Waiting for Progress: Promises of Privatization and Conservation on an African Indigenous Frontier in southern Kenya
A guest lecture by Professor Kariuki Kirigia of the School of Environment, University of Toronto.
This lecture is part of the African Studies Program Speakers Series and is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of International Development, the Department of Anthropology and the African Studies Students Association.
´¡²ú²õ³Ù°ù²¹³¦³Ù:Ìý This talk seeks to upend an entrenched notion of what progress for Africa entails by engaging the concept of waiting as both a discursive and methodological tool. The idea of progress in the African context has largely been understood as ‘development’, or as being synonymous with ‘development’. The instruments and metrics used to measure this mode of progress, such as the GDP and, more recently, CO2 emissions, further entrench the idea of progress as ‘development’. Focusing primarily on how capitalist logics have influenced land governance and biodiversity conservation among the Maasai peoples of Kenya, I discuss how the transition from communal landownership and the creation of wildlife conservancies are framed as progress. However, rarely discussed is what this transition phase entails, yet it is during this period that key outcomes of the privatization and conservation processes are determined. Viewing the transition period as one where community members and landowners wait, I consider the varied ways individuals and groups wait, how waiting at times is mobilized to pursue the promissory notes of progress, and the value of waiting as a disruptive tool against the avaricious forces of global capital. Ultimately, I advance that waiting provides fertile ground for conjuring effective strategies to foil the destructive forces of global capital in Africa.
