| dc.description.abstract | African urban studies of Anthropology have their origin in one ideal model, the diachronic model. This model assumes that African urbanization can be regarded as a gradual process of detribalization in consequence of direct contact with heterogeneous and powerful Western Cultures. In the 1950's, however, members of Rhodes-Livingstone School advocated a new approach for African urban studies. They criticized the detribalization model and put. Forward the situational analysis which emphasized synchronic social relations. This approach had a decided superiority because it highlighted the migrant's personal strategy in situational selection. It cannot, however, explain the re-tribalization phenomenon which prevails in the most of African larger cities today. It cannot resolve the paradox of retaining tribal relations in a strikingly urban context. There are several points of the situational analysis that requires to be modified. For its elaboration, it is important to remove such uncertain division as tribal or urban and to illuminate the re-tribalization phenomenons which are contemporary, dynamic and purely urban phenomenon. The purpose of this paper lies in this point.
Urban population has rapidly expanded in almost all African countries after their political independence. Though several factors like high birth rate should be considered, the most crucial factor is the mass miqration from rural to urban areas. Those urban migrants flow into towns to look for a permanent employment, leaving behind their family and farm land in rural home areas. They do not break away "tribal" social relations in order to live a stable life in the severe urban environment.
We would like to tl1ke up the Maragoli migrants from Kakamega District, Western Kenya living in Nairobi in order to bear out that kind of re-tribalization phenomenon. In the Part I of this paper, we will attempt to elucidate the urban colony of the Maragoli migrants in Nairobi, especially its formation process where the actual re-tribalization phenomenon can be observed. It was around 1920's when the Kerongo villagers left their village to work away from home in Kabete coffee plantations adjacent to present Kangemi sub-location. Since then until today, they have historically performed a leading part in the formation of the Maragoli urban colony in Kangemi which is the northern corner of Dagoretti Division on the out skirts of Nairobi.
This formation process can be examined in terms of two stages. They are, namely, intensive labour migration to Kabete coffee plantations before independence through the "personal-invitation network" and intensive inflow to Kanqemi after independence through the "self invitation network". Kerongo village and Kabete (later Kangemi, kabete) area have been closely related to each other in labor migration since 1920's. We can call this special relation as a
“migration channel" between those areas.
Neighbouring villages of Kerongo have similarly formed the same “migration channels” with Kabete Kangemi area. Thus we have come to the conclusion that these "migration channels" as a whole urged the formation and development of the urban colony in Kangemi for the Maragoli migrants.
Setting it forth as .premise, this paper would Like to point out in the Part II that the re-tribalization phenomenon among the Maragoli migrants appeared as nothing less than survival mechanism on the extreme edge of subsistence in a severe urban environment. The minimum necessities for daily life cause the Kerongo migrants to make use of or adaptively change a combination of such relations as based on clan, lineage, extended family, village neighborhood, urban neighborhood and urban locality in different situations. An entire process of reorganization of these social relations should be crystallized into the re-tribalization phenomenon.
In order to elucidate this process, this paper adopts the following procedures. Firstly, eight urban situations, where social relations are developed and organized, are chosen from the daily life of the Kerongo migrants in Kangemi. Secondly, the forms of reorganizing social relations (network/group type) are examined in each situation. Thirdly, the principles of reorganizing them (clan-lineage/ village-homeboy/ urban neighborhood-locality principle) are verified in each situation. Finally, we analyze how the village-homeboy principle, which has been rapidly developed in town, is embedded and reinterpreted in a traditional and dominant ideology of unilineal descent. Following these procedures, a reorganization process of social relations among the Maragoli migrants could be described in each situation. Then we will grasp the re-tribalization phenomenon as their complex whole in its totality.
This paper takes an example of the eighth situation, a part of this complex whole, and focuses on social relations organized on the occasion of co-operation for transporting a deceased migrant's body back to the home village and preparing and performing ilishoma for him.
These activities are still mainly done by the extended family and clan members in the home land, but they are scarcely done by them alone in Nairobi, where they are replaced with home-boys. For the homeboy principle has been newly developed in town as base for co-operation. It should be pointed out that even in such a most traditional and culturally conservative situation as is concerned with ideas of death and life, the principle of reorganizing social relations has gradually changed from the clan-lineage principle to the home-boy principle I though it is a1ready provided with legitimacy within the framework of the traditional unilineal ideology. | en |
