Devin Smart’s Preparing the Modern Meal: Urban Capitalism and Working-Class Food in Kenya’s Port City is a groundbreaking study spanning the colonial and postcolonial periods in Kenya’s port city. Smart sets the tone of the book from the outset by showing how “food was personal and local” (1) and its gendered dynamics among Kenyans during the period he explores. He argues that, in a globalized modern world, capitalism and migration altered how Kenyans in the twentieth century accessed and consumed food. He states, “capitalism and regional migration transformed the food system of a single city in East Africa during the twentieth century, forming part of the global story about how modern urban life changed the way people access, prepare, and consume food, that most essential of all necessities” (2–4). By anchoring his analysis in “how food fits into the systems that maintained working classes on a daily basis in capitalist cities” (4), Smart positions food not merely as sustenance but as a lens through which to examine the structural forces shaping urban life. This framework allows him to bridge migration, labor, food, gender, and business history, demonstrating how the seemingly mundane act of eating reveals the workings of capitalism in African cities. Smart critically engages with existing scholarship, noting its tendency to focus “on residential space as a site of social reproduction in African cities” (15). He pushes beyond this domestic focus by shifting attention to the public sphere, streets, markets, and food stalls, where working-class people actually acquired the meals that sustained them. This analytical move reframes social reproduction as an urban, commercial, and fundamentally public process. His focus on food aligns closely with a growing body of scholarship that uses consumption to reinterpret African modernity, not as a derivative of Europe, but as locally produced, through markets, migration, and gendered labor relations.
Smart uses Chapter One to provide background on Kenya’s agrarian social reproductive work, in which the kitchen was within women’s ambit until the colonial economy drove men into the city of Mombasa in the 1910s and 1920s, leading to “masculine compromise.” This compromise allowed men to enter the kitchen when women were absent. Smart compares the colonial capitalist economy in Kenya to the British Empire, where rations were provided to working-class women, who were treated as servants. In Chapter Two, Smart walks us through how the ration system was phased out and how “workers in Kenya’s port city became more like urban proletariats elsewhere, dependent entirely on cash for the acquisition of daily necessities like food” (52). This began in the 1930s, when Kenyan migrants controlled what they consumed based on their purchasing power. This was also during the period of proliferation of localized grocers, markets, and food vendors, when variety was abundant (53, 59). Chapter Three builds on this foundation by examining the spatial and temporal dimensions of eating. Smart draws a revealing contrast between rural and urban food practices: rural workers typically brought their own lunch or returned home to eat.
In contrast, urban dwellers adapted to the rhythms of wage labor by eating breakfast and dinner at home and purchasing lunch during work breaks. He shows how “the economic geography of urban capitalism made regular lunch breaks possible” (77). The author further shows how urbanism altered social reproductive work, with men becoming increasingly involved.
Chapter Four extends Chapters Two and Three by further showing how colonial and postcolonial governments in Kenya have sought to curb informal urban commerce for sanitation or public health reasons. However, their efforts were hampered by resistance and by the fact that these vendors sold cheap food to the urban working class. Smart also shows how food vendors leveraged their status as citizens to sustain their trade in the postcolonial city. In Chapter Five, Smart explores how the latter part of the twentieth century introduced new terrain to the street food industry and urban life in Kenya. This chapter examines rapid suburbanization and its transformation of the urban informal food economy and urban geography. It highlights the precarious legal position of these vendors, who often navigated complex bureaucratic hurdles and sought political patronage to secure space for their businesses. The conclusion sums up the book’s central argument. It details how government officials have repeatedly used violent demolitions of street kiosks under the guise of urban modernization, while actually pursuing political agendas to displace opposition supporters. Smart shows that despite these aggressive crackdowns and the rise of global fast-food chains, the working class remains deeply reliant on informal vendors for affordable nutrition and flexible credit. The informal sector remains the primary backbone of food security and employment for the majority of Kenya’s city dwellers.
Methodologically, Smart combines archival research from hubs such as the Kenya National Archives, newspaper sources (Daily Nation), and oral interviews that capture the lived experiences of ordinary people. This triangulation of sources enables a bottom-up perspective that centers food vendors as historical actors in the development of African states. While Smart mentions newspapers in his introduction, he could have more explicitly demonstrated how they shaped or were used in his analysis; this minor oversight does not diminish the work’s substantial contribution. The conclusion brings the story into contemporary times that readers can identify with, which is a strong addition.
Those interested in African, migration, labor, business, and gender history will find this book engaging. Scholars and graduate and undergraduate students alike will find it valuable because it is written in accessible language.
