An Uncertain Age

The Politics of Manhood in Kenya

Nonfiction, History, Africa, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Gender Studies, Political Science
Cover of the book An Uncertain Age by Paul Ocobock, Ohio University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Paul Ocobock ISBN: 9780821445983
Publisher: Ohio University Press Publication: March 27, 2017
Imprint: Ohio University Press Language: English
Author: Paul Ocobock
ISBN: 9780821445983
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Publication: March 27, 2017
Imprint: Ohio University Press
Language: English

In twentieth-century Kenya, age and gender were powerful cultural and political forces that animated household and generational relationships. They also shaped East Africans’ contact with and influence on emergent colonial and global ideas about age and masculinity. Kenyan men and boys came of age achieving their manhood through changing rites of passage and access to new outlets such as town life, crime, anticolonial violence, and nationalism. And as they did, the colonial government appropriated masculinity and maturity as means of statecraft and control.

In An Uncertain Age, Paul Ocobock positions age and gender at the heart of everyday life and state building in Kenya. He excavates in unprecedented ways how the evolving concept of “youth” motivated and energized colonial power and the movements against it, exploring the masculinities boys and young men debated and performed as they crisscrossed the colony in search of wages or took the Mau Mau oath. Yet he also considers how British officials’ own ideas about masculinity shaped not only young African men’s ideas about manhood but the very nature of colonial rule.

An Uncertain Age joins a growing number of histories that have begun to break down monolithic male identities to push the historiographies of Kenya and empire into new territory.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In twentieth-century Kenya, age and gender were powerful cultural and political forces that animated household and generational relationships. They also shaped East Africans’ contact with and influence on emergent colonial and global ideas about age and masculinity. Kenyan men and boys came of age achieving their manhood through changing rites of passage and access to new outlets such as town life, crime, anticolonial violence, and nationalism. And as they did, the colonial government appropriated masculinity and maturity as means of statecraft and control.

In An Uncertain Age, Paul Ocobock positions age and gender at the heart of everyday life and state building in Kenya. He excavates in unprecedented ways how the evolving concept of “youth” motivated and energized colonial power and the movements against it, exploring the masculinities boys and young men debated and performed as they crisscrossed the colony in search of wages or took the Mau Mau oath. Yet he also considers how British officials’ own ideas about masculinity shaped not only young African men’s ideas about manhood but the very nature of colonial rule.

An Uncertain Age joins a growing number of histories that have begun to break down monolithic male identities to push the historiographies of Kenya and empire into new territory.

More books from Ohio University Press

Cover of the book Making the Mark by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Prophetic Politics by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Power in the Blood by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Cartography and the Political Imagination by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book We Do Not Have Borders by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book History and Poetics in the Early Writings of William Morris, 1855–1870 by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Drawing the Line by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Cinematic Hamlet by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book The Wake of Wellington by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Somebody Telling Somebody Else by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book Not White Enough, Not Black Enough by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book The Wife of Martin Guerre by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book In Idi Amin’s Shadow by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book From Mastery to Mystery by Paul Ocobock
Cover of the book The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician by Paul Ocobock
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy