Acknowledgements

It was July 2015 and President Uhuru Kenyatta had launched his ‘war on killer brews’. Police were raiding unlicensed distilleries across central Kenya, and television stations broadcast images of servicemen in fatigues pouring vats of illegally distilled spirit away into the sewers. Over the previous month, scenes of male alcoholism had been pasted across newspaper covers, raising moral outcry about the future of the region’s young men, the unemployed, and the destitute, sometimes in accusatory tones. In many ways, this book began in those months, when I was in Kenya as a graduate attaché with the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA). Between my MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology at University College London and my PhD at the University of Cambridge, I was returning to Kenya for the first time since I left a career in international development in 2012.

Crucially, I met Tom Cunningham, then a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh studying mission Christianity in central Kenya. He re-introduced me to the work of John Lonsdale, whose writing I had read and generally misunderstood as an undergraduate in History some years earlier. It was this twinned experience – of the unfolding crisis of male destitution in central Kenya and a renewed appreciation for historical inquiry into moral economy, and of ideas about wealth, poverty, and virtue – that motivated and inspired the doctoral research that went into this book. During my time in Kenya in 2015, conversations with Neo Musangi, Trevas Matathia, Wambui Karanja, and Syokau Mutonga added further encouragement to my intention. Instead of Zambia, where I had been planning to study artisanal mining, I decided to return to Kenya for my PhD. These months were therefore decisive, and were it not for this experience, I would not have gone on to make the many friends and acquaintances that I did between 2016 and 2018. I wish to thank Tom for his friendship and support during the research and writing of this book. This project would simply not exist had he not inspired me to switch my research site – a move that involved following my better instincts as well as intellectual curiosity. In many ways, this project reflects our conversations about changing economic life and moral thought in central Kenya over the longue durée.

In Kiambu, I want to thank all my friends in the area I call here ‘Ituura’ and nearby ‘Chungwa’. Out of ethical considerations, I have decided not to name anyone individually, but I believe that each one of you knows who you are and how you helped me conduct this research.

During my doctoral research, the BIEA offered more than simply a place to affiliate for my research permit. It was a home-away-from-home. I want to give thanks to all the staff there who supported me during those years: Freda Nkirote, Tess Ngandi, Fabian Ongaya, Janet Njoroge, John Kanyingi, Mercy, Boni, Paul, Godfrey, and the late Florence. I also want to thank several people who passed through the institute as researchers for their friendship and company: Francesco Colona, Tessa Diphoorn, Alex Dyzenhaus, Maria Fibaek, Christine Gibson, Craig Halliday, Rob Heinze, Wambui Karanja, Esther Kariuki, David Kay, Doseline Kiguru, Brigitte Mutengwa, Tyson Odoo, Margarita Rayzberg, Adam Rodgers Johns, Sipke Shaughnessy, Edwin Rwigi, Lily Rice, Julia Stanyard, and Yayi Zheng. I also wish to thank Chloé Josse Durand, then Deputy Director at the Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique (IFRA) and the institute itself, which supported further fieldwork for this project in 2019. Others I wish to thank in Nairobi are Shiko Nduati, Matayo Magalassia, and Daniel Waweru. A big thanks too to Andre Epstein and Neda Monshat for their hospitality and friendship.

I want to thank Joost Fontein specifically. Then the BIEA’s director, Joost presided over a renewed programme of research and exhibitions at the institute that culminated in the recently published Nairobi Becoming: Security, Uncertainty and Contingency (Punctum, 2024). Enthusiastic about scholarship, committed to field research, Joost was highly supportive of this project during my time in Kenya and has been since.

I also wish to thank John Gitau and Esther Wagema. They both invested enormous amounts of time and patience in assisting me during my language training. I cannot thank them both enough for sharing their time and insights into Kenya with me.

At Cambridge, I benefited from being surrounding by a brilliant and talented cohort of PhD students. I would especially like to thank Kenni Bruun, Thandeka Cochrane, David Ginsborg, Sophia Hornbacher-Schoenleber, Corinna Howland, Nick Lackenby, Camille Lardy, Ori Mautner, Julia Modern, Natalie Morningstar, Alice Pearson, Tom Powell-Davies, Sofia Ugarte, Fred Wojnarowski, and Anna Wood. I learnt a great deal from James Laidlaw, who chaired the writing-up seminar and provided incisive comments on early drafts of this book’s chapters. I will be eternally grateful to Harri Englund, who has been supportive of this project throughout its transformations, first as a PhD supervisor, then as a colleague. I also wish to thank Rosie Jones-Mcvey, Anna-Riika Kauppinen, Sian Lazar, Joel Robbins, Rachel Smith, David Sneath, Jamie Wintrup, and Christina Woolner for their advice and feedback on my work during my Cambridge years. I want to thank Andrew Sanchez who examined my PhD dissertation upon which this work is based, though very much changed. It may not entirely satisfy his quest to understand my ‘theory of value’ but I believe it goes some way towards it. At Darwin College, Leo Howe helped me settle in. He may be surprised to see the influence his work has had on this book’s ideas. The same will not go for John Lonsdale, whose assistance has been invaluable and has been nothing but kind, encouraging, and inspiring in sharing with me his time, archival resources, and immense knowledge of central Kenya’s history. Ray Abrahams encouraged me to look back to the ‘old’ kinship studies of so-called ‘fission and fusion’ – of life events and their material circumstances within patterns of inheritance. I also want to thank Hans Steinmüller and Natalia Buitron, who arrived in Cambridge towards the end of my time there but whose friendship I am grateful for. A big thanks also goes to Tim Burger for his friendship and support throughout these recent years of academic precarity.

My MRes and PhD were generously supported by the Economic and Social Research Council Studentship (ES/J500033/1).

During my subsequent post-doctoral research on Project Self-accomplishment and Local Moralities in Eastern Africa (SALMEA), I benefited from the assistance of a wonderful group of colleagues across France and Switzerland. I wish to thank Yvan Droz, Yonatan Gez, Marie-Aude Fouéré, Norah Kiereiri, Claire Medard, Henri Medard, and Elizabeth Schubiger. In Manchester, I have benefited from the feedback and advice of Maia Green, Andrew Irving, Chloe Nahum-Claudel, Tony Simpson, Katie Smith, Karen Sykes, Angela Torresan, Soumhya Venkatesan, Peter Wade, and Chika Watanabe. Conversations with Tom Gillespie and Smith Ouma have enriched the final phases of writing this work, and its final form reflects the encouragement I took from these conversations to embrace the sense in which my fieldsite was shaped by ‘the real-estate frontier’. A special thanks goes to Connie Smith, a longtime collaborator and friend, who has seen this project through many phases, and I know will be happy to see me finish it. Through the European Conference on African Studies and other UK and international fora, I have been fortunate to benefit from the input of several colleagues. I wish to thank Dominic Burbidge, Kevin Donovan, Hannah Elliott, Fred Ikanda, Mario Schmidt, Hannah Waddilove, Hadas Weiss, and Jörg Wiegratz. Gabrielle Lynch, Nic Cheeseman, and Justin Willis helped me develop my first published work from this wider doctoral research. Geir Henning Presterudstuen and Don Kalb hosted me in Bergen. Max Bolt examined the PhD dissertation from which this book originated. His comments provided the foundation for this book’s transformation into its current form. In recent years, Dauti Kahura has been a friend and thoughtful interlocutor as my research interests in Kenya have shifted across politics and economy.

I wish to thank Deborah James for her assistance in editing this book manuscript and the anonymous reviewers who provided feedback on initial drafts. I am grateful to Stephanie Kitchen for guiding me through this entire process.

Finally, I want to thank my partner, Sophia, whose support has been integral to the completion of this book in these past few years of shared precarity in higher education. The arrival of our daughter, Marta, in 2023 gave me a new perspective on these years of research and writing, encouraging me to look forward more than back.

An earlier version of Chapter 4 was published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant no: ES/J500033/1) made it possible for this book to be published open access, making the digital version freely available for anyone to read under a Creative Commons licence.