ABSTRACT
The author shows how a clash of adaptations can occur in a context where adaptation means different things to different actors, and that for those in power it can be employed as a resource to pursue their own interests. The ways in which the discourse on adaptation to climate change concerning Africa is advancing can largely be characterised by the language of vulnerability, disaster, hazard, inequality, poverty, and lack of adaptive capacity. Western discourses on disasters form part of a wider historical and cultural geography of risk that maintains a specific image of large parts of the world as dangerous places. The history of perceptions of the relationship between the Maasai pastoralists with their cattle and their environment has been fraught with controversy. While the travelling idea of adaptation is revitalising these very same misconceptions and prejudices of the Maasai as 'backward' and in need of education, it is the same idea that has given way to a counter narrative.
