Providing to belong: masculinities, hustling and economic uncertainty in Nairobi ‘ghettos’

Abstract

Hustling as a concept has travelled through the global soundscapes of impoverished, neglected, racialized and otherwise marginalized urban settings. The widespread rearticulation of the term ‘hustling’ in a broad range of urban languages reveals that its use in particular forms of Black Atlantic music cultures speaks to shared experiences worldwide. Simultaneously, it shows the flexibility of this term to acquire new and unfolding meanings. This article focuses on the modes in which poor young men in Nairobi (re)deploy, translate and practise hustling to fit immediate circumstances and imagine possible futures, and on the meanings these men produce in the process. I argue that interrogating hustling as a practice provides insights into gendered experiences of urban life worlds in the underserved and highly policed areas of Nairobi, which may tentatively resonate with young men in comparable positions worldwide. I specifically examine how positions of (junior) manhood are configured by localized hustling practices to elucidate how navigating fear and hope, while facing extreme uncertainty, simultaneously defines and undermines their sense of manhood.

Goats, materials and uncertainty in Nairobi

“…: 4). This is in contrast to Nairobi’s ‘slums’ (Thieme 2021; Van Stapele 2021) and peri-urban margins (Lockwood 2020), where many people self-identify as hustlers. Hustling has also been co-opted among politicians 28 or in the inverse snobbery of Nairobi’s wealthier classes seeking streetwise acumen.…”

Women's gendered experiences of political instability: Kibera during the 2017 Kenyan elections

“…Scholarship on masculinities in informal settlements demonstrates how new masculine identities are constituted around such experiences of marginalisation and poverty, redefining but essentially maintaining the idealised masculine identity of the provider (Izugbara, 2015;Silberschmidt, 2004;Van Stapele, 2015;Van Stapele, 2016). Contemporary understandings of the male provider are partly shaped by colonial economic structures, such as the colonial British hut tax (Van Stapele, 2021). Our interview data show that the ideal-typical 'imaginary of the provider' (Van Stapele, 2016: 306), despite largely fictional, was reproduced by both men and women.…”

Masculinity, Morality, and the State in Northern Kenya: The Case of Baringo County's Il Chamus

“…This is interesting, because “respect” has become a focus of a number of studies of men in violent and precarious circumstances, in Africa and beyond. Many of these argue that men, in the absence of opportunities for stable livelihoods, engage in violent or illicit activities in order to gain “respect” from their social surroundings (Bourgois, 1996; Enria, 2016; Iwilade, 2014; van Stapele, 2021; Vigh, 2017), thus theorizing respect as a gendered moral disposition and aspiration achieved through violence and illegality (cf. Masquelier, 2019; Thornton, 2016).…”