Ethnicity, violence, and the immigrant-guest metaphor in Kenya

African Affairs

Volumn 111, Issue 445, 2012, Pages 576-596

  Jenkins, Sarah ^a  

^a ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BOTTOM-UP APPROACH; DEMOCRATIZATION; ELECTION; ETHNIC GROUP; ETHNICITY; IMMIGRANT POPULATION; MOBILIZATION; NATIONAL IDENTITY; SOCIAL EXCLUSION; TERRITORIALITY; VIOLENCE;

KENYA;

EID: 84867118618     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/ads051     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. There are notable exceptions, particularly within the recent literature emerging out of the Kenyan crisis. In particular see Gabrielle Lynch, I Say to You: Ethnic politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2011); and the contributions in Daniel Branch, Nic Cheeseman, and Leigh Gardner (eds), Our Turn to Eat: Politics in Kenya since 1950 (Lit Verlag, Berlin). This article seeks to build upon this growing body of literature.2010
2. The conceptualization of ethnic others as 'immigrants' and as 'guests' are two aspects of the same metaphor that are emphasized at different times and under different circumstances
3. Hank Johnston, 'Ritual, strategy and deep culture in the Chechen national movement', Critical Studies on Terrorism 1, 3 (2008), pp. 321-42
4. Interviewees were asked to narrate their personal stories, describing their experiences of and involvement in the campaigns, the elections, and the aftermath. Questions related to each individual narrative were combined with more general ones designed to elicit views on the nature of ethnicity, politics, and violence in Kenya.
5. Field sites within these three towns were selected through consultation with residents of each area, in an effort to gather material in both the localized hot-spots of violence, as well as in micro-territories which remained relatively peaceful'Tribalism: when shall we slay the dragon?', Sunday Standard, 18 February 2008.
6. Edward W. Soja, The Geography of Modernization in Kenya: A spatial analysis of social, economic and political change (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 1968), p. 13.
7. Lynch, I Say to You, p. 17.
8. The early use of terms like 'invention' and 'creation' has been questioned, not only for their Eurocentric assumptions that pre-colonial African societies had no conscious sense of themselves and for their overemphasis on colonial power, but also because it assumes a once and for all event, not allowing for the continuous imagining and reimagining of identity over time. Key literature in this debate includes Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983); John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979); Terence Ranger, 'The invention of tradition revisited: the case of Africa' in Terence Ranger and Olufemi Vaughan (eds), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa (Macmillan, London, 1993), pp. 62-111.
9. Many scholars have highlighted the influence of African agents, arguing that they were as much the manipulators of colonial reinventions as they were the manipulated. See for example, Leroy Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1989
10. Thomas Spear, 'Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa', Journal of African History 44, 1 (2003), pp. 3-27
11. Justin Willis, 'The makings of a tribe: Bondei identities and histories', Journal of African History 33, 2 (1992), pp. 191-208
12. Gabrielle Lynch, 'Negotiating ethnicity: identity politics in contemporary Kenya', Review of African Political Economy 33, 107 (2006), pp. 385-410.
13. See for example Peter Geschiere and Josef Gugler, 'Introduction: The urban-rural connection: changing issues of belonging and identification', Africa 68, 3 (1998), pp. 309- 19
14. Peter Geschiere and Francis B. Nyamnjoh, 'Capitalism and autochthony: the seesaw of mobility and belonging', Public Culture 12, 2 (2002), pp. 423-52
15. Daniel Jordan Smith, 'Burials and belonging in Nigeria: rural-urban relations and social inequality in a contemporary African ritual', American Anthropologist 106, 3 (2004), pp. 569-79.
16. Josef Gugler, 'The son of a hawk does not remain abroad: the urban-rural connection in Africa', African Studies Review 8, 1 (2002), pp. 45-63
17. Nancy Schwartz, 'Active dead or alive: some Kenyan views about the agency of Luo and Luyia women pre-and post-mortem', Journal of Religion in Africa 30, 4 (2000), pp. 433-67
18. For a full account see David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Burying SM: The politics of knowledge and the sociology of power in Africa (James Currey, Oxford, 1992). 15. Geschiere and Nyamnjoh, 'Capitalism and autochthony', p. 437.
19. Parker Shipton, 'Debts and trespasses: land mortgages and the ancestors in western Kenya', Africa 62, 3 (1992), pp. 357-88
20. On several occasions Raila Odinga and former President Moi have made inflammatory speeches over the issue of rent in Kibera, claiming that since it is government land, there could be no landlords in the slum, and therefore that existing rents should be reduced. This issue is bitterly contested by the Nubian community.
21. Interview, Nubian woman, Karanja, Kibera, 10 December 2009.
22. Othaya, in Central Province, has risen to prominence because it is the district from which President Mwai Kibaki hails; Kakamega is the capital of the Luhya province of Western; similarly, Kiambu is a prominent district in Central Province.
23. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of globalization (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000), p. 180.
24. Roseline Achieng, 'Langas or "home away from home"? The social meaning of place by Kikuyu internally displaced women from Burnt Forest, Kenya' in C. Brun and N. M. Birkeland (eds), 'Researching Internal Displacement: State of the art, conference proceedings', Acta Geographica, Series A, 6 (NTNU, Trondheim, 2003), pp. 153-74, p. 165.
25. Interview, Taita youth, Waithaka, Kawangware, 8 March 2010.
26. Interview, elderly Kalenjin man, Huruma, Eldoret, 2 February 2010.
27. Marianne Gullestad, 'Invisible fences: egalitarianism, nationalism and racism', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8, 1 (2002), pp. 21-41
28. Interview, elderly Kikuyu woman, Huruma, Eldoret, 29 January 2010.
29. Interview, Kalenjin youth, Shabab, Nakuru, 2 June 2010.
30. Shipton, 'Debts and trespasses', p. 362.
31. Interview, Nubian woman, Karanja, Kibera, 10 December 2009.
32. Interview, Luhya youth, Munyaka, Eldoret, 12 February 2010.
33. Akiwumi Commission, 'Report of the judicial commission appointed to inquire into tribal clashes in Kenya' (Government Printer, Nairobi, 1999), p. 167.
34. Antoine Socpa, 'Bailleurs, autochthones et locataires allogenes: enjeu foncier et participation politique au Cameroun', African Studies Review 49, 2 (2006), pp. 45-67.
35. Ruth Marshall-Fratani, 'The war of "who is who": autochthony, nationalism and citizenship in the Ivoirian crisis', African Studies Review 49, 2 (2006), pp. 9-43
36. Nancy Lee Peluso and Emily Harwell, 'Territory, custom and the cultural politics of ethnic war in West Kalimantan, Indonesia' in Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts (eds), Violent Environments (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2001), pp. 83-116
37. Mireille Rosello, Postcolonial Hospitality: The immigrant as guest (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2001), p. 3.
38. Susanne D. Mueller, 'The political economy of Kenya's crisis', Journal of Eastern African Studies 2, 2 (2008), pp. 185-210
39. Interview, Luhya youth, female, Gatina, Kawangware, 7 April 2010. It is noteworthy that this interviewee is a resident of Nairobi, and as such, this desire for development in the rural home is further illustrative of the urban-rural ties many migrants maintain.2010
40. Interview, Luhya youth, female, Gatina Kawangware, 8 April 2010.
41. Daniel N. Posner, 'Regime change and ethnic cleavages in Africa', Comparative Political Studies 40, 11 (2007), pp. 1302-28
42. Nicolas van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001), p.120.
43. 'Appeals to tribe an excuse for exploitation', The Standard, 20 December 2007.
44. Interview, Luhya youth, Kabiro Kawangware, 3 March 2010.
45. Johnston, 'Ritual, strategy and deep culture', p. 322.
46. Interview, Kikuyu youth, Huruma, Eldoret, 3 February 2010.
47. Interview, Kalenjin youth, Kaptembwa Nakuru, 16 June 2010.
48. Reported in 'Act on roots of electoral crime', The Standard, 20 December 2007.
49. Bambi Ceuppens and Peter Geschiere, 'Autochthony: local or global? New modes in the struggle over citizenship and belonging in Africa and Europe', Annual Review of Anthropology 38 (2005), pp. 385-407
50. Peter Geschiere and Stephen Jackson, 'Autochthony and the crisis of citizenship: democratization, decentralization, and the politics of belonging', African Studies Review 49, 2 (2006), pp. 1-14
51. Piet Konings, 'Autochthony and ethnic cleansing in the post-colony: the 1966 Tombel disturbances in Cameroon', International Journal of African Historical Studies 41, 2 (2008), pp. 203-22
52. Lynch, I Say to You, p. 211.
53. Interview, middle aged Kikuyu man, Kibera, 1 January 2010.
54. Interview, Kikuyu youth, Shabab, Nakuru, 5 June 2010.
55. Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, On the Brink of the Precipice: A human rights account of Kenya's post-election violence (KNCHR, Nairobi, 2008) p. 106http://www. knchr.org/Portals/0/Reports/KNCHR_REPORT_REPORT_ON_THE_BRINK_OF_THE_PRECIPE.pdf
56. Interview, Kikuyu youth, Huruma, Eldoret, 25 January 2010.
57. For a detailed discussion of majimboism, see David Anderson, 'Majimboism: the troubled history of an idea' in Branch, Cheeseman, and Gardner, Our Turn to Eat.
58. Interview, Kikuyu youth, Laini Saba, Kibera, 29 July 2010.
59. Waki Commission, 'The report of the Commission of Inquiry into post-election violence' (Government Printer, Nairobi 2008), p. viii
60. Lynch, I Say to You, p. 209.
61. John Lonsdale, 'The moral economy of Mau Mau: wealth, poverty and civic virtue in Kikuyu political thought' in Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale (eds), Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey, London, 1992), pp. 315-504.2
62. For examples of these more optimistic readings of moral ethnicity in Kenya, see Stephen Orvis, 'Moral ethnicity and political tribalism in Kenya's "virtual democracy"', African Issues 29, 1 (2001), pp. 8-13
63. Jacqueline M. Klopp, 'Can moral ethnicity trump political tribalism? The struggle for land and nation in Kenya', African Studies 61, 2 (2002), pp. 269-94.
64. Nic Cheeseman, 'Kenya since 2002: the more things change the more they stay the same' in Raufu Mustapha and Lindsay Whitfield (eds), Turning Points in African Democracy (James Currey, Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 94-113
65. Gabrielle Lynch, 'Histories of association and difference: the construction and negotiation of ethnicity' in Branch, Cheeseman, and Gardner (eds), Our Turn to Eat, p. 186.
66. This body of literature has emerged out of the influential work of Frederik Barth, who documented switches of identity between the Pathan and Baluch communities in Pakistan. See Frederik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The social organization of cultural difference (Little Brown and Co., Boston, MA, 1969). For analyses which explore the negotiation of identity in the Kenyan context see Lynch, 'Negotiating ethnicity'; Thomas Spear and Richard Waller (eds), Being Maasai: Ethnicity and identity in East Africa (James Currey, London, 1993
67. Dishon G. Kweya, Narrative as a Process of Re-Negotiating Ethnic Identities among the Abanyole of Western Kenya (University of Witwatersrand, unpublished PhD dissertation, 2011).
68. James D. Fearon, 'Why ethnic politics and "pork" tend to go together' (Paper presented at a MacArthur Foundation-sponsored conference on 'Ethnic Politics and Democratic Stability', Wilder House, University of Chicago, 21-23 May 1999).
69. John Lonsdale, 'Soil, work, civilization and citizenship in Kenya', Journal of Eastern African Studies 2, 2 (2008), pp. 305-14.
70. 'Why Nakuru can never become a county for one ethnic community', Daily Nation, 8 September 2010.
71. Interview, Kalenjin youth, Shabab, Nakuru, 6 June 2010.
72. For example, different clans which come under the Kalenjin umbrella may at one time recognize each other as Kalenjin brothers and at other moments be cast in oppositional host-guest roles.
73. Interview, middle-aged Kalenjin man, Kaptembwa, Nakuru, 14 June 2010.
74. Indeed, things remained tense in the town until Mwai Kibaki reinstated Ruto later that day on the grounds that, as Prime Minister, Raila Odinga had no authority to suspend members of the cabinet. The author was in Eldoret town on this particular day and observed the increasing tensions.
75. Interview, Kalenjin youth, Kaptembwa, Nakuru, 16 June 2010.