Paper short abstract:

How does a person come to stand for others? In a site of intense transnational medical research in rural Kenya, ‘stakeholder’ has become a new person-category, form of authority and opportunity to leverage value for residents of an otherwise subsistence farming economy.

Paper long abstract:

In a rural African field-site for numerous transnational medical research projects, certain individuals come to stand for others in negotiations between ‘the community,’ the researchers and other NGOs. However, these designated ‘stakeholders’ do not always map on to traditional forms of authority and power. Knowing how to talk to researchers and how to leverage value from these encounters has become an enviable skill in a rural subsistence economy, where medical research is the main source of money flow in the area. Based on ethnographic work over several years, this paper explores the biographies and practices of several stakeholders – or ‘people who know how to talk to people’ - who have forged careers in this new category of powerful figures. It places their case stories in the context of a wider development of a new form of labour for sale in development work – that of knowing your community