Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Spring 5-15-2019 Marriage, the Market, and Gendered (In)securities in Kibera, Kenya Elizabeth Ashley Wilson Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Wilson, Elizabeth Ashley, "Marriage, the Market, and Gendered (In)securities in Kibera, Kenya" (2019). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1819. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/1819 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of Anthropology Dissertation Examination Committee: Shanti Parikh, Chair Jean Allman Bret Gustafson Carolyn Lesorogol Kedron Thomas Marriage, the Market, and Gendered (In)securities in Kibera, Kenya by Elizabeth Ashley Wilson A dissertation presented to The Graduate School of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2019 St. Louis, Missouri © 2019, Elizabeth Ashley Wilson Table of Contents List of Figures……………………………………………………………….………………. iii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………….……….……….…iv Abstract……………………………………………………………………….…………. …. vii Chapter 1: Marriage, the Market, and Insecurity…………………………………….………1 Chapter 2: Don’t Say ‘Research’: Reducing Bidirectional Risk in Kibera and the Context of Insecurity………………………………………………………………………….….………36 Chapter 3: Marriage, Education, and Work by the Numbers………………………….…….67 Chapter 4: Placing Marriage and Marriage Debates in Urban Kenya………………….…...93 Chapter 5: Companionate Trappings: Complicating the Formal Marriage Ideal…………. 117 Chapter 6: Kibera’s Jua Kali: A Theory of a Gendered Economic Spectrum …….………146 Chapter 7: Gendered Insecurity, Marriage Ambivalence, and the Question of Love………174 Afterword: Post-Ethnography Reflections………………………………………………….194 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...……………198 ii List of Figures Figure 1: Arrival of Fresh Tarmac to Olympic Estates, January 2016 ………………….……...5 Figure 2: View of Kibera from the Uganda Railway ……………………………………………42 Figure 3: With imagery reminiscent of Kenya's 2007 post-election violence, Kibera was labeled a no-go zone on 'Machozi Mondays' during anti-electoral board protests early in 2016. Photo by Joshua Ogure. …………………………………………………………….………...….…. ….…46 Figure 4: Map of the Research Sites ……………………………………………………......…...54 Figure 5: Research Team Reviewing a Day’s Work …………………………………………....63 Figure 6: Comparison of Kibera Estate, left, and Kibera Village, right …………….……….…71 Figure 7: Self-Identified Marital Status by Percentage in Olympic and Kisumu Ndogo.………73 Figure 8: Marriage Type Frequency in Olympic and Kisumu Ndogo ………………………….74 Figure 9: Marriage Type Frequency by Neighborhood …………….……………...……….…75 Figure 10: Aerial Photo of Fort Jesus, a Neighborhood Adjacent to Kibera Slum ……………79 Figure 11: Educational Attainment Level Frequency Across Neighborhoods ………………….80 Figure 12: Educational Attainment Level Frequency By Neighborhood ………….……………81 Figure 13: Household Employment Type Frequency Across Neighborhoods …………….……83 Figure 14: Frequency Comparison of Marriage Type and Educational Attainment Level Across Neighborhoods……………….……………………………………………………...……….…85 Figure 15: Religious Affiliation Across Neighborhoods …………………………………….…87 Figure 16: A Nubian Home and Once a Hiding Place for Jomo Kenyatta during Mau Mau ….88 Figure 17: Ethnic Affiliation Across Neighborhoods ……………………………….…………89 Figure 18: Kibera Auto Garage ……………………………………………………...…………153 Figure 19: Aerial View of Makina Market, Kibera ……………………………………….…158 Figure 20: Kibera Town Centre’s Opening Banner, 2015 ………………………….…………176 Figure 21: View of Kisumu Ndogo from Kibera’s Town Centre’s Second Story …………….177 iii Acknowledgments I walked this long path to the PhD alongside many others, who encouraged, fed, housed, and loved me to the finish line. I wouldn’t have been able to do this alone. I attempt here to express my heartfelt gratitude. To my dear friends—and especially Susan, Natalia, Benjamin, Carolyn, and Nicole—to call you friends is one of the greatest honors of this life. I love you more than I can put here in words. I trust you know and feel my love. To my family—mom, dad, Andrew, Angie, Mark, Victoria, sweet Leviticus, and my darling Connor—thank you for putting up with me constantly needing to do “my thing” (aka work) every time I come home for a visit. I have finished now, and on my subsequent trips home, I promise you much more of my time and presence. To my heart teachers—especially Jenn and Barbara—deep bows of gratitude from my heart for sharing your wisdom and practice with me. Namaste and thank you. To my family in Kenya—especially Josephine, Janet, Sarah, Becca, and Steve—thank you for welcoming me into your lives and into your homes for a decade now. You have loved me so well, and you have made doing this work not only possible, but so very enjoyable. To my core committee—Shanti, Bret, and Kedron—thank you for your support throughout each step of this process. Some years were better than others, and I am immensely grateful to each of you for your unwavering encouragement through the ups and the downs. Thank you, Jean and Carolyn, for being outside readers. I am honored to include you two to create a full committee of scholars whom I have admired and tried to emulate for a long while. May I make you proud in all future endeavors. iv Thank you to the Departments of Anthropology at Washington University in Saint Louis and the University of Nairobi as well as the Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad and National Geographic Young Explorers for financially and institutionally supporting this research project. I extend heartfelt gratitude to my research collaborators – Doreen Odera, Joshua Ogure, Fredrick Onyino and Zachary Wambua – for your assistantship, enthusiasm, and dedication to always guiding the research in more appropriate directions. Last, but never least, to the Kibera community: from my heart to yours, thank you for opening up your lives to me time and time again. Nitarudi nyumbani tena na tena. Nakupenda zaidi. E. Ashley Wilson Washington University in St. Louis May 2019 v Dedicated to the Women of Courage. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Marriage, the Market, and Gendered (In)securities in Kibera, Kenya by Elizabeth Ashley Wilson Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology Washington University in St. Louis, 2019 Dr. Shanti Parikh, Chair. Based on more than two years of anthropological fieldwork, 157 household surveys, and 40 in-depth interviews, my dissertation research examines a conjugal form in Kenya known as “come-we-stay” marriage, or long-term intimate cohabitation that is often not seen as legitimate neither by the law nor kinship networks. Whereas various opinion leaders, from clergy to feminist organizations, have hailed come-we-stay as an affront to moral decency and women’s rights (respectively), women and men with whom I have conducted research in Nairobi’s Kibera slum emphasize the complexity of the issue and highlight the social, economic, and intimate challenges and benefits of their relationships. My dissertation explores macro-level marriage debates in Kenya from the ground level, looking closely at how individuals living in Kibera negotiate a path to formal marriage as well as why some couples intentionally choose to remain informally cohabitating for long periods of time. Together, I take Kibera’s come-we-stay (informal marriage) with the jua kali (informal economy) in Kibera as the ethnographic objects of my study to explore how deep insecurity associated with informal forms of work and marriage are also tied closely with flexibility, personal autonomy, economic gain, and upward/outward mobility rather than victimhood or moral depravity. Against the backdrop of national attempts to simultaneously protect and police poor women’s and men’s sexuality and conjugal practices, this dissertation explores the dynamism of different conjugal forms in the socially marginal but economically vital informal economy of Kibera. vii Chapter 1: Marriage, the Market, and Insecurity Introduction: Finding Your Way “You know in Kenya we still concentrate on permanent marriage. Even if you go through many problems you are told to stick with your husband. They [undefined others] still emphasize stable marriage, permanent marriage. You get married, you have kids, you take care of the kids. Even if you are passing through many challenges, you have to stay in that place that you are married.” “But as you grow, the harder it becomes.” “That was in their [elders] time. Nowadays, you can't stick to a man and you are suffering. You have to find your ways.” __ And so begins this dissertation on the insecure, as defined by informants, forms of both marriage and employment in Nairobi Kenya’s largest slum, Kibera. I begin with this short exchange with a couple of women in Kibera to introduce a tension that runs through these chapters: social expectations and individual desire for permanency in intimate relationships and the inability and hesitancy