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Indigeneity and Kenya's Nubians: seeking equality in difference or sameness?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2013

Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes*
Affiliation:
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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 act of positioning, but suggests that in the Kenyan context it can be deployed in another way as well, that is, as an act that seeks equal rather than special positioning within the dominant population. In this case indigeneity is not a special ‘slot’ but rather the norm. The article illustrates this by drawing on research with the Nubian community of Nairobi who seek to shed their ethnic stranger status and instead position themselves as indigenous to Nairobi in order to access the same quality of citizenship as that enjoyed by Kenya's ‘42 tribes’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 331 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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