David Parkin's focus has been on East Africa where he has carried out a number of years' fieldwork among different peoples and in different ecologies: the Luo of western Kenya, the Giriama of eastern Kenya, and Swahili-speakers in Zanzibar and Mombasa. He has studied the growth of ethnically mixed urban populations in Kampala, Uganda, where his interest in Luo first started, and in Nairobi, where he developed more fully his interest in Luo.
'...these admirable studies offer one of the best introductions to the protocol of meeting the elites of Tropical Africa.' West Africa