Popular Cultural Responses to Kenya’s 2010 Constitution: Machakos Book Workshop

Between 1–4 October, team member Nicklas Hållén visited Machakos University, where he and Dr. Charles Kebaya ran a second of three planned PhD and MA student workshop on popular cultural production in Kenya. The student participants have been working diligently on six different projects which will be collected in a co-authored book that is scheduled to be published in late 2025. Its tentative focus is Popular cultural production and the 2010 Kenyan constitution, and many of the chapters focus on the issue of popular culture in different kinds of social movements and protests.

The workshop was successful and the discussions about the drafts for the different chapters were animated and constructive. Since they will be collected in a co-authored volume, all the attendees are responsible for the quality of all texts. This method of co-authorship brings with it many interesting challenges – chief among which is perhaps the question of how one can reach consensus on the degree to which views can differ within the group without it becoming a problem for the project as a whole.

One topic that came up in many of the discussions is the so called Gen-Z protests and Mama Mboga (market lady) Revolution in Nairobi earlier this year. Other topics that were discussed included rural literary production and sustainability, the futures of literature in Kenya’s minority languages, and how non-political popular music has been re-purposed by Kenyan social movements.

The materials that participants are analysing will all be included in the ALMEDA database.

The next workshop is planned for early 2025 and we look forward to ultimately celebrating the launch of this co-written book in both Kenya and in Sweden!