Speaking of Trust
Religion and Mutual Aid in Southwest Kenya

By (author) Teodor Zidaru

ISBN13: 9781350301115

Imprint: Zed Books Ltd

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format:

Published: 23/01/2025

Availability: Not yet available

Description
Since independence in 1963, Kenya has seen the steady growth of mutual aid arrangements; a practice which creatively combines market logic with redistributive politics and older forms of reciprocity and solidarity. As a means to providing welfare and pursuing joint economic activity, mutual aid has flourished - despite the failures of neoliberal statecraft, and deepening asymmetries of power and wealth between and within different ethnic groups – and has been largely built up using a language of religious faith. This book examines the often overlooked entanglements and affinities between emerging models of formal and informal finance and welfare with longer-running religious structures and concerns. Observing that many aspects of Christian and indigenous religious life play an integral part in shaping how Kenyans save, lend, distribute, fundraise, and entrust money and value in collective arrangements, Speaking of Trust illuminates and analyses the complex and innovative ways in which Kenyans are reimagining and renegotiating the terms of interdependence across social divides.
A Note on the Gusii and Swahili Languages Introduction CHAPTER 1: Competing for Sovereignty CHAPTER 2: The Politics and Poetics of Transgression CHAPTER 3: Containing the Anti-Help CHAPTER 4: The Value of Prudence CHAPTER 5: Patriarchy at Bay? CHAPTER 6: Affective Labour in Savings and Microfinance Groups CHAPTER 7: Microfinance and Christianity Postlude: A Brave New Africa? Bibliography Index
  • Religion & beliefs
  • Aid & relief programmes
  • Professional & Vocational
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List Price: £85.00