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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Ethnicity, violence, and the immigrant-guest metaphor in Kenya
Author:Jenkins, Sarah
Year:2012
Periodical:African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621)
Volume:111
Issue:445
Pages:576-596
Language:English
Geographic term:Kenya
Subjects:ethnicity
immigrants
political violence
2007
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/23357170
Abstract:Kenya's enduring ethnic violence is frequently explained with reference to the mobilization of ethnicity from above, and relatively little attention has been paid to the participation of ordinary people. Focusing on the violence that followed the 2007 general elections, this article explores how bottom-up processes of identification and violence interacted with incitement from above. It argues that autochthonous discourses of belonging and exclusion engendered an understanding of ethnic others as 'immigrants' and 'guests', and these narratives of territorialized identity both reinforced elite manipulation and operated independently of it. It offers an illustration of this territorialized identity narrative through an examination of burial customs and the formation of ethnic enclaves. Kenya's post-election violence can thus be understood as a bottom-up performance of narratives of ethnic territorial exclusion operating alongside more direct elite involvement, organization, and incitement. The durability of these narratives, as well as their inherent plasticity, has significant implications for the potential for further violence and the prospects for democratization. The analysis is based on fieldwork carried out in Kenya between October 2009 and August 2010, during which 533 narrative interviews were conducted with residents of urban slums and peri-urban centres around Eldoret, Nairobi and Nakuru. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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