Peasants to Paupers

Land, Class, and Kinship in Central Kenya

AvPeter Lockwood

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

Del i serien The International African Library

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Beskrivning

On the northern periphery of Nairobi, in southern Kiambu County, the city's expansion into a landscape of poor smallholders is bringing new opportunities, dilemmas, and conflicts. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Peter Lockwood examines how Kiambu's 'workers with patches of land' struggle to sustain their households as the skyrocketing price of land ratchets up gendered and generational tensions within families. The sale of ancestral land by senior men turns would-be inheritors, their young adult sons, into landless and land-poor paupers, heightening their exposure to economic precarity. Peasants to Paupers illuminates how these dynamics are lived at the site of kinship, how moral principles of patrilineal obligation and land retention fail in the face of market opportunity. Caught between joblessness, land poverty and the breakdown of kinship, the book shows how Kiambu's young men struggle to sustain hopes for middle-class lifestyles as the economic ground shifts beneath their feet.This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-01-19
Mått:152 x 229 x 18 mm
Vikt:579 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:The International African Library
Antal sidor:288
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781009643474

Utforska kategorier

Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Politik och statsskick inom Samhälle och politik
Mikroekonomi inom Ekonomi och Ledarskap

Mer om författaren

Peter Lockwood is a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Manchester. His current research studies land speculation, finance and fraud on Nairobi's urban frontier. He is the co-curator of Nairobi Becoming (2024), a multi-authored ethnographic portrait of the city. He has been published in Current Anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Africa.

Recensioner i media

'Detailed in its ethnography, this engaging and timely book lifts the lid on how available land and economic opportunities have failed to keep pace with population growth in Kenya, leading to youth unemployment, alcoholism and dislocated masculinity. It is an essential resource for Africanist scholars and policy makers.' Fred N. Ikanda, Maseno University

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction; 1. Ten million beggars: from peasants to paupers on the edge of the city; 2. Hopeless consumptions: 'hanging on' to the future amidst destitution; 3. Retaining land, claiming morality: debating labour, legacy, and virtue at the end of the land; 4. Household sustainers: women's work in the shadow of male poverty; 5. 'Women Only Hustle for Themselves': men's mistrust and women's lost faith in marriage; 6. Enclosing property, containing envy: inheritance, gender and land conflict in urbanising Kiambu; 7. 'There is only starting at the bottom': Downward mobility and the future at the end of the land; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.