House, fire, gender

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article I examine the Samburu house (pastoralists, northern Kenya) and its fire as the sacred locus of right moral practices—as feminine objects consecrated through proper use. I begin by way of counter-example, however, describing the moral entailments of a particular event, a woman's house that caught fire in contentious circumstances. Following this elucidation of houses made sacred or desecrated through use, I will conclude with a discussion of the Samburu house in relation to Samburu understandings of “modernity.” Here, I will point out the re-gendering of the Samburu house in the wake of an intriguing trend—the accelerating proliferation of the “modern” house that has frequently become a man's house in a society for which the house has long been a quintessentially feminine space.