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Accepted Paper:
Plotting for the future: Landscapes of emerging mistrust on Nairobi's urbanising outskirts
Peter Lockwood
(University of Manchester)
On Nairobi's northern outskirts, the rising value of land is formenting new landscapes of mistrustwithin families. By exploring the case of Ann Wairimu, a 40-year-old Kenyan woman who had been defrauded of her title deed, this paper reflects on the experience of losing property to land grabs.
Paper long abstract:
On Nairobi's northern outskirts, the rising value of land is formenting new landscapes of mistrust and suspicion within families. For Kikuyu families who have lived on this changing periphery, land continues to passed down through ties of blood. With land's value growing, inheritance disputes are intensifying over plots of land that might be 'developed' due to their proximity to the city or sold for even higher values. This paper explores the effects of rocketing land prices on kinship networks, turning them into sites of mutual suspicion and mistrust, fraud and deception. By exploring the case of Ann Wairimu, a 40-year-old Kenyan woman who had been defrauded of her title deed, this paper reflects on cases of land fraud in contemporary Kenya, their capacity to ruin lives, and the political and economic roots of such chicanery in a form of capitalism shot-through with acts of predation.