FENCING/deFENCING LAND: New pastoral commons in postcolonial Kenya
Channel: IASC COMMONS
Date: 29/07/2020

FENCING/deFENCING LAND: New pastoral commons in postcolonial Kenya 

by Mette Løvschal,  Aarhus University, Denmark and Marie Gravesen, Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark

Extensive processes of land enclosure currently unfold in Southwest Kenya largely driven by Maasai land users. Across areas previously held as common land, fences are spreading at an unpredictable scale that radically reconfigure the socio-ecological landscape. Paradoxically, although historically, privatization of common land has been associated with state dominance – today, many Maasai land users see enclosure as delineating new horizons of prosperity and autonomy. We explore the nexus between enclosure and its lodging in layers of political pasts and how preceding forms of governance continue to influence the organization of land tenure across time frames. For this purpose, we present three case studies of land fencing and (de)fencing from the Rift Valley region of Kenya. We build on ethnographic fieldwork in the region undertaken between 2014-2016 with more than 80 interviews, combined with archival resources from The National Archives in Kew and new geospatial mappings of the fencing expansions. The cases provide insight into the ways in which enclosure co-produces plural and ambiguous land tenure relations, elsewhere referred to as new commons. Moreover, we focus on what drives pastoralists to (de-)fence in contradiction to interests in sustaining common pastures, and how the binding of land becomes its own political deliberation.