Kinship in Action, Kinship in Flux: Uncertainties and Transformations in Okiek Marriage Arrangement

Abstract

Abstract:For Okiek in Kenya, marriage arrangement is a nexus where transformations of personhood and social relations, changes in land tenure, and shifting state engagements come together in ways that shape individual and family lives as well as communities. This article sketches transformations in Okiek life and marriage arrangement and considers how Okiek have managed interlineage discussions central to marriage arrangement. It explores the social dynamics, evocative rhetorics, uncertainties, and moral imaginations through which people constitute lineages and affinal relations in changing circumstances, and situates these processes within a longer historical trajectory of socioeconomic and demographic change.