Who to blame and what's to gain? Reflections on space, State, and violence in Kenya and South Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Who to blame and what's to gain? Reflections on space, State, and violence in Kenya and South Africa
Authors:	Landau, Loren B. Misago, Jean Pierre
Year:	2009
Periodical:	Africa Spectrum
Volume:	44
Issue:	1
Pages:	99-110
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Kenya South Africa
Subjects:	violence politics ethnicity xenophobia
External link:	https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/31
Abstract:	The ethnically and xenophobically motivated violence in Kenya and South Africa in the first half of 2008 has raised questions about its causes, the role of the State and the reality of current African societies. This article, which is based on a mix of secondary and primary sources, analyses this violence, stating that although the violence in both countries had historical origins, there were also fundamental differences regarding the reasons and the objectives of the violence. Whereas the Kenyan violence was both national and State-centric, South Africa's xenophobic violence was decentralized and rooted in the micropolitics of township life. As a result, the less controlled violence in South Africa was somehow even more dangerous, because it contested State power itself. The authors blend microlevel analysis of people's spatialized subjectivities with broader insights into institutional structures and regimes of control and regulation. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract]