Maragoli and Gusii Farmers in Kenya: Strong Collective Action and High Prosocial Punishment

I an effort to capture the middle of the market integration spectrum, we included two modern farming communities in Africa in our cross-cultural world sample: the ethnically related Maragoli and Gusii of Kenya. Like many farmers in Kenya and other more developed countries on the continent, the Maragoli and the Gusii are well educated and highly diversified in their household economic strategies. In one marked respect, however, they are very different. The Maragoli are considerably less well endowed economically than the Gusii by virtually all measures. The Maragoli and Gusii share a common ethnolinguistic ancestry, but there are stark differences in the contemporary economic situations of the two samples represented here. Although both ethnic groups inhabit relatively lush agricultural zones, the Maragoli suffer from extreme population density, and their land holdings are small (averaging 0.2 hectares); thus, many Maragoli have been forced off the land in search of better economic fortunes. Much of the Gusii community at large suffers exactly the same fate as the Maragoli, but the specific Gusii population represented here benefited from residing in the Nyansiongo resettlement area. The colonial administrators had displaced the original occupants to create space for the white settlers, who brought large-scale farming in dairy cattle, tea, and coffee to the area. In 1962 the same authorities established a boundaries commission to formulate a strategy for returning the land to the Gusii because some of the white settlers were eager to leave before the country attained independence in 1963. At the time of independence, the Gusii who settled there were some of the most politically well connected and privileged under the colonial authorities; most of them were sons of the politically powerful during the colonial era. They were rewarded with large plots, and today they are still well endowed with land and enjoy a comfortable economic situation. They have large pieces of land that they use to produce food and cash crops. Most of them derive income from their farming activities sufficient to enable them to invest in both farming and nonfarming ventures. Compounding these differences between the two ethnic groups in economic endowment is the fact that the Maragoli games were run during an exceptionally bad local drought in 2003, while the Gusii games were run in 2004, a year of favorable rainfall and improved local farming conditions. These stark differences in economic circumstances do generate different effects within and across these two societies when we look at the distribution of offers and the regression statistics. However, there is considerable similarity between the Maragoli and the Gusii compared to the rest of the cross-cultural sample. Chapter 12