TY - JOUR

T1 - From ruins and rubble: promised and suspended futures in Kenya (and beyond)

AU - Kovač, Uroš

AU - Ramella, Anna Lisa

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2023/11

Y1 - 2023/11

N2 - In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, much future-making in Kenya is taking place in ruins of unfinished promising projects, failed capitalist enterprises, and decades of colonial and postcolonial exclusion and marginalization. When discussing future-making in Kenya specifically and Africa more generally, especially in the context of vision-driven developmentalist narratives that rely on visions of linear progress and growth, analysts and social scientists need to account for ways that futures emerge from ruins and rubble of undelivered and uncertain promises, collapsed industries, and colonial and postcolonial dispossession of land and rights. This article establishes the overarching argumentation and framing of the “Living with Ruins” special collection, outlines key theoretical concepts like ruination, infrastructuring, and future-making, and examines ruins and ruination in key economic and political domains that make claims to Kenya’s future: capitalist boom-and-bust economies, mega-scale infrastructure projects, and urban development. In all these domains, futures are emerging through assemblages of people’s everyday practices of maintenance and the ruins that surround them, complicating facile proclamations of Africa’s rising or abjection

AB - In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, much future-making in Kenya is taking place in ruins of unfinished promising projects, failed capitalist enterprises, and decades of colonial and postcolonial exclusion and marginalization. When discussing future-making in Kenya specifically and Africa more generally, especially in the context of vision-driven developmentalist narratives that rely on visions of linear progress and growth, analysts and social scientists need to account for ways that futures emerge from ruins and rubble of undelivered and uncertain promises, collapsed industries, and colonial and postcolonial dispossession of land and rights. This article establishes the overarching argumentation and framing of the “Living with Ruins” special collection, outlines key theoretical concepts like ruination, infrastructuring, and future-making, and examines ruins and ruination in key economic and political domains that make claims to Kenya’s future: capitalist boom-and-bust economies, mega-scale infrastructure projects, and urban development. In all these domains, futures are emerging through assemblages of people’s everyday practices of maintenance and the ruins that surround them, complicating facile proclamations of Africa’s rising or abjection

KW - Ruins

KW - development

KW - infrastructure

KW - capitalism

KW - urbanity

KW - Kenya

KW - mega-projects

KW - future-making

KW - Science of art

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169825898&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/17531055.2023.2245263

DO - 10.1080/17531055.2023.2245263

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 17

SP - 141

EP - 164

JO - Journal of Eastern African Studies

JF - Journal of Eastern African Studies

SN - 1753-1063

IS - 1-2

ER -