Meghan E Ference
Biographic Data
| ID | 128609 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meghan E Ference |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meghan E |
| FAMILY NAME | Ference |
| SIGNATURE | FERENCE M E |
| AFFILIATIONS | City University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8264-8019 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
RaShelle R. Peck, Nairobi Hip Hop Flow
RaShelle R. Peck, Nairobi Hip Hop Flow: Diasporic Blackness and Embodied Performance in the Underground. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2025. 250 pp. ISBN 9780520389793/9780520386488/9780520386495 (hbk/pbk/ebk)
Compliments from the Housewives’
This article examines the racial politics of decolonization in late-colonial Nairobi in the decade before independence through the unique space of the colonial bus using archival letters from a group of European women who called themselves ‘The Housewives’. In letters to Nairobi's mayor and the Kenya Bus Service (KBS), the Housewives argued against a newly proposed transportation policy that would make all seating on the colonial buses the same p…
You will build me
Those who populate the productive frontiers of capitalism are often targets of violence by groups and institutions aiming to poach, control and regulate their economic practices. This article draws on years of ethnographic research conducted with informal transport operators in Nairobi who drive, conduct and own the minibus taxis calledmatatu. In order to navigate the city, this workforce engages in a coordinated but tense economic dance along th…
Harnessing the 'hustle
In a workshop entitled ‘Harnessing the Hustle’, held at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in April 2017, a group of academic researchers and community activists came together to discuss a concept that resonated across ethnographic findings and everyday life alike: hustling. For many of us working in Nairobi for years, we considered the real ‘experts in the room’ to be our Kenyan interlocutors, many of whom have become research collab…
Satire, social media, and cultures of resistance
Retooled by social media and new communication technologies, the cultural politics of dissent in Kenya has become bolder and more open since the return of multi-party politics in the early 1990s. Tracing such changes, this chapter highlights lively domains of creative expression that disrupts political messages and unmasks political power in ways that upstage dominant news media. Satire, popular music, graffiti art, and cartoons capture rulers’ e…
Linguistic Diversity and Plurality in Africa
Nearly one‐third of all the earth's languages, over 2000, are spoken on the continent of Africa. Classification around African languages draws social boundaries and is emotionally charged, with deep historical roots, important to personal identity as well as local and national politics. Problems in language classification can be traced to the colonial project. As white, European, colonial officers and early anthropologists encountered Africa's va…
Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience. Kai Kresse. Bloomington
Joyriding
WatchingThe Daily Showin Kenya
Global distribution of a popular American television programme – Jon Stewart's Daily Show – offers a rare opportunity to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire. Drawing on focus group discussions in Kenya, this analysis shows how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted – indeed unexpectedly subverted – The Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprisi…
David Anderson, Susan Beckerleg, Degol Hailu and Axel Klein. The Khat Controversy
Harnessing the 'hustle
In a workshop entitled ‘Harnessing the Hustle’, held at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in April 2017, a group of academic researchers and community activists came together to discuss a concept that resonated across ethnographic findings and everyday life alike: hustling. For many of us working in Nairobi for years, we considered the real ‘experts in the room’ to be our Kenyan interlocutors, many of whom have become research collab…
WatchingThe Daily Showin Kenya
Global distribution of a popular American television programme – Jon Stewart's Daily Show – offers a rare opportunity to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire. Drawing on focus group discussions in Kenya, this analysis shows how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted – indeed unexpectedly subverted – The Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprisi…
You will build me
Those who populate the productive frontiers of capitalism are often targets of violence by groups and institutions aiming to poach, control and regulate their economic practices. This article draws on years of ethnographic research conducted with informal transport operators in Nairobi who drive, conduct and own the minibus taxis calledmatatu. In order to navigate the city, this workforce engages in a coordinated but tense economic dance along th…
Joyriding
David Anderson, Susan Beckerleg, Degol Hailu and Axel Klein. The Khat Controversy
WatchingThe Daily Showin Kenya
Global distribution of a popular American television programme – Jon Stewart's Daily Show – offers a rare opportunity to examine transnational contingencies of meaning in political satire. Drawing on focus group discussions in Kenya, this analysis shows how some East Africans appropriated and reinterpreted – indeed unexpectedly subverted – The Daily Show's political content, deriving from it insights that Stewart himself might have found surprisi…
Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience. Kai Kresse. Bloomington
Joyriding
Satire, social media, and cultures of resistance
Retooled by social media and new communication technologies, the cultural politics of dissent in Kenya has become bolder and more open since the return of multi-party politics in the early 1990s. Tracing such changes, this chapter highlights lively domains of creative expression that disrupts political messages and unmasks political power in ways that upstage dominant news media. Satire, popular music, graffiti art, and cartoons capture rulers’ e…
Linguistic Diversity and Plurality in Africa
Nearly one‐third of all the earth's languages, over 2000, are spoken on the continent of Africa. Classification around African languages draws social boundaries and is emotionally charged, with deep historical roots, important to personal identity as well as local and national politics. Problems in language classification can be traced to the colonial project. As white, European, colonial officers and early anthropologists encountered Africa's va…
You will build me
Those who populate the productive frontiers of capitalism are often targets of violence by groups and institutions aiming to poach, control and regulate their economic practices. This article draws on years of ethnographic research conducted with informal transport operators in Nairobi who drive, conduct and own the minibus taxis calledmatatu. In order to navigate the city, this workforce engages in a coordinated but tense economic dance along th…
Harnessing the 'hustle
In a workshop entitled ‘Harnessing the Hustle’, held at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in April 2017, a group of academic researchers and community activists came together to discuss a concept that resonated across ethnographic findings and everyday life alike: hustling. For many of us working in Nairobi for years, we considered the real ‘experts in the room’ to be our Kenyan interlocutors, many of whom have become research collab…
Compliments from the Housewives’
This article examines the racial politics of decolonization in late-colonial Nairobi in the decade before independence through the unique space of the colonial bus using archival letters from a group of European women who called themselves ‘The Housewives’. In letters to Nairobi's mayor and the Kenya Bus Service (KBS), the Housewives argued against a newly proposed transportation policy that would make all seating on the colonial buses the same p…
RaShelle R. Peck, Nairobi Hip Hop Flow
RaShelle R. Peck, Nairobi Hip Hop Flow: Diasporic Blackness and Embodied Performance in the Underground. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2025. 250 pp. ISBN 9780520389793/9780520386488/9780520386495 (hbk/pbk/ebk)
Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Media studies (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Art (3 works) · History (3 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (3 works) · African history and culture studies (2 works)