Land, belonging and structural oblivion among contemporary white Kenyans

Abstract

In recent years, settler descendants in Kenya have found their rights to hold land in Laikipia challenged by Maasai activists. Many have defended themselves by drawing on colonial-era discourses about pastoralist ecology and what constitutes good use of the land. These discourses have side-stepped ecological history and the moral problematics of colonial land seizure, while treating Maasai anger and nostalgia as manipulative and inauthentic. At the same time, new ‘community-based’ conservation movements, in conjunction with Afro-Kenyan activism, have prodded some white Kenyans into loosening their epistemology and making preliminary, partial concessions to Afro-Kenyan points of view. Yet, I suggest, these concessions themselves are part of a new, shifting model of whiteness: one that responds to new political imperatives, yet retains certain ways of justifying white advantages in landholding. I draw on these shifts to explore similarities with and disjunctures from colonial whiteness among these contemporary white Kenyans feeling the pressure to move from one historical era to another.

Framing Local Attitudes to a Modern Health Intervention in the Neoliberal Order – Culturalism and Malaria Control in Southeastern Nigeria

“…Those objections are what they then tend to express in my interactions with them across the villages (evident in many of the quotes in this article) because they reckon that the researcher is not part of the control campaign and may be open to their own differing views about current malaria control efforts. It is also understandable that the intervention functionaries are working under 'structural oblivion' (McIntosh, 2018), a disposition that tends to blinker them from the larger structural factors that might undermine their constrained attempts to control or eradicate a disease that has larger structural dimensions.…”

Mediating Maendeleo: Examining the Nexus Between Geothermal Extraction, Wildlife Conservation and Community Well-being in Olkaria-Suswa, Southern Kenya

“…Hughes (2006) documents how the Maasai resisted the putative agreements by asserting that they would rather die fighting than move. Others were adamantly opposed to the relocation and hid in forests to evade the move, forming part of the current Maasai population in Laikipia County (McIntosh 2017).…”

“…The tensions between public sector organizations such as KWS and Kenya Forest Service (KFS), over the green funds are likely to increase as the private sector also gets involved. For example, several private conservancies such as Olchoki ranch in Laikipia have already enlisted for carbon credit (McIntosh 2017, Fox 2018, and many more may follow suit. While this is favourable for the overall conservation goals, it may favour certain species with the risk of forest-destructive species such as elephants likely to be phased out of such spaces.…”