Samantha Balaton‐chrime
Biographic Data
| ID | 1399000 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Samantha Balaton‐chrime |
| GIVEN NAMES | Samantha |
| FAMILY NAME | Balaton‐chrime |
| SIGNATURE | CHRIME S B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deakin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7917-2846 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
To count or not to count? Insights from Kenya for global debates about enumerating ethnicity in national censuses
There is an impasse on the question of whether or not to enumerate identity groups in national censuses, given their potential to variously facilitate dominance and an emergence from marginalisation. In this paper, we theorise the impasse in Kenya as relating to a colonial history of the strategic use of ethnicity to divide and rule; a demographic makeup with both some large ethnic groups and many small ones; and the local social construction of …
The Rightful Share
Scholars James Ferguson and Tania Murray Li have recently and persuasively argued that a new politics of distribution is needed to address the needs of the growing numbers of people who are permanently landless and jobless. The authors of this article explore how land might feature in James Ferguson's idea of a 'rightful share'. It details a case study of the Anti-POSCO People's Movement (POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti) of farmers, fisherfolk and…
Who are Kenya's 42(+) tribes? The census and the political utility of magical uncertainty
The idea that Kenya is made up of 42(+) tribes is widespread, but the origins, nature and consequences of any list are not well-known. This article compares ethnic classifications in all Kenyan censuses to demonstrate the origins of the '42' in (only) the 1969 census, and the multiple political purposes of classifying and counting. To make sense of why the 42(+) remains significant, I argue a cultivated vagueness provides a sense of consistency, …
Who wants a ‘development’ that doesn’t recognise alternatives?
Jagatsinghpur, a district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, has attracted media attention for a lengthy fight over land between a community of betel-farmers, fisher folk and livestock herders on one side, and the state and state-patronised corporations seeking to build a steel plant, port and captive power plant on the other. The struggle has lasted over a decade amidst reports of killings, arrests and gross human rights violations. In 2017,…
Desiring the Other and Decolonizing Global Solidarity
This paper considers a case study of Survival International’s campaign in support of the Dongria Kondh adivasi community of Odisha, India, and that community’s ultimately successful struggle to prevent mining company Vedanta from acquiring their sacred mountain, Niyamgiri. I argue this case presents an ethical conundrum for those of us interested in decolonizing solidarity: politically effective work rewards relationships and representations that…
Recognition, coloniality and international development
In response to the provocation of this special issue, about the extent to which we might be ‘beyond recognition’ out of concern for its colonising tendencies, this paper enquires into norms of recognition in international development. The paper establishes development as a site in which governmentality operates (following Tania Murray Li), in which coloniality is at play, and which also forms a field of recognition. I provide an analysis of a lan…
Recognition, power and coloniality
Recognition has emerged in recent decades as an almost universally valued moral and political horizon in intercultural contexts. Recognition claims underpin myriad social struggles, and forms and practices of recognition also animate the management of alterities within both formal and informal arenas. Recently, critical Indigenous scholars Audra Simpson and Glen Coulthard have posed a fundamental challenge to this moral and political horizon. Wri…
Redress and Corporate Human Rights Harms
Human rights harms caused by transnational business in the global South are increasingly being addressed using ‘new governance’ tools and their cooperative problem-solving processes. Such an approach is employed by OECD National Contact Points (NCPs), which received a complaint regarding Korean steel giant POSCO in India. This article explains the contested aspects of the POSCO project in its politico-economic context and shows how the NCP proces…
Statelessness, identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya
Statelessness as a legal and political problem has attracted increasing attention from scholars and international advocacy organisations in recent years. This attention has predominantly focussed on the legal aspects of statelessness, and has generally held the acquisition of citizenship documentation as the primary goal in remedying citizenship deprivation. This article explores the merits of this focus through a case study of the Nubians of Ken…
Indigeneity and Kenya's Nubians
Recent studies of indigeneity in Africa have highlighted the problematic nature of the concept in a continent where it is difficult to determine which groups have temporal priority in a given location. These studies have suggested, with varying degrees of criticism, that indigeneity in Africa is a strategic identity deployed to attain a special status and associated benefits, often to remedy past harms. This article agrees that indigeneity is an …
Counting as Citizens
This article uses the case of the Nubians in Kenya as an ethnic minority, and the 2009 Kenyan census as a particular form of recognition, to engage in a particular aspect of the debates surrounding the politics of recognition: the perceived competitive nature of the relationship between national and subnational groups, in this case ethnic groups. Using data obtained during a 6-month qualitative study conducted over the census period, this paper e…
Recognition, power and coloniality
Recognition has emerged in recent decades as an almost universally valued moral and political horizon in intercultural contexts. Recognition claims underpin myriad social struggles, and forms and practices of recognition also animate the management of alterities within both formal and informal arenas. Recently, critical Indigenous scholars Audra Simpson and Glen Coulthard have posed a fundamental challenge to this moral and political horizon. Wri…
Counting as Citizens
This article uses the case of the Nubians in Kenya as an ethnic minority, and the 2009 Kenyan census as a particular form of recognition, to engage in a particular aspect of the debates surrounding the politics of recognition: the perceived competitive nature of the relationship between national and subnational groups, in this case ethnic groups. Using data obtained during a 6-month qualitative study conducted over the census period, this paper e…
Statelessness, identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya
Statelessness as a legal and political problem has attracted increasing attention from scholars and international advocacy organisations in recent years. This attention has predominantly focussed on the legal aspects of statelessness, and has generally held the acquisition of citizenship documentation as the primary goal in remedying citizenship deprivation. This article explores the merits of this focus through a case study of the Nubians of Ken…
Indigeneity and Kenya's Nubians
Recent studies of indigeneity in Africa have highlighted the problematic nature of the concept in a continent where it is difficult to determine which groups have temporal priority in a given location. These studies have suggested, with varying degrees of criticism, that indigeneity in Africa is a strategic identity deployed to attain a special status and associated benefits, often to remedy past harms. This article agrees that indigeneity is an …
Who are Kenya's 42(+) tribes? The census and the political utility of magical uncertainty
The idea that Kenya is made up of 42(+) tribes is widespread, but the origins, nature and consequences of any list are not well-known. This article compares ethnic classifications in all Kenyan censuses to demonstrate the origins of the '42' in (only) the 1969 census, and the multiple political purposes of classifying and counting. To make sense of why the 42(+) remains significant, I argue a cultivated vagueness provides a sense of consistency, …
Redress and Corporate Human Rights Harms
Human rights harms caused by transnational business in the global South are increasingly being addressed using ‘new governance’ tools and their cooperative problem-solving processes. Such an approach is employed by OECD National Contact Points (NCPs), which received a complaint regarding Korean steel giant POSCO in India. This article explains the contested aspects of the POSCO project in its politico-economic context and shows how the NCP proces…
To count or not to count? Insights from Kenya for global debates about enumerating ethnicity in national censuses
There is an impasse on the question of whether or not to enumerate identity groups in national censuses, given their potential to variously facilitate dominance and an emergence from marginalisation. In this paper, we theorise the impasse in Kenya as relating to a colonial history of the strategic use of ethnicity to divide and rule; a demographic makeup with both some large ethnic groups and many small ones; and the local social construction of …
The Rightful Share
Scholars James Ferguson and Tania Murray Li have recently and persuasively argued that a new politics of distribution is needed to address the needs of the growing numbers of people who are permanently landless and jobless. The authors of this article explore how land might feature in James Ferguson's idea of a 'rightful share'. It details a case study of the Anti-POSCO People's Movement (POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti) of farmers, fisherfolk and…
Desiring the Other and Decolonizing Global Solidarity
This paper considers a case study of Survival International’s campaign in support of the Dongria Kondh adivasi community of Odisha, India, and that community’s ultimately successful struggle to prevent mining company Vedanta from acquiring their sacred mountain, Niyamgiri. I argue this case presents an ethical conundrum for those of us interested in decolonizing solidarity: politically effective work rewards relationships and representations that…
Counting as Citizens
This article uses the case of the Nubians in Kenya as an ethnic minority, and the 2009 Kenyan census as a particular form of recognition, to engage in a particular aspect of the debates surrounding the politics of recognition: the perceived competitive nature of the relationship between national and subnational groups, in this case ethnic groups. Using data obtained during a 6-month qualitative study conducted over the census period, this paper e…
Indigeneity and Kenya's Nubians
Recent studies of indigeneity in Africa have highlighted the problematic nature of the concept in a continent where it is difficult to determine which groups have temporal priority in a given location. These studies have suggested, with varying degrees of criticism, that indigeneity in Africa is a strategic identity deployed to attain a special status and associated benefits, often to remedy past harms. This article agrees that indigeneity is an …
Statelessness, identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya
Statelessness as a legal and political problem has attracted increasing attention from scholars and international advocacy organisations in recent years. This attention has predominantly focussed on the legal aspects of statelessness, and has generally held the acquisition of citizenship documentation as the primary goal in remedying citizenship deprivation. This article explores the merits of this focus through a case study of the Nubians of Ken…
Redress and Corporate Human Rights Harms
Human rights harms caused by transnational business in the global South are increasingly being addressed using ‘new governance’ tools and their cooperative problem-solving processes. Such an approach is employed by OECD National Contact Points (NCPs), which received a complaint regarding Korean steel giant POSCO in India. This article explains the contested aspects of the POSCO project in its politico-economic context and shows how the NCP proces…
Recognition, coloniality and international development
In response to the provocation of this special issue, about the extent to which we might be ‘beyond recognition’ out of concern for its colonising tendencies, this paper enquires into norms of recognition in international development. The paper establishes development as a site in which governmentality operates (following Tania Murray Li), in which coloniality is at play, and which also forms a field of recognition. I provide an analysis of a lan…
Recognition, power and coloniality
Recognition has emerged in recent decades as an almost universally valued moral and political horizon in intercultural contexts. Recognition claims underpin myriad social struggles, and forms and practices of recognition also animate the management of alterities within both formal and informal arenas. Recently, critical Indigenous scholars Audra Simpson and Glen Coulthard have posed a fundamental challenge to this moral and political horizon. Wri…
Who wants a ‘development’ that doesn’t recognise alternatives?
Jagatsinghpur, a district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, has attracted media attention for a lengthy fight over land between a community of betel-farmers, fisher folk and livestock herders on one side, and the state and state-patronised corporations seeking to build a steel plant, port and captive power plant on the other. The struggle has lasted over a decade amidst reports of killings, arrests and gross human rights violations. In 2017,…
Desiring the Other and Decolonizing Global Solidarity
This paper considers a case study of Survival International’s campaign in support of the Dongria Kondh adivasi community of Odisha, India, and that community’s ultimately successful struggle to prevent mining company Vedanta from acquiring their sacred mountain, Niyamgiri. I argue this case presents an ethical conundrum for those of us interested in decolonizing solidarity: politically effective work rewards relationships and representations that…
Who are Kenya's 42(+) tribes? The census and the political utility of magical uncertainty
The idea that Kenya is made up of 42(+) tribes is widespread, but the origins, nature and consequences of any list are not well-known. This article compares ethnic classifications in all Kenyan censuses to demonstrate the origins of the '42' in (only) the 1969 census, and the multiple political purposes of classifying and counting. To make sense of why the 42(+) remains significant, I argue a cultivated vagueness provides a sense of consistency, …
To count or not to count? Insights from Kenya for global debates about enumerating ethnicity in national censuses
There is an impasse on the question of whether or not to enumerate identity groups in national censuses, given their potential to variously facilitate dominance and an emergence from marginalisation. In this paper, we theorise the impasse in Kenya as relating to a colonial history of the strategic use of ethnicity to divide and rule; a demographic makeup with both some large ethnic groups and many small ones; and the local social construction of …
The Rightful Share
Scholars James Ferguson and Tania Murray Li have recently and persuasively argued that a new politics of distribution is needed to address the needs of the growing numbers of people who are permanently landless and jobless. The authors of this article explore how land might feature in James Ferguson's idea of a 'rightful share'. It details a case study of the Anti-POSCO People's Movement (POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti) of farmers, fisherfolk and…
Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Ethnic group (5 works) · African history and culture analysis (4 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works)