Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home Africana Periodical Literature Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Urban trust in Kenya and Tanzania: cooperation in the provision of public goods
Author:Burbidge, DominicISNI
Year:2013
Periodical:Canadian Journal of African Studies (ISSN 0008-3968)
Volume:47
Issue:3
Pages:465-482
Language:English
Geographic terms:Kenya
Tanzania
Subjects:local government
public services
market vendors
ethnicity
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2013.876921
Abstract:Literature connecting ethnic diversity with public goods provision has found public goods to be poorly and unevenly supplied in ethnically heterogeneous communities. Scrutinizing this hypothesis, the present study contrasts an ethnically homogenous community in Kenya with an ethnically heterogeneous one in Tanzania, documenting levels of trust and cooperation in public goods provision. Interviews and focus groups with market-sellers of Mwanza (Tanzania) and Kisumu (Kenya) reveal how the two professionally similar populations differ starkly in the way they participate in public goods, and in an opposite direction to that which would be predicted by the current literature on ethnicity. On the topic of the organization of security and cleaning within markets in Mwanza, ethnically heterogeneous market-sellers' sense of solidarity facilitates a greater degree of seller-on-seller trust. In Kisumu, in contrast, with participants reflective of the dominant Luo ethnicity, the lack of State provision of public services has seen a feeble and individualistic response. The findings demonstrate how ethnic distribution matters less for public goods provision than commitments amongst citizens themselves and between citizens and local authorities. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
Views
Cover