Eco-zones Household Socio-economic Differentiation among the Keiyo in Kenya

Abstract

This paper discusses the efforts and actions by the Kenyan government to address challenges of agrarian change and rural transformation in Keiyo. The paper demonstrates that state employs the mechanisms of co-opting the forces of rural commercialization through the strategies of land consolidation. The paper explains that these strategies widen the scope of engagement in the post-colonial economy by Keiyo households. Keiyo households have demonstrated their capacity to respond positively and spontaneously to agrarian changes and innovations which proves vital to the enhancement of their economic well-being. Furthermore, the paper addresses two other issues; first it considers the nature of households as units of study and analysis of rural society. The household has too often been assumed to be a unitary phenomenon, a presumption that ignores intra and inter-household social processes in the allocation of labor, production of goods and services, generation of incomes, spending, consumption and reproduction. This does not imply that the household is an inappropriate unit of study, but rather that the processes that go on within and between households must be sought out and recognized on a case basis. Second, the paper employs data collected from the three ecological zones, in order to examine the characteristics of households in Keiyo; that is; size, composition, the gender of the household head, as well as distribution of household resources within and across the three ecological zones. It is demonstrated that the characteristics of these household reflect the different economic opportunity structures of the three areas. It is suggested that while the distribution of resources within any of the three ecological zones is to varying degrees unequal, there is nevertheless a pronounced pattern of inequality across eco-zones: most households in the highland are better endowed with resources than most households either on the escarpment or in the valley.