Justus B. Aungo

Performance and Dynamics of Public Protest in Kenya: from Swinging to Singing Justus B. Aungo

The study explores the performance and dynamics, of public protest in Kenya using a variety of data sources including selected testimonies and archival data. Noting the changes manifested in the way the protest events happen in Kenya,it attempts to establish the motivation and explanation for such changes within the logic of rationality, dramatization and personalization of public politics. It demonstrates how a personalized rationality of the emerging and shifting political classes dominates and manipulates the nature and construct of the protest movement in Kenya. The visceral desire to control existing State machinery which are only viable means for accumulation, mobilization and distribution of economic resources and socio-political reproduction is the feasible explanation for such shifts. Existing social movement theorizing ignores this reality. Thus the study concludes that the protest movement and political context in Kenya and other peripheral countries are best studied through the resource mobilization and state class perspectives. The book is meant for students, activists and researchers of social movements and popular change advocacy.