Africana Periodical Literature 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | A City under Siege: Banditry and Modes of Accumulation in Nairobi, 1991-2004 |
| Author: | Katumanga, Musambayi |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
| Volume: | 32 |
| Issue: | 106 |
| Period: | December |
| Pages: | 505-520 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Kenya |
| Subjects: | banditry political economy urban society Urbanization and Migration Law, Human Rights and Violence Politics and Government Economics and Trade History and Exploration |
| External links: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240500466981 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4A7799C48907764E5A53 |
| Abstract: | This is a study of the impact of forced political and economic liberalization on modes of socioeconomic engagement and accumulation in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi, subsequent to the introduction of multiparty 'democracy' in 1992. It focuses on the political economy underlying the urban banditry in Nairobi which was the result of forced liberalization. It demonstrates how a besieged regime facilitates the criminalization of urban existence in a bid to ensure its survival. The argument is that beleaguered regimes survive through a twin strategy. They privatize public violence and appropriate private violence. The net effect is the perversion of social order and the emergence of bandit economies. Regime longevity may derive not only from lack of an alternative leadership and organizing ideology, but also from the threat to perceived benefits accruing from such informal economies. The ruling elite responds to the possibility of losing power by using neopatrimonial structures to selectively allocate public spaces to their cronies, thereby subverting social order and undermining democratization, security and social harmony; this in turn spawns urban banditry. Urban banditry here denotes the unregulated deployment of instruments of coercion by ruling elite and various elements within the citizenry in bids to facilitate acquisition of economic benefits and political leverage. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited] |
