New media and re-bargaining patriarchy in Kenyan families

Abstract

This article aims to empirically analyse and theoretically reflect on how the appropriation of new information and communication technologies in everyday life interrelates with continuous renegotiations of contemporary social and family relations in Kenya. Various changes in the locally specific communication ecologies in Kenya occur simultaneously with similar important societal changes related to migration, wage labour, marketization and increased access to education. Consequently, people’s basic living conditions in everyday life have changed in terms of connectivity, knowledge, power, time and space, with traditional family relations being challenged, re-bargained and re-established in a complex synthesis between continuity and change. Taking theoretical reflections on patriarchy, power and communication ecologies as its point of departure, the article conducts empirical analyses grounded in semi-structured ethnographic interviews and observations. The article presents an account of how the new diverse communication ecologies interrelate with continuous negotiations of family relations in a re-bargaining of patriarchy.