80 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 115 (1990)
any time. They are leaders on account of their rhetoric skills and their deeds. When
raiding there is no fixed strategy which would assign age-sets certain positions in
battle. Maasai (Jacobs 1968) and Boran (Baxter 1979) assign a man's position in fight-
ing according to his age-set.
It is more the ideology of age and generation-sets than their actual socio-political
organization which relates to warfare. Hearing the speeches at celebrations may easily
convey the impression that generation and age-sets line up together to thwart off Tur-
kana attacks or decide together when to raid their enemies. When Kaplelach asked Ko-
ronkoro and Chumwó in November 1988 for their circumcision they were eager to
point out their exploits in warfare. It was they who went to Turkana, raided cattle and
killed enemies. Though every participant in a raid has very individual interests in the
loot on such occasions communal interest and communal success is stressed. The Kap-
lelach argued that in spite of their exploits the socio-political position of their set was
still inferior. In all promotion ceremonies speakers will make allusions to their sets’
success in raiding and blame other sets for staying at home cowardly. Speakers evoke
the image of their age-set acting as a corporate group when raiding Turkana.
Age and generation-sets may be utilised for the mobilisation of personnel for raid-
ing. The networks of age-set comrades are widespread and may be used to transmit
news about the impending raid. The rhetoric of the age-set system is used to motivate
men. The system further provides convenient categories to describe warfare. The ab-
sence of leadership and internal organization makes it useless for organizing inter-eth-
nic warfare. Only in internal conflicts do age and generation-sets act as corporate
groups.
2.3 Cognitive organization: anger
Literature on East African pastoralists has frequently discussed the belligerent orien-
tation of the pastoralist’s cognitive systems (Jacobs 1979). Older literature (e.g. Tho-
mas 1965) has depicted the martial orientation as a prime motif for interethnic conflict.
Unfortunately there has been little anthropological fieldwork done on the cognitive-
emotive organization of East African herders. The stereotype of the belligerent herds-
man is rather tied to the concept of the cattle-complex cultures than that is is based on
research.
In Pokot the concept sirumoi is of importance in understanding emic explanations
on emotional states in connection with conflict behaviour. sirumor conveys connota-
tions of anger und rage but goes beyond that. sirumoi should be felt before starting à
raid, before entering the circumcision hut, before spearing the oxen at the initiation ce-
remony and when killing an enemy. Not all humans are able to enter into the emotio-
nal state of sirumoi — or the right form of sirumoi. Individuals who are able to do so are
highly esteemed. Men and women express sirumot in different ways. Pokot claim that
this emotional state expresses itself in facial and body expressions and a certain way of
