Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the tensions and contradictions within sentimental white Kenyan narratives about their entitlements to land ownership and citizenship in Kenya, as they rhetorically embed themselves in Kenyan spaces and bind themselves to its wildlife.

Paper long abstract:

Kenya's three to five thousand white citizens, the descendents of former colonial settlers, may be entitled to carry Kenyan passports, but since imperial dissolution they have been perpetually insecure about their entitlement to belong in Kenya and own its lands (see Hughes 2010 for comparable sentiments among white Zimbabweans). In this paper I focus upon white Kenyan narratives about these entitlements, as they rhetorically embed themselves in Kenyan spaces and bind themselves to its wildlife. I find that white Kenyans tend to be unsentimental when assessing Maasai claims to white Kenyan-owned land, but deeply romantic as they discussion of their own attachment to Kenya's land and wildlife, discussions that often revert nostalgically to early childhood memories and that use sentiment to stake a claim to their essential relationship to the place and its wildlife. A related tension plays out in white Kenyan discussions of mobility and entitlement to land. While white Kenyans represent pastoralists' mobility as a strike against their claims to land rights, they adduce their own mobility repeatedly when discussing their childhoods, a time when moving freely across the land inculcated deep emotional attachments that inspire their present commitments. All in all I find white Kenyans use sentiment to justify their claims to stewardship of Kenyan resources, and ultimately to justify their entitlement to belong to the contemporary nation. While sentiment tends to be solipsistic, I also note that some white Kenyans increasingly make concessions to the alternative viewpoints of the communities bordering their lands and conservation areas.