Goats, materials and uncertainty in Nairobi

Bibliographic Data

ID2103805
AuthorsJoost Fontein (0000-0001-6528-6992, University of Johannesburg, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume93
Issue1
Pages60-79
Publication date2023-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972023000128
OpenAlexW4361853368
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited19

Kiamaiko in Nairobi hosts one of the largest goat markets in East Africa. The goats come from across Kenya and the region, as do many of the people there, illustrating how regional movements of human and animal bodies are part of Nairobi's becoming, and making Kiamaiko an extremely diverse part of the city. Through a discussion of the working lives of people involved in Kiamaiko's goat meat industry, this article explores the material flows and blockages, and processes of containment and transformation, that entangle lives and livelihoods in Kiamaiko with those of the city as a whole. These flows and processes are marked by uncertainties and contingencies that can be both full of potentiality for (re)forging regimes of order, social relations, subjectivities, mobility and livelihood aspirations, and entrench inequalities, social hierarchies and exclusions, as well as undermine the safe containment of material forms essential for liveable lives. Since the mid-2000s, city authorities have repeatedly failed to impose planning and public health-related regulations and relocation on Kiamaiko's goat industry. These efforts and their repeated failure reflect the emergent but productive excessivities of the material, corporeal and bodily flows that constitute cities, which both demand and yet often defy formal mechanisms of regulation, containment and order

Agriculture · Business · Containment (computer programming · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Inequality · Livelihood · Order (exchange · Political economy · Political science · Relocation · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

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