Cartography and the Political Imagination: Mapping Community in Colonial Kenya (New African Histories)

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Description

After four decades of British rule in colonial Kenya, a prior to now unknown ethnic name — “Luyia” — seemed at the official census in 1948. The emergence of the Luyia represents a clear case of ethnic “invention.” On the same time, current restrictive theories privileging ethnic homogeneity fail to provide an explanation for this defiantly diverse ethnic project, which now accommodates the second one-largest ethnic group in Kenya.

In Cartography and the Political Imagination, which encompasses social history, geography, and political science, Julie MacArthur unpacks Luyia origins. In so doing, she calls for a shift to understanding geographic imagination and mapping not only as means of enforcing imperial power and constraining colonized populations, but as tools for articulating new political communities and dissent. Through cartography, Luyia ethnic patriots crafted an identity for themselves characterized by plurality, mobility, and cosmopolitan belonging.

While other historians have focused at the official maps of imperial surveyors, MacArthur scrutinizes the ways African communities adopted and adapted mapping strategies to their very own ongoing creative projects. This book marks the most important reassessment of current theories of ethnogenesis, investigates the geographic imaginations of African communities, and challenges recent readings of community and conflict in Africa.

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