From Samburu Heirloom to New Age Artifact: The Cross‐Cultural Consumption of<i>Mporo</i>Marriage Beads

Abstract

Antique Venetian trade beads used in Samburu women's marriage necklaces ( mporo ) have recently undergone intense recommodif ication in the transnational trade bead market concurrent with their appropriation by Euro‐American women in both religious and secular domains. The article offers duai ethnographies of this mporo bead in order to advance anthropological understandings of precious objects in the context of globalization. Samburu and Euro‐American desires for the "same" bead have been both reciprocal and distinct: Whereas Samburu desires for and exchange of mporo beads have been rooted in Samburu cultural forms, Euro‐American desires for the same bead are linked to a kind of "fictional inalienability" that is not embedded in Samburu social relations but is instead rich in spiritual associations imagined through Euro‐American women's vague understandings of the bead's "original" African owners. [Keywords: material culture, globalization, United States, Kenya, pastoralists]