Religious Experience of the Kalenjin of Kerio-Valley Cultural Complex, Kenya, 1800-1965

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dc.contributor.advisorGimode Edwinen_US
dc.contributor.advisorBiegon Eliuden_US
dc.contributor.authorShiyuka, Elvis Karani
dc.date.accessioned2024-01-31T13:47:53Z
dc.date.available2024-01-31T13:47:53Z
dc.date.issued2023-09
dc.descriptionA Thesis Submitted to the School of Law, Arts, and Social Sciences in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Kenyatta University, September 2023.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis study explores the religious history of the Kalenjin people living in the Kerio- Valley Cultural Complex of Kenya. It overturns the conventional understanding, in religious studies, which portrays African religions as static and ahistorical entities, by introducing the theoretical dimension of agency. This revisionist interpretation presents the ancestors of the Kalenjin as creative agents who transformed their religion by absorbing ideas from other ethnic groups, in the Kerio-Valley, during interactions and infusing them into their culture. When confronted with new religious ideas, during cultural interactions, the ancestors of the Kalenjin engaged the repertoires of their past, projected hypothetical pathways in time, and adjusted their actions to meet the problems of emerging historical moments. This agentic intervention inevitably led to the fusion of ideas from various temporalities, the past and their present, to formulate syncretism. This study thus speaks to Africa‟s wider struggle for self-invention and self-definition that is at the center of the decoloniality movement. It is an attempt to demonstrate the African agency in religious change by examining how the Kalenjin navigated through the different religious universes presented to them, during interactions with their neighbours including the autochthonous groups, Ateker, Masaian groups, and later with western Christianity. This study used primary sources of data, especially oral traditions and archival materials, and secondary sources to examine how the Kalenjin used their agentic power to negotiate through the different ways of explaining cosmological meaning in their history.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipKenyatta Universityen_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/27365
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherKenyatta Universityen_US
dc.subjectReligious Experienceen_US
dc.subjectKalenjin of Kerio-Valleyen_US
dc.subjectCultural Complexen_US
dc.subjectKenyaen_US
dc.subject1800-1965en_US
dc.titleReligious Experience of the Kalenjin of Kerio-Valley Cultural Complex, Kenya, 1800-1965en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
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