Killing Your Neighbors: Friendship and Violence in Northern Kenya and Beyond"One of the most disturbing spectacles of recent decades has been brutal acts of genocidal violence committed among neighboring communities who once lived together in peace: ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia; the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda; or the Sunni versus Shia violence in today's Iraq. As these cases illustrate, lethal violence does not always come at the hands of outsiders or foreigners. Rather, it can just as easily come at the hand of someone who once was considered a friend. Killing Our Neighbors employs a multi-sited approach and multi-vocal ethnography to examine how once-peaceful neighbors become transformed into perpetrators and victims of lethal violence. It engages with a set of interlocking case studies in northern Kenya, focusing on sometimes-peaceful, sometimes violent interactions between Samburu herders and neighboring groups, interweaving Samburu narratives of key violent events with the narratives of neighboring groups on the other side of the same encounters. The book is, on one hand, an ethnography of particular people in a particular place, vividly portraying the complex and confusing dynamics of interethnic violence through the lives, words and intimate experiences of individuals variously involved in and affected by these conflicts. At the same time the book aims to use this particular case study to illustrate how the dynamics in northern Kenya provides comparative insights to well-known, compelling contexts of violence around the globe"--Provided by publisher. |
Contents
Being There Being Friends Being Uncertain | 28 |
Green Stomachs Mau Mau and the Government | 73 |
Killing the Sheik | 98 |
Bad Friends and Good Enemies | 126 |
Government and the Making | 164 |
War Stories | 190 |
| 205 | |
Other editions - View all
Killing Your Neighbors: Friendship and Violence in Northern Kenya and Beyond Jon Holtzman Limited preview - 2016 |
Killing Your Neighbors: Friendship and Violence in Northern Kenya and Beyond Jon Holtzman Limited preview - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
accounts actors age set anthropologists arrested attack Baragoi Boran British brutal buru cattle chapter characterized claim clashes colonial conflict Consequently context cows cultural described discourses enemies ethnic groups ethnography explain extent fact fieldwork fight friends friendship goats guns herd herders incident individuals instance involved Isiolo Isiolo District Kijana Kikuyu Laikipia Laikipia District land large number Lekeren Lekutaas live livestock loibon Lpusi Maasai massacre Mau Mau memory Menchú motivations Mount Kenya murran narratives neighbors Ngoroko nkanyit northern Kenya oath occurred particularly pastoralists peace perhaps person Pokot and Samburu police political raid raiders relationship Rendille response Rigoberta Menchú role rumors Samburu and Pokot Samburu assert Samburu District Samburu elder Samburu view seen settlement Sheik Shifta side Simba simply Somalis someone sometimes spears steal stories suggest tell testicles theft things Tinga told truth Turkana typically understand violence warfare warriors weapons