| dc.description.abstract | This paper will focus on the importance of inheritance of land among the Digo who
live on the southern coast of Kenya. The Muslim Digo, one of nine peoples who make up
the Mijikenda, express social continuity through concepts of matrilineal kinship and the
continuation over time of matri-clans. Affirming and contesting kin relations through access
to land, inheritance has been crucial in Digo society as an expression of this continuity.
However, conversion to Islam, colonialism, and the independent state have affected this
access to land, as well as power and authority in other aspects of Digo society, disrupting
notions of kinship, law and identity with gendered implications. Inheritance of land
remains especially important in rural Kenya, today because of an inability for most rural
people to economically compete in land markets. Through the process of negotiations,
settlements and practice of inheritance the Digo set out to challenge not only the authority of
the colonial government, religious structures and the independent state, but what it means
and has meant, within Digo society, to be Digo and Muslim. Thus, inheritance provides a
site for 'symbolic as well as material struggles over land. As such, conflicts in inheritance
can be read as attempts to co-opt legal structures in fights within and Without a community
over defining community and belonging. | en |
