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Paper Short Abstract:

New initiatives in Kenya’s mountain-focused recreational tourism sector, under Kenyan leadership and targeting Kenyan clientele, spur questions about how to live a good life while making a living. How are Kenyan mountain enthusiasts trying to set new moral norms for entrepreneurialism?

Paper Abstract:

Kenya is a paradigmatic ‘hustler economy’ with Kenyan youth cast as the resources fueling the entrepreneurialism that is embraced as the country’s official business model and held up as an example for other youthful countries. Accounts of young people’s business acumen in traditional (e.g. farming) and non-traditional sectors of the economy (e.g. digital platform mediated work) highlight the reproduction of many inequalities and conventional norms, including the entrenchment of neoliberal subjectivities. However, another growing youth-driven entrepreneurial sector may be uniquely challenging some of these norms by distinguishing what it means to do business as Kenyans, for Kenyans, in Kenya. The growing mountain-focused recreational tourism sector, targeting Kenyan clientele specifically, is raising new questions about how to live a good life while making a living, and specifically how to embed capitalist interests in a broader moral framework for living well which is conceptualized in relation to both social justice and ecological sustainability.

While clashes between moral and business values are common in eco-tourism everywhere, the case of the burgeoning Kenyan mountaineering economy holds different stakes: Kenyans encouraging other Kenyans to access their country’s mountains have framed this pursuit in terms of decolonization and nationalism, as well as seeking alternatives to consumer-focused, urban lifestyles. And yet, in an economy that is officially celebrated as a ‘hustler economy’, can the mountains actually prove an escape from dominant modes of profit-driven entrepreneurialism? Are Kenyan mountain enthusiasts navigating new ways for overcoming historical injustices, nurturing human-nature relations, and setting moral norms for capitalist entrepreneurialism?