The Role of Somali Kinship in Sustaining Bureaucratic Governance around Dagahaley Camp in Kenya

Bibliographic Data

ID2143142
AuthorsFred Nyongesa Ikanda (Maseno University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume87
Issue2
Pages384-403
Publication date2022-03-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1844 • E-ISSN: 1469-588X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00141844.2020.1773894
OpenAlexW3034980637
LanguageEN
References cited18

Bureaucracy is often portrayed as having an unrivalled capacity to shape human relationships in states and organisations. By contrast, however, ethnographic studies have suggested that bureaucracy cannot easily take root among Somalis and other Muslim nomadic societies where kinship is ostensibly supreme. Based on ethnographic research at Dagahaley refugee camp, this article challenges the idea that Somali kinship and bureaucratic structures are rival governing technologies. I demonstrate that kinship and bureaucracy play similar roles and are, therefore, not incompatible. Kinship provided traction to bureaucratic procedures in the way people used it alongside bureaucracy as means of governance and resource access. The article contributes to legal and political anthropology, as well as the burgeoning field of ethnography of bureaucracy by attributing common portrayals of civil wars, ethnicity, and nepotism as 'nomadic' or 'African' problems to commentators' failure to grasp the value of kinship in these societies

Bureaucracy · Corporate governance · Economics · Ethnography · Kinship · Management · Political anthropology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Somali · African history and culture analysis · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Gender Studies · Law