Cross-cutting Ties and Coexistence: Intermarriage, Land Rentals and Changing Land Use Patterns among Maasai and Kikuyu of Maiella and Enoosupukia, Lake Naivasha Basin, Kenya

Eric Mutisya Kioko,Michael Bollig

doi:10.16993/rl.ad

Abstract

This paper explores the value of cross-cutting ties and conflicting loyalties for the peaceful management of conflicts and the emergence of collective action across previously violently contested community boundaries in two communities in the Lake Naivasha Basin, Kenya. In the researched communities cross-cutting ties result from intermarriages, land rentals and friendship. Fieldwork was conducted in six neighbouring villages on the border between Nakuru and Narok Counties in 2013 and early 2014. Half of these villages fall within the Maiella Sub-location and the other half within Enoosupukia Location. Enoosupukia, especially, has become notorious in the history of ethnicised violence in Kenya’s Rift Valley. In October 1993 more than 20 farmers of Kikuyu descent were killed in an organised assault perpetrated by hundreds of Maasai vigilantes with the assistance of game wardens and administration police; later thousands of farmers were evicted from the area at the instigation of leading local politicians. Nowadays, intercommunity relations between Maasai and Kikuyu are surprisingly peaceful and the cooperative use of natural resources is the rule rather than the exception. How did formerly violent conflicts develop into peaceful relations? How did competition turn into cooperation facilitating changing land use? In this paper we explore the role of cross-cutting ties and the conflicting loyalties associated with them to explain changing community relations.

Highlights

Land and violent conflict Violence and conflicts have long been of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists (e.g. Sponsel, 1996: 96; Vanhanen, 1999)
Changing patterns of intermarriage In a sample of 140 marriages documented for Maiella and Enoosupukia, 48 (34%) intermarriages between Maasai and Kikuyu were recorded (Figure 3)
In June 2013, two medical officers visited Maiella Trading Centre to seek out victims of the 2007/8 post-election violence who needed medical care for possible physical or psychological conditions

Summary

Introduction

Land and violent conflict Violence and conflicts have long been of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists (e.g. Sponsel, 1996: 96; Vanhanen, 1999). The major thrust of the literature has focused on the search for root causes of violence, linking violent interaction to specific social dynamics: the politicisation of ethnicity (Montalvo and Reynal-Querol, 2005; Vanhanen, 1999; Sambanis, 2001), social exclusion (Le Billon, 2001; Richards, 2003; Watts, 2004), contested entitlements (Brass, 1985; Bryant, 1998), the militarization of profit-seeking elites and consequent grievances (Collier and Hoeffler, 2004) and competition over scarce resources (Homer-Dixon, 1994). From the local perspective of our case study in Maiella and Enoosupukia, cross-cutting ties do explain a trend towards non-violent interaction. This serves as motivation to reconsider the cross-cutting ties hypothesis. Mid-1900s onwards, and progressively abandoned most of their previous hunter–gatherer strategies

Methods

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Conclusion