Being Kikuyu in Meru
Challenging the Tribal Geography of Colonial Kenya
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8978182 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Timothy H Parsons (corresponding author), Timothy Parsons (0009-0000-3959-3016) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 65-86 |
| Publication date | 2012-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853712000023 |
| OpenAlex | W2043139698 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
| References cited | 24 |
Faced with a confusing range of fluid ethnicities when they conquered Kenya, colonial officials sought to shift conquered populations into manageable administrative units. In linking physical space to ethnic identity, the Kenyan reserve system assumed that each of these ‘tribes’ had a specific homeland. Yet the reserves in the central Kenyan highlands soon became overcrowded and socially restive because they could not accommodate population growth and private claims to land for commercial agriculture. Although colonial officials proclaimed themselves the guardians of backward tribal peoples, they tried to address this problem by creating mechanisms whereby surplus populations would be ‘adopted’ into tribes living in less crowded reserves. This article provides new insights into the nature of identity in colonial Kenya by telling the stories of two types of Kikuyu migrants who settled in the Meru Reserve. The first much larger group did so legally by agreeing to become Meru. The second openly challenged the colonial state and their Meru hosts by defiantly proclaiming themselves to be Kikuyu. These diverse ways of being Kikuyu in the Meru Reserve fit neither strict primordial nor constructivist conceptions of African identity formation. The peoples of colonial Kenya had options in deciding how to identify themselves and could assume different political and social roles by invoking one or more of them at a time and in specific circumstances
Colonialism · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Geography · Homeland · Identity (music · Kenya · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Demography · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law
Kenya’s Four Ages of Ethnicity
Regime Threats and State Solutions
Trust, Ethnicity and Integrity in East Africa
A State of Change
The Contempt of Public Property
Autonomy and morality
Ethnicity, Politics, and the Rhetoric of Genocide at Eldoret
Power and the Presidency in Kenya
Reinventing Imbalu and Forcible Circumcision
The Unaccountable Census
Navigating ethnicity and electoral politics in northern Kenya
When did the Luyia (or any other group) become a tribe
Who are Kenya's 42(+) tribes? The census and the political utility of magical uncertainty
Military decolonisation and Africanisation
Jomo Kenyatta and the repression of the 'last' Mau Mau leaders, 1961-1965
Agricultural frontier, land tenure changes and conflicts along the Gucha-Trans Mara boundary in Kenya
Control And Crisis In Colonial Kenya The Dialectic Of Domination
An African survey
Politics of the Womb
I Say to You
Class and economic change in Kenya
Histories of the Hanged
The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa
A Modern History of Tanganyika
Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya
Trouble Showed the Way
Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda
Local Responses to the Ethnic Geography of Colonialism in the Gusii Highlands of British-Ruled Kenya
Politics of the Womb
Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa
Where do I belong
The Illusion of Tribe1
The Illusion of Tribe
A History of the Kikuyu 1500-1900
Trouble Showed the Way
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,23 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2023 (11) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |