Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Drawing on Rendille ethnography, the paper examines how in Northern Kenya uncertainty is actively produced, governed, and instrumentalized through emergencies, humanitarianism, and state actors with consequences for power, social cohesion and subaltern agency in marginalised communities

Paper long abstract

In northern Kenya, climate change and conflict are framed as permanent emergencies requiring humanitarian governance, technocratic interventions, and prayer. This paper examines how uncertainty is actively produced, governed, and instrumentalised, shaping power, cooperation, and social cohesion in Rendille. Historically, Rendille society relied on centralised but redistributive elder-led structures to manage scarce resources during droughts. Today, these roles are replaced by state actors, producing patronage, clientelism, and selective interventions during “crises,” which reinforce dependence while eroding traditional mutual aid. NGOs further exacerbate this dynamic, substituting rights-based citizenship with compassion-driven humanitarianism, while the state neglects basic infrastructure. Political narratives frame the Rendille as dependent, rebellious, or backward, obscuring structural inequalities and the dramatic social transformations of the past half-century. Behavioural change interventions by NGOs coexist with state abandonment of infrastructure, electricity, and transport, producing contradictory and racialised interpretations of vulnerability.

The paper draws on 70 in-depth interviews and analysis of Facebook communications to explore consent, political legitimacy, infrapolitics, James C. Scott’s concept of hegemony, and Didier Fassin’s theorisation of emergency. It interrogates the meaning of development: is it alignment with external values or a political vision for the future? In contexts fractured by tribalism, corruption, historical marginalisation, and humanitarian paternalism, repeated interventions—even bottom-up approaches—fail unless structural injustices, political crimes, human rights violations, and systemic inequalities are addressed first. Only then can smaller, targeted interventions succeed—changing the structures before attempting to reshape outcomes. Development is thus not merely a policy question, but a matter of legality in a functioning democracy.