AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF POLITICAL ACTION IN A BAJUNI VILLAGE IN KENYA

Abstract

The main theme of this 'thesis is a sociological analysis of a process of political conflict in a village community. The village Tondwa - has a population of just over a thousand persons, and is situated on an island lying just of the north Kenya coast near the border with Somalia. It is a village where political factionalism is an important element in social life. My aim in this thesis has been to show that conflicts between the factions were an expression of under lying social and economic causes and that the recruitment of support for the factions was based on the pre-existing structure of linkages in the community. The focal material of this thesis is therefore contained in Chapter where I describe in detail the series of connected ‘social dramas’ or-crisis situations which punctuated the development of factional conflicts in Tondwa in 1965. The first part of the thesis is devoted to an analysis of the three most important aspects of Tondwas social-organization economic-organization kinship and social stratification. Each of these aspects of social organization creates a contextual framework for social action, and each of them is influential in determining the alliances of people in political crises.