Tusker Project Fame: Ethnic States, Popular Flows

Abstract

Ethnicity has come to be the dominant currency of Kenya’s politics over recent years. This article explores the social meaning of ethnicity through an examination of ethnic stereotyping, as this is revealed in a variety of popular discourses. Stereotypes are forged and circulated within popular sites of cultural encounter, and they are one of the principal means through which the objectives of ethnic projects are executed. The predominance of stereotypes within everyday social discourse in Kenya makes ethnic ‘othering’ normative. The article interrogates the links between popular cultural flows that enable the formulation and dissemination of both ethnic-based and other stereotypes, for instance on masculinity. It is argued that a consideration of (en-) gendering, often entirely missing from discussions of stereotypes, enables a more nuanced reading of such practices. It is asserted that stereotypes have become a dominant mode of discoursing in Kenya today because they constitute a corpus of folklore, originated within ‘in-groups’ and deployed in various modes against ‘out-groups’. In a society where folklore reaches deep into the past few people ever stop to question the validity of folkloric interpretations that are constantly at work in the present. These issues around stereotyping and ethnicity are examined through consideration of bar-room conversations, the lyrics of popular songs, text messaging, internet chat rooms, and newspaper cartoons