Seeing like a citizen : decolonization, development, and the making of Kenya, 1945-1980 / Kara Moskowitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moskowitz, Kara, author.

Series:

New African histories series

New African histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Decolonization--Kenya.

Decolonization.

Economic development--Political aspects--Kenya.

Economic development.

Economic development--Political aspects.

Politics and government.

History.

Kenya--History--20th century.

Kenya.

Kenya--Politics and government--20th century.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 332 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, [2019]

Summary:

"In Seeing Like a Citizen, Kara Moskowitz approaches Kenya's late colonial and early postcolonial eras as a single period of political, economic, and social transition. In focusing on rural Kenyans-the vast majority of the populace and the main targets of development interventions-as they actively sought access to aid, she offers new insights into the texture of political life in decolonizing Kenya and the early postcolonial world. Using multi-sited archival sources and oral histories focused on the western Rift Valley, Seeing Like a Citizen makes three fundamental contributions to our understanding of African and Kenyan history. First, it challenges the widely accepted idea of the gatekeeper state, revealing that state control remained limited and that the postcolonial state was an internally varied and often dissonant institution. Second, it transforms our understanding of postcolonial citizenship, showing that its balance of rights and duties was neither claimed nor imposed, but negotiated and differentiated. Third, it reorients Kenyan historiography away from central Kenya and elite postcolonial politics. The result is a powerful investigation of experiences of independence, of the meaning and form of development, and of how global political practices were composed and recomposed on the ground in local settings"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 "Can I Be One of Them?"

The Landscapes of Settlement in Decolonizing Kenya

ch. 2 "We Must Return to the Land That We Love"

Local Accounts and Life Histories in Three Settlement Schemes

ch. 3 "The Land Was Ours, but It Was Not Mine"

Land Marginalization and the Political Imagination

ch. 4 "If I Was Evicted, Where Could I Go?"

Cooperative Development and Contestations over Economic Citizenship

ch. 5 "A Hungry Nation Cannot Be Contented"

The Political Economy of Famine

ch. 6 "Those Poor People Who Sweated Themselves to Help Themselves"

Self-Help and the Contradictions of Citizenship and Development

ch. 7 "Are You Planting Trees or Are You Planting People?"

Local Resistance, International Development, and the Making of Kenya.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-313) and index.

ISBN:

9780821423950

0821423959

9780821423967

0821423967

OCLC:

1110159530

Publisher Number:

99986231110