Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2013 Where and When Things Fall Apart: Relating narratives of post-election violence from Nairobi Joseph Hamer Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hamer, J. (2013). Where and When Things Fall Apart: Relating narratives of post-election violence from Nairobi (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/622 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHERE AND WHEN THINGS FALL APART: RELATING NARRATIVES OF POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE FROM NAIROBI A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Joseph Hamer December 2013 Copyright by Joseph Hamer 2013 ii WHERE AND WHEN THINGS FALL APART: RELATING NARRATIVES OF POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE FROM NAIROBI By Joseph Hamer Approved September 30, 2013 ________________________________ ________________________________ Leswin Laubscher, Ph.D. Martin Packer, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Associate Professor of Psychology (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Rodney Hopson, Ph.D. James Swindal, Ph.D. Professor of Education Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate (Committee Member) School of Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy ________________________________ Leswin Laubscher, Ph.D. Chair, Psychology Department Associate Professor of Psychology iii ABSTRACT WHERE AND WHEN THINGS FALL APART: RELATING NARRATIVES OF POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE FROM NAIROBI By Joseph Hamer December 2013 Dissertation supervised by Leswin Laubscher, Ph.D. The violence that followed the 2007 elections in Kenya caught many people by surprise, including me. Given some familiarity with, and personal connections to, Kenya, this dissertation began first with shock and concern, and later with suspicion of the way the post election violence was presented in the Western media as yet another example of sudden, prolific, and nonsensical outbreaks of violence in Africa. It seemed notable that the violence occurred around political elections and important to explore the stakes therein. A review of available literature on the topic revealed that historical injustices and ethnic inequality seemed to be contributing factors in the post-election violence. A review of the psychological literature pertaining to collective violence raised questions about identity and power, obedience and conformity, and the breakdown of law and order. To the extent to which these factors and principles shed some light on what iv happened in Kenya, the question remained: what might all of this mean, concretely, in people‘s lives? Beyond the stories of Western journalists and behavioral scientists, I wanted to know how Kenyans narrated the post-election violence. I turn to multisited ethnography, a method of research and writing that affords the procedural flexibility to follow the traces of such a complex phenomenon and to reflexively document the process of ―finding‖ and understanding. If what both the Western press and conventional psychology provide tend to be general, abstract, ahistorical explanations of violence, I present a situated account involving a diversity of descriptions and explanations given by Kenyans from various tribes, classes, and political affiliations about the post-election violence and prospects of sustained peace. This includes detailed first person accounts of how things unfolded, or, fell apart. The Kenyans I spoke with narrate the post- election violence by both contextualizing it in (post)colonial history and by personalizing it in a manner that shows ethnicity in Kenya to be highly nuanced and complex. What results from this dissertation is a rearticulation of the post-election violence through revealing relations that have been obscured by the dominant discourse. Finally, with regard to studying violence and peace, it is assumed that total understanding is impossible; I have been attendant to the challenges associated with understanding and writing about others as subjects of violence. To my project it has been essential to show the places and ways in which discourse on violence necessarily breaks down. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As the defense of this dissertation also marks the completion of the requirements for my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of my clinical supervisors for their guidance and wisdom, especially: Roger Brooke, Jessie Goicoechea, Elsa Arse, Stan Marlan, Michelle Deering, Mark Forest, and lastly the late Brian Shannon. As for this dissertation, thanks to Dave Clements and Emilia Gonzales-Clements of the Fifth Sun Development Fund for a generous grant that allowed me to make my first trip to Kenya in 2007. I would like to thank my parents for so many things, including their crucial support during graduate school. Likewise, I would like to acknowledge my grandparents and my siblings as sources of both support and inspiration. Thank you Marilyn for all your help over the past six years. And to Sharon, it is extraordinary how the kindness of a stranger can make all the difference to the success of one‘s endeavor. Thank you. And thanks to Felgona and the serendipity that transformed a weekly commute into a trolley ride to Kenya. Thanks to the APA team at the United Nations for inviting me to learn from and work with you. I am grateful to the Institute of Developmental Studies at Nairobi University, my academic host for the period of my fieldwork. Thanks to the British Institute in East Africa for making available its facilities, including a great library. Thanks specifically to vi Godfrey for your hospitality. Thanks to the research attaches at BIEA for the insightful discussions, especially Julia. I‘m very grateful to Evans for the invaluable Kiswahili lessons. And thank you Nigel and Patrick for your friendship. You‘ve both advanced my understanding and work far more than I have yours. Our work together is anything but done. I thank my undergraduate advisor, the late Barry Michrina, for introducing me to so many outstanding ethnographies and for the enlightening dialogues that preceded and followed those readings. To Paul Richer, my academic mentor, who forced Psychology, or at least the Psychology Department at Duquesne, to recognize the inseparability of knowledge/power. I would like to thank Sipho Mbuqe for encouraging me in my first semester to keep hold of my political interests in the field of psychology and for his consistent support throughout. Thanks to Martin Packer for the extremely important work that is the Science of Qualitative Research. This project was first conceived in his advanced research course, and developed in two subsequent independent studies. Indeed, if it weren‘t for his support, especially in the early phases of this project it would not have happened. Thanks also to Rodney Hopson for a dynamic pro-seminar within the Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research and for pushing me throughout this dissertation to the depths of humanity. I acknowledge my debt to Leswin Laubscher, who has been extraordinarily patient with my writing. His humility in relation to the topic of this dissertation and in general has guided me in a direction I‘ll be forever grateful for. vii To my wife, Alina, who has suffered the pains of this dissertation process with me, offered endless encouragement and wisdom, and who has, simply and profoundly, been with me every step of the way. May I be for you as you have been for me in the madness of academic work and creative life. Finally, to all those who shared their stories with me: your generosity has changed my life. Gratitude is not adequate. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgement .......................................................................................................... vi I. Introduction: Where and when things fall apart ............................................................ 1 1.1 The violence that followed ............................................................................... 1 1.2 Critical entry (or, an initial motivation for the research) ................................... 2 1.3 To Kenya itself (or, an/other motivation for the current study) ......................... 5 1.4 Outline of the dissertation ................................................................................ 7 II. Review of the Literature.............................................................................................. 9 2.1 Literature specific to post-election violence in Kenya ...................................... 9 2.2 Literature on the psychology of collective violence ........................................ 15 A) Civilization and its discontents; Sigmund Freud .................................... 16 B) The heart and mind of darkness; Freud‘s followers ................................ 20 C) Alienation and an appetite for destruction; Erich Fromm ....................... 24 D) Submission to authoritarianism; Theodor Adorno