Lake Turkana Wind Power, situated on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, is currently the largest wind-power project in Africa and the biggest private investment in Kenyan history. While this project enjoys strong support from the Kenyan government, at the local level it has unfolded amid considerable controversy and has been accompanied by accusations of land-grabbing, corporate negligence and infringement of indigenous and customary land rights. This article examines the local effects of the Lake Turkana Wind Power's construction. It explores how the value of land has been transformed by the wind farm and the effects this has had on local social relationships, territoriality and connections to place. The largescale, rapid privatisation of land and infrastructure development has produced a variety of apparently contradictory effects; local people simultaneously seek to access 'benefits' from the project and experience new forms of exclusion. This is particularly clear in disputes over the distribution of employment and corporate social investment. A notable consequence has been increasingly exclusive claims to land and interpretations of local history -new values ascribed to the land have generated new feelings of entitlement and raised expectations of 'development'. These contestations reveal that the value of land is about more that the material resource itself. It rests on what other privileges can be accessed through claims to place and belonging.
This article explores conflicts over local administrative boundaries in South Sudan and what these reveal about relationships between pastoralist communities and the state. Drawing on research in the Gogrial region of South Sudan, it argues that conflicts over local boundaries are rooted in the existence of different border paradigms and in subsequent attempts to resolve, sometimes violently, competing moral claims on the landscape. It draws a contrast between a Dinka concept of the border as a point that is owned and the state's concept of the border as a neutral dividing line. These concepts are based on different cultural logics, but there has been a century of interpenetration as well as conflict between them. The state has tried to lay its lines over Dinka points and local people have sought to tap the power of the state by claiming authority at administrative boundaries. These complex processes of interpenetration show how rural populations negotiate with violent state power: both in the past and in the process of forming the new state of South Sudan. They also reveal how some pastoralist populations have played an active role in shaping the geography of the state.
This article examines increasing prominent claims of 'heritage' and 'culture' along the LAPSSET corridor. In particular it looks at how heritage is being used to promote pastoralism, communal land ownership and the survival of indigenous cultures in northern Kenya. In the context of the ambitious infrastructural development projects contained in the LAPSSET and Vision 2030 plans, 'heritage' is emerging as a way of negotiating change. Various legal instruments, including the formalization of customary laws and 'bio-cultural community protocols' are currently being developed to protect pastoralist heritage and communal land tenure. An important example is the attempts in Isiolo County to reinvent and strengthen a Borana customary institution for grazing management: a council of elders called dedha. The article explores the ways in which these attempts to promote pastoralist heritage are part of a larger conversation about the value of pastoralism and pastoralist culture and how the heritage of pastoralism is being positioned as the basis for an alternative 'Vision' for the future of Kenya's arid lands. Heritage isn't simply about preserving the past; it has effects on the present. This article will show how attempts to revive customary institutions are themselves part of the process of transforming space in northern Kenya; shedding light on the intentional and unexpected ways in which large-scale development plans reconfigure the landscape.
The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.