Don't Take It Out of Context

Don’t Take It Out of Context: A Study of Entrepreneurship in a Nairobi Slum

Philip O’Donnell, Colm O’Gorman, and Eric Clinton

ABSTRACT We draw on data collected during a three-month ethnographic study in an impoverished and marginalised slum community in Nairobi, Kenya, to show how contextual factors sometimes supersede strategic choice in the initiation of entrepreneurship. We study two ‘entrepreneurial collectives’ that formed not for economic but for social reasons, but whose purpose evolved to fulfil the economic needs of individual members. We show how strong ties are cultivated in a context of perceived persecution, and subsequently how group allegiance helps to democratise scarce resources and opportunities, even when this comes at the expense of income maximisation.

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION As other disciplines in the field of management have spoken in near-celebratory tones about the gains which have been made in sensitising research findings to their discrete context (Bamberger, 2008), entrepreneurship has been found wanting (Zahra and Wright, 2011). This study seeks to build upon an emerging stream of work that is helping to redress this deficiency, by exploring how a distinctive, but highly prevalent, form of ‘collective entrepreneurship’ takes form in an environment marked by acute resource constraints. We illustrate how the interplay of social, spatial, institutional, and temporal factors helped to spawn two ‘entrepreneurial collectives’ which encompassed over twenty members in total, and which embarked on divergent, path-dependent growth trajectories despite highly similar founding conditions and processes. Following Welter (2011), we take a broad view of context, in which higher order aspects like networks and spatial characteristics are seen to impact directly upon the phenomena at hand (Johns, 2006; Viswanathan, Rosa, and Ruth, 2010). This approach facilitates multi-level analyses (Peng and Luo, 2000) where individuals are nested within the constructed microsocieties of their entrepreneurial collectives, which in turn came to exist within contrasting institutional settings (namely the formal and the informal sector) despite relative spatial proximity being maintained. Our chosen research setting for this study is an informal (“slum”) community in Nairobi, Kenya, called Mukuru, in which the paper’s first author spent a period of three months conducting ethnographic fieldwork. After observing the apparent propensity of young people (in particular young men) to engage in entrepreneurship on a collective rather than an individual basis, within what appeared to be loosely structured and sometimes ephemeral groups of up to twenty people, a broad research question was articulated: how has this highly unfamiliar context helped to give rise to this highly unfamiliar (but clearly prevalent) form of entrepreneuring? Two important contributions are seen to emerge from these investigations. First, we build upon the seminal work of Gartner (1988) and others, who proposed that entrepreneurship research should concern itself primarily with the creation of organisations, by exploring how a particular type of entrepreneurship which is largely overlooked by current literature (Rehn and Taalas, 2004a) has in practice become highly prevalent. By extension, we provide much-needed insight on entrepreneurship in informal markets and, especially, informal communities, which are becoming increasingly important research settings in a quickly urbanising world (Bruton, 2010; UN-Habitat, 2003). Second, we bring to an empirical setting the conceptual paradigms of scholars like Zahra (2007), Zahra and Wright (2011), and Welter (2011), and using an immersive, interpretive methodology we deploy the disaggregated perspective of entrepreneurial context that these papers propose.

SECTION 2: BACKGROUND LITERATURE 2.1 Does Context Matter? The growing publication space devoted across a wide spectrum of organisational journals to the topic of context answers this question affirmatively and emphatically (Johns, 2001, 2006;

Welter, 2011; Welter, Smallbone, and Pobol, 2017; Hess, 2004; Zahra, 2007; Zahra and Wright, 2011; Zahra, Wight, and Abdelgawad, 2014; Bamberger, 2008). Defined by Mowday and Sutton (1993:198), context refers to “stimuli and phenomena that surround and thus exist in the environment external to the individual, most often at different levels of analysis.” In associating context with “the situational opportunities and constraints that affect the occurrence and meaning of organisational behaviour…” Johns (2006:386) draws a more salient connection between exogenous forces and the phenomena under study. Exogeneity, however, cannot be thought of in absolute terms that remain consistent across disciplines, and this is particularly problematic when influential ideas relating to context are transposed from disciplines such as organisational behaviour (Mowday and Sutton, 1993; Johns, 2001, 2006; Dacin, Ventresca, and Beal, 1999) to entrepreneurship. Organisational behaviour has as its raison d’etre an unusually strong interest in context, simply because the organisation and context are treated as one and the same. But if entrepreneurship is the creation of organisations, what then is the context for entrepreneurship? Is the context for entrepreneurship simply vacuous, until entrepreneurship ‘occurs’ and an organisation (i.e. a new context) is born? The answer to these questions is, of course, ‘no’, and admittedly the framing of them is somewhat hyperbolic if not disingenuous, because entrepreneurship scholars with an interest in context have gained a great deal by drawing from the approaches taken by related disciplines such as OB (Welter, 2011; Welter and Baker, 2017). Nonetheless, the point that entrepreneurship exists some distance upstream from OB is irrefutable, and the need to delineate its own conceptualisation of context has been clear for quite some time. Contributions seeking to advance this cause appear to be converging from a disparate base towards some degree of consensus. Steyaert and Katz (2004) emphasised the benefit of studies which are spatially situated and which can therefore explore some of the innumerable, mundane entrepreneurial interactions that take place within that space (Welter, et al., 2017). Watson (2013b) later echoed this, adding that entrepreneurship is enacted not only in a given place but also in – and over – time (Baumol, 1990; Kodithuwakku and Rosa, 2002). Separate papers by Welter (2011) and Zahra and Wright (2011) exhibit a high degree of agreement with respect to the constituent parts of context, with both identifying social, spatial, and institutional factors as elements of context; Zahra and Wright, whose paper was published some months after Welter’s, propose incorporating a temporal dimension to take the place of Welter’s “business context”. In the empirical portion of this paper we explicitly apply the framework for context described by Zahra and Wright (2011), although we draw heavily from the contributions made to the entrepreneurship-in-context discourse offered by Welter (2011), Welter, Smallbone, and Pobol (2017); Welter and Gartner (2017), Zahra (2007), Steyaert and Katz (2004), Zahra, Wright, and Abdelgawad (2014), and Watson (2013a, 2013b).

2.2 The Rise of the Slum Rapid urbanisation in the Developing World is one of the most urban and complex challenges on the global development agenda (de Soto, 2000:70). In 1995, Africa had twenty-five cities with a population of between 1-5m inhabitants, plus one city in each of the 5-10m and >10m brackets; by 2015 it had forty-six cities with populations between 1-5m, four cities of 5-10m, and three cities with more than 10m (UN-Habitat, 2015). As municipal infrastructures have reached and exceeded their capacities, many of these rural migrants have become housed in sprawling, unplanned slums (UN-Habitat, 2006), defined in 2002 by a UN Expert Group as an

“area that combines, to various extents, the following characteristics: (i) inadequate access to safe water; (ii) inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure; (iii) poor structural quality of housing; (iv) overcrowding; (v) insecure residential status” (see UN-Habitat, 2003:12, for further definitions of ‘inadequate’, ‘overcrowding’, etc.). The centrality of slums to global development has been enshrined in the MDGs and the SDGs1 but, unlike extreme poverty, these initiatives have not targeted the eradication of slums, they merely aspire to improve them (United Nations, 2016). Slum growth is taking place at too quick a pace for it to be halted and reversed within a time-bound programme such as the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda; in fact, UN-Habitat’s own Programme Framework for this initiative reports that “the absolute number of slum dwellers … is expected to increase threefold by 2050 to almost half of the world’s urban population” (UN-Habitat, 2016:2). Already, fifty-five per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population live in communities categorised as slums (United Nations, 2015, 2016). Moreover, the forces driving the steepening rates of urbanisation in the Developing World, which is the principal cause of these burgeoning slum statistics, are complex and multifaceted. De Soto (2000:82-83) writes that “[l]ife in the far-off cities not only seemed better; it was better … Migration, therefore, is hardly an irrational act. It has little to do with ‘herd instinct’. It is the product of a calculated and rational assessment by rural people of their current situation measured against the opportunities open to them elsewhere.” Gauging the total number of businesses in a single slum is a virtually impossible task, so figures at national, regional, and global level are extremely sparse. Of the 880m people around the world that live in slums (United Nations, 2016), we cannot say how many have formed a business, only that – owing to the difficulties that slum dwellers frequently have in accessing labour markets, and because they tend to exist in countries that do not have sufficient social welfare systems for the unemployed – many of them have; enough, certainly, to justify a good deal more targeted research attention than what has so far been paid. To date, entrepreneurship research has largely overlooked slum settings. From a theoretical standpoint, this is somewhat surprising given the field’s fundamental concern with resource constraints (Baker and Nelson, 2005; Powell and Baker, 2014), but is most probably attributable to the challenging practicalities of carrying out research in slum communities, including, as noted by Marx, et al. (2013:190), “safety issues for research fieldworkers, the high mobility and turnover rates of respondents, and the fact that target households are regularly absent from their dwellings”. Recent work, e.g. Thieme (2013, 2015), Imas, et al., (2012), and Imas and Weston (2012), which provides an important reflection on how neoliberal governance is contributing to the marginalisation of vulnerable tranches of society, serves as a notable exception. In an ethnographic study carried out in Nairobi’s Mathare slum (less than ten miles from our own research site), Thieme (2013:390) shed light on the culturally embedded and symbolically rich idea of ‘hustling’, which refers both to “’last resort’ survival mechanism[s]” and to “livelihood strategies” practiced by slum youths that are “constantly straddling struggle and opportunity”. Imas, et al. (2012) and Imas and Weston (2012), based on field data gathered in Buenos Aires, Santiago, Accra, Harare, and Rio de Janeiro, are deeply critical of researchers’ propensity to assume that the processes and motivations that underpin entrepreneurship in non-Western research settings such as theirs are broadly the same as those 1

MDG 7.D aimed to achieve a significant improvement in the living conditions of 100m slum dwellers (which by 2014 had largely been achieved), and SDG 11.1 aims, by, 2030, to ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums (United Nations, 2015; UN-Habitat, 2016). In addition, improving living conditions in slums is linked by UN-Habitat (2016:1) to seven other SDGs, including those associated with poverty, gender equality, energy, decent work and economic growth, inequality, peace and security, and partnerships.

in the Anglo-American contexts that dominate the field. As an indicator of the misalignment that is observed between the entrepreneurs that our research has for a long time lionised and those that it has largely forgotten, they write: “… the entrepreneur is defined within an economic system that legitimizes values, actions, and identities that do not reflect life among poor or neglected communities in the developing world or the poor south … The values espoused within the peripheral environment are arguably fundamentally different from those promoted in mainstream economic discourse. For instance, we found that solidarity rather than competition informs relationships. In marginality new creative ways of day-to-day survival emerge that are not associated with an individual per se but with communities” (2012:566&568). These studies apart, very few empirical papers have sought explicitly to examine the particularities of conducting entrepreneurship in a slum setting, yet the briefest of visits to such a setting is enough to convince that these particularities are many. Exceptions include Gras and Nason (2015) and Marti, et al., (2013), both of which support the present study with important insights about the collaborative nature of entrepreneurship in slum communities. However, both are fundamentally different from the present study too; Gras and Nason’s (2015) paper on bricolage in the slums of Hyderabad, India, rests on a deductive, hypothesis-driven methodology and large-sample survey data. Like us, Marti, et al. (2013) employ qualitative techniques, such as semi-structured interviews and participant observation, but theirs is a study of interaction between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in a small slum community in the relatively isolated town of Bariloche, north of Patagonia in Argentina. Surrounding insights about entrepreneurship in slum settings are more generally inferred from studies set in Developing World urban centres, which generally seek informants that are poor and/or informal but located in downtown rather than slum districts (e.g. Barrios and Blocker, 2015; Bromley, 1978; De Castro, et al., 2014; Honig, 1998). Other developing country studies that do not specify an urban/rural framing (e.g. Khavul, et al., 2009; Boso, et al., 2013; Fadahunsi and Rosa, 2012; Estrin, et al., 2013) and those that are explicitly rural (Kodithuwakku and Rosa, 2002) are helpful especially in challenging the assumptions which may otherwise be carried over from a Western viewpoint, but the extent to which they can be applied to the idiosyncratic context of a slum is unknown. Lastly, studies from related disciplines, e.g. marketing (Viswanathan et al., 2010; Viswanathan et al., 2012; Viswanathan et al.. 2014) and economic geography (e.g. Park, 2006; Fafchamps and Lund, 2003; Foster and Rosenzweig, 2001) provide useful insights into interconnectedness within extremely poor settings, but in their questionable relevance to slum settings suffer from similar shortcomings vis-à-vis the present study as the entrepreneurship papers summarised above.

SECTION 3: METHODOLOGY Data for this study was collected over the course of three months from two neighboring informal (“slum”) communities in Nairobi, namely Mukuru kwa Reuben and Mukuru kwa Njenga, which for parsimony we henceforth refer to collectively as “Mukuru”. 2 Mukuru is situated less than four miles from Nairobi’s Central Business District, and has a population of

2

Data for this study was collected as part of a wider research project which included a number of Nairobi’s other slums and a larger base of research participants. The participants chosen for inclusion in this particular study were chosen on the basis of their similar processes of collective venturing.

around 500,000 and a land area of less than 1.85sqkm (Wouters, et al., 2015).3 Our ethnographic approach enabled multifaceted modes of interaction and delivered rich, emicperspective insights on the nature and utility of social relationships in this deeply impoverished community (Wolcott, 2008:42; Aldrich, 1992; Gartner, Bird, and Starr, 1992).

3.1

Research Setting

Nairobi epitomises the global phenomenon of accelerating rural-to-urban migration and its associated challenges for policy makers and citizenry alike (Blanco, Wanyoike, Mwilaria, Omar, and Onyango, 2012). As a city of around 4m people, it is the largest in East Africa, yet its services and amenities are desperately inadequate to cater for what is one of the most rapidly growing populations in the world (Oxfam GB, Concern Worldwide, and CARE International, 2009). UN-HABITAT’s (2006) definition of a slum household as one which is lacking access to improved water, improved sanitation, sufficient living area, durable housing, and secure tenure captures the living conditions of more than half of Nairobi’s residents (Wouters, et al., 2015). Nairobi is home to around 200 informal settlements, yet the aggregated land coverage of these settlements accounts for only 1.62% of the city’s residential area (Wouters, et al., 2015), meaning that they are centres of extreme population density that are frequently obscured by the growing affluence that surrounds them (Lock and Lawton Smith, 2016; Kenya Vision 2030, n.d.).

3

As noted in their report for the World Bank, population statistics for the community vary wildly, and while 500,000 is far above the figure reported by the 2009 census (110,000 people), it is a conservative estimate relative to other sources.

Arial photographs of the research communities taken in 2002 (below) and 2016 (bottom), illustrating the extraordinary pace of population growth. The train tracks separating Mukuru kwa Reuben (to the left of the tracks) from Mukuru kwa Njenga (to the right) can be seen running from top to bottom in the centre of the photographs. The brownish wasteland in the centre of the 2002 picture is now densely packed with fragile, corrugated metal dwellings (2016), with every unused tract of land, even what was in 2002 an open quarry (top centre of 2002 picture), now used for housing.

Long-term insecurity of tenure is one of several structural challenges facing residents of Nairobi’s slums (Oxfam et al., 2009). Their dwellings typically consist of one room measuring 10sqft and are constructed from wood and sheets of corrugated metal that are vulnerable to inclement weather conditions and fire (e.g. The Guardian, 2011). Eleven dwellings are usually grouped along a narrow central corridor to form a single ‘compound’; which may house up to forty people, and among whom rudimentary sanitation facilities are shared (Gulyani, 2006; Blanco, et al., 2012; Wouters, 2015; Satterthwaite and Mitlin, 2012). Rent ranging from US$20-35 is paid to ‘structure owners’ – typically early settlers that “claimed” a parcel of land as their own, upon which they would build a metal structure for rent (Lamba, 2005; Wouters,

et al., 2015).4 Eviction for non-payment of rent or to allow for upgraded construction is common, often humiliating to the evictee, and occasionally escalates to fatal disputes (Wouters, et al., 2015). Basic levels of service provision are not met by city authorities, leading to continuously degrading environmental conditions resulting from poor or absent sewerage, waste management, and drainage (Gulyani, 2006; Blanco, et al., 2012; Wouters, et al., 2015; Thieme, 2013). Associated health problems, such as diarrhoea, tuberculosis, malaria, and infant mortality are rife (Blanco, et al., 2012; Concern Worldwide, 2015; Oxfam, et al., 2009; UNHabitat, 2006 see photographs below).

Housing, sanitation, and waste disposal services in Mukuru (next page also).

4

As Wouters et al. (2015) describes, this adds another layer of complexity to the question of who does or should ‘own’ squatter-occupied lands in Nairobi.

Nairobi’s slum communities are viewed as highly entrepreneurial (Macharia, 1992), with small, usually-informal businesses lining both sides of almost every main thoroughfare. Sellers of clothes, food, charcoal, household items, small electronics, and handicrafts added to barbers, medical practitioners, M-Pesa kiosks5, movie parlours, and cyber cafes account for almost all of the vast number of streetside enterprises in the slums (Blanco, et al., 2012; Muoki, et al., 2008).

3.2

Data Collection

In order to augment the growing body of cross-sectional research that has explored various facets of entrepreneurship in contexts of poverty (e.g. Khavul, et al., 2009; Gras and Nason, 2015; Honig, 1998; Barrios and Blocker, 2015; Viswanathan, et al., 2014; Viswanathan, et al., 2010; Viswanathan, et al., 2012; Sutter, et al., 2013, Acquaah, 2007, Imas, et al., 2012, De Castro, et al., 2014; Bradley, McMullen, Artz, and Simiyu, 2012), this study incorporated a longitudinal dimension into an inductive, qualitative design. During a period of three months, the first author spent over 370 hours in the field, collecting data by a diverse set of ethnographic techniques including structured and unstructured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. For reasons of security, it was not feasible for the field researcher to live in the slum community under study; instead, he stayed nearby and returned to the slum each day during daylight hours.6 Given the field researcher’s obvious status as an outsider, trust had to be firmly established with respondents before conversations regarding matters such as business finances or social relationships could become too probing. Therefore, early interviews were not recorded electronically, as the presence of a Dictaphone could have aroused suspicion vis-à-vis the researcher’s impartiality concerning local authorities, towards whom a number of individuals in the collectives under study felt some fear and contempt. Instead, detailed notes were written up each evening detailing important conversations, and what may be inferred from observations made in the field (Viswanathan, et al, 2016). The longitudinal nature of the fieldwork made it easy to fact-check these notes during subsequent interactions. Cleaned fieldnotes amounted to over 120 typed pages, and were supplemented by around 70 pages of transcribed interviews that were conducted and recorded during the latter part of fieldwork. Individual research interactions ranged in duration from ten minutes (an informal chat in passing) to almost a full working day (travelling to other parts of Nairobi to purchase stock).

3.3

Sampling and Participants

This study focuses on two ‘entrepreneurial collectives’, comprising a total of 20-25 individuals. Each collective constitutes a group of like-minded friends that live in near proximity to each other, and who engage frequently (daily or almost daily) and collaboratively in incomegenerating activities that are not connected to salaried employment. Initial contact with both collectives was made opportunistically. Collective 1 tended to congregate near the entrance to 5

M-Pesa is a mobile phone-based payment platform provided by Kenya’s largest telecommunications firm, Safaricom. Small kiosks, at which subscribers convert cash to ‘credit’, and vice-versa, proliferate in every population centre. See World Bank (2016) for added detail. 6 Occasional visits were also made the informants’ place of work in the evening, the purpose being to identify any noteworthy circadian patterns associated with their work. While it was evident that the eveningtime (until around 7.30pm, around which time most retail businesses would close) was vibrant, there was nothing to indicate that what could be observed at night could not be observed during the day.

a school at which the fieldworker lent assistance, and an introduction was made by one of the schools’ teachers. A focus group interview, which was attended by around twelve members of the Collective, was then held to assess the Collective’s suitability for participation in this research. The first meeting with a member of Collective 2 took place while the fieldworker was conducting an unrelated interview with a local barber. The individual, who entered the barbershop during the interview, joined in the discussion and invited the fieldworker to meet with some of his friends, with whom he owned a cyber café business.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics regarding Collectives 1 and 2. Economic Activities Group Size Formality Illegal Activity Education

Collective 1

Collective 2

Car Wash, Sugarcane Delivery

Cyber Cafes

6-14 (variable) Fully informal Sugarcane delivery (for use in the manufacture of illicit alcohol). At least 2 members began tertiary courses (neither completed)

3 owners (plus ‘associates’ and employees) Fully formal Copyright infringement (download and sell music illegally). One member began tertiary course (didn’t complete)

Initial Financial Investme nt

Almost zero

Almost zero

Business Growth

Only to create other, similarly low-income opportunities

Own 3 cyber cafes, the largest of which has 16 computers and is located outside the slum.

SECTION 4: ANALYSIS Here we examine how the four dimensions of context specified by Zahra and Wright (2011), namely institutional, social, spatial, and temporal aspects, influenced the creation of the two entrepreneurial collectives described in Table 1. Before doing so, it is worthwhile to lead with some important qualifications. First, although Zahra and Wright’s framework of context is comprehensive, context in its truest conceptual sense is, like culture (Wolcott, 2008:101), fundamentally irreducible; identifying and elucidating a select number of its dimensions cannot capture all of the obscure, multi-directional processes and mechanisms that together constitute context. The observations included in the tables below therefore cannot claim to reflect context in all of its aspects and entirety. However, in-keeping with the emic objectives of this study, we have sought to present those elements of context which our informants considered to be most pertinent to the circumstances of their entrepreneurial activities. As can be seen from each of the tables, a high degree of convergence is expressed among group members with respect to their institutional, social, and spatial environments, indicating that the topics chosen for

inclusion reflect a consensus view of ‘what it’s like’ to do business in this context. Relatedly, we include in our analysis of the spatial context insights from informants that were not part of the collectives under study (Miles and Huberman, 1994). This step is taken in recognition of the very evident fact that inhabitants of the slum have a broad array of perspectives towards it, both positive and negative, but most of which appear to be conditioned by the extent to which that person views the slum as ‘home’, which in turn impacts on the affinity they feel to their peers and the likelihood that they will cultivate the type of bonding ties that sustain these Collectives. The second qualification to be made regarding the analyses below is that the boundaries that separate each dimension are not clearly defined. This is all the more pronounced in a setting like this where a weak regulatory environment spawns an ‘institutional void’, and where the absence of formal, market-supporting institutions is offset by a rich, informal institutional fabric (Mair and Marti, 2009; North, 1990). The high degree of conceptual overlap between informal institutional constraints (which belong to the institutional context) and, for example, cognitive social capital or normative commitment (which belong to the social context) means that categorising observed instances of these phenomena is a challenge (Schneiberg and Clemens, 2006; Viswanathan, et al., 2010). Below, we have categorised as institutional those forces which are analogous to North’s (1990:3) description of institutions as ‘the rules of the game’, while those pertaining to issues like crime and corruption in the community or the interpersonal relationships among members of the Collectives are included within the social context. While these categorisations may be disputed, it should be recognised that much more important than decisions regarding classification were decisions regarding the observations that should be included and the inferences that could be drawn from them. Tables 2-4 stem from coded fieldnotes and interviews, and show how theoretical inferences emerged from earlystage thematic analyses. The third and final qualification concerns the temporal dimension of context, which refers to the relationship that a given phenomenon has to the time period in which it occurs. Baumol’s (1990) historical examination of productive, unproductive, and destructive forms of entrepreneurship illustrates that temporality is critically important (Johns (2001:38) writes that “time is context”; emphasis in original), although few authors in our field have attempted to contextualise their research along temporal lines as dramatically as Baumol did. Nonetheless, relatively short-lived, cyclical events like seasonality and government elections can alter the institutional, social, and (especially in the case of seasonality) spatial landscape. Indeed, the physical deterioration of the slums’ unpaved streets during the rainy seasons (of which there are two in Nairobi, the ‘long rains’ of March to May and the ‘short rains’ of late-October to mid-December, with the latter coinciding with this fieldwork) perhaps provides one of the most visible distinctions between slums and other areas. However, while the temporal features of seasonality are easily identifiable (because everyone, including the fieldworker, must wear wellington boots to negotiate the mud-filled streets of the slum), other aspects of temporality, and the effects that they have on the social behaviours and viewpoints of individual actors, are often more obscure. To illustrate this point using an analogy that should resonate globally, consider traffic. When we are stuck in morning-time traffic, we are much more likely to admonish ourselves for the mistake of driving through the city at rush hour than we are to consider, let’s say, a broader perspective that attributes the heightened traffic congestion to historically high levels of global petroleum supply, meaning fuel prices are extremely low (crude oil is trading at $43 a barrel at the time of writing), ensuring that more people can afford to drive rather than take public transport or walk. And while a researcher might think that the bigger picture is a more important temporal context, it may remain concealed behind the informant’s very immediate and self-critical frustrations of being stuck in a traffic jam. Very

similar challenges exist in theorising the temporal dimension of the context that we’re currently studying; while informants may make occasional references to ‘how things are (not) changing’ or ‘how maintaining a business in the slum seems to be getting harder and harder’, they often feel unable to draw clear, backward connections to wider events and changes.7 Therefore constructing a temporal context relied heavily upon the synthesis of other sources of data, including informants that lived in the slum (some since its very earliest days) but who did not belong to the Collectives under study, informants that lived in other, more affluent parts of Nairobi and therefore had a more detached perspective on the rapid expansion of the city’s slums, and secondary sources like newspaper articles and books (in particular Sobania, 2003; King, 1996; Mwangi, 2000). Since the temporal aspect depends less on direct quotations proffered by informants and more on a broader base of background insight, we begin our analysis with an examination of the temporal antecedents to the formation of the Collectives. We then explore the institutional, social, and spatial contexts, with tabularised excerpts from fieldnotes and interviews presented for each.

4.1

The Temporal Context

Mukuru, like many urban slum communities throughout the world, is relatively young, having begun to draw rural labour migrants in the post-independence era (1960s) (Lamba, 2005), before undergoing an accelerated transformation caused by the sharp rise in rural to urban migration from the 1990s onwards (United Nations, 2015, 2016; UN-Habitat, 2013, 2015). In Mukuru, as in all the other urban slums in Kenya – a country which comprises some 42 distinct ethnic groups or “tribes”8 – first generation settlers were forced to build communities within small spatial confines alongside people with whom they shared a different ethnic identity, native language, and set of life experiences (Lamba, 2005; Blanco, et al., 2012; Lam and Paul, 2013; Unites Nations, 2011), and legacy effects of this amalgam remain evident.9

7

By way of example, Kenya introduced a new national constitution in 2010, to a great degree of fanfare, but although informants were aware that the purpose of the constitution was to devolve authority from central government to individual county governments, they were generally (and unsurprisingly, given that they felt they were roundly neglected by both national and local government) unable to see how it impacted on their day-to-day livelihoods. 8 Other authors, e.g. Neal Sobania, author of the definitive Culture and Customs in Kenya, and Wrong (2009) have made explicit their avoidance of the term ‘tribe’ and its derivatives (e.g. Wrong uses “ethno-nationalism” in favour of “tribalism”) on the grounds that they conjure up images of primitive or savage traditions. We are sympathetic to their points of view, but note that we use the terms because they are used in the everyday discourse of our participants, as well as in political and media discourse. The terms are used only in their ‘modern’ sense – to describe affinity to one’s ethic group or, more commonly, to refer to ethnically-rooted favouritism and hegemony in such spheres as the labour market or politics. 9 A particularly visible manifestation is the role that has emerged for members of the well-known Maasai tribe. Stemming from ethnic customs dating across several generations and a special constitutional exemption, Maasai tribesmen are among the only civilians in Kenya that can legally carry knives and swords in public spaces. Coupled with their reputation within Kenya (and neighbouring Tanzania) for being scrupulously honest, the Maasai have come to be accepted as de facto night watchmen, and most business owners in the slums pay them 20ksh (20 US cents) each night to protect against theft of stock. To take another example, as far back as 1971, Marris and Somerset (1971) noted that members of the populous Kikuyu tribe from the Central Highlands exhibited a strikingly good capacity for businesses and entrepreneurship. These sentiments continue to be expressed by many people; indeed, given the different customs that would have prevailed among these

The negative aspects of tribalism have not yet dissipated and are viewed as a major barrier to social progress and mobility. The post-election violence of 2007-08 killed around 1,100 Kenyans in an otherwise peaceful era in the country’s history, and was largely fuelled by ethnic (i.e. tribal) discord. On a more mundane level, access to jobs is frequently determined by tribal allegiances, a status quo which prevails from the upper echelons of politics and the civil service right down to the light industry firms that exist in the slums; one informant told of how a onceoff payment of KES20,000 ($200) was demanded of him when he sought to obtain a job in one of these companies, because he did not belong to the same tribe as the person in charge of recruitment. But what is of immediate relevance is the widespread rejection by second-generation slum dwellers, including the members of the Collectives under study here, of what they see as a divisive and archaic mindset. Tribalism, or to employ a broader term used by one of our informants, “a village mentality”, holds little relevance among a youth demographic for whom English Premier League soccer and US hip-hop music are ubiquitous cultural reference points. The proliferation of ‘Sheng’, a contemporary, urban composite of Kiswahili, English, and numerous tribal tongues, encapsulates well the ongoing re-creation of social identity among the youth of the cities, to whom Sheng is seen to belong exclusively. Replete with colloquial slang, it has become an accessory of cohesion among poor youth, affording them a common means of expression that helps them to forge a social identity based not on tribal ethnicity but on urbanity, youth, and detachment from the upper classes. The coalescence of slum youth around cultural bases such as language is a critical antecedent of the entrepreneurial collectives that are the subject of this paper. However, as can be seen from the quotes that we later use to illustrate the institutional and social context, the bonds formed by proximity and shared means of expression are further solidified by a sense of persecution and marginalisation. The sense of being distrusted and actively targeted because they constitute a particular demographic was expressed frequently, and this led strongly to a ‘strength in numbers’ mentality among members of the collectives. With respect to the Collectives’ adversarial views towards the police – particularly in the case of Collective One – one incident above others highlights (quite tragically) how these perspectives can be situated within a very salient temporal context. Less than six months before the fieldwork for this study began, eight youths were shot and killed in the Mukuru slum in what was later deemed a summary execution by human rights groups (see Odhiambo, 2016), and which sparked a rare wave of protests among slum youth (Agutu, 2016). The impact that this incident had on informants’ perceptions of the police, and crucially the police’s higher-than-usual authority in the community, is evident in the number of times references were made to the police during general conversations about conducting business in the slum (see Table 2). Compounding the sense of persecution imposed by entities such as the police is a sense among the youth of the slum that they are part of an ‘underclass’ (Portes, Fernandez-Kelly, and Haller, 2005), and that the burgeoning affluence that is transforming large pockets of Nairobi is perpetuating that separation. This was illustrated when, on the return journey from another of Nairobi’s slums and whilst walking through one of the city’s new, upper-middle class districts, the fieldworker was told by the two informants in his company that they could not have walked through that area alone without being “bothered”, since to local eyes they were noticeably residents of a slum. One of those informants did note, however, that he had no such problems

tribes with respect to commerce and trade, it is highly possible that they have (or at least had) some basis in fact.

in years past, and that the gentrification of specific localities, leading to the sense that he was somehow trespassing, had occurred relatively recently. These forces were important in creating a context from which strong bonds could form among those that might be seen as their victims, and this leads to a point which is at the essence of the formation processes of both of these Collectives, which is that individual members did not come together to form a business; rather, they came together and then formed a business. Peredo and Chrisman (2006) note how “in entrepreneurial formation, networks … give the individual entrepreneur self-confidence, support and motivation”. It is our suggestion that these elements came to be present not through “entrepreneurial formation”, but through the organic emergence of group relationships in a context in which vulnerability to crime, neglect, and economic poverty was unusually high, making these elements particularly scarce. To view them only as the product of entrepreneurship is therefore an incomplete assessment, for they are just as much ingredients of entrepreneurship as they are its outcome. “We were all alone in that team. We were like, three of us with some other helpers, our close friends… So our aim was not to do business, it was to do something that may give us some transportation fees to go somewhere. So when we ventured into this thing we didn’t know that it would grow big. We didn’t know that it would grow big.” – Collective 2. “Everyone is on their own, but we came together as friends and started small businesses.” – Collective 1. The ‘purpose’ that led these youths to undertake entrepreneurship might therefore better be seen as an extension in scope of the relationships that had emerged from spatial and social proximity, rather than the purposeful, strategic undertaking – existing in an economic realm – that we conventionally view entrepreneurship to be. In this way, the enterprise exists less because of the orthodox processes of environmental scanning (Kirzner, 1997) or environmental disruption through innovation (Schumpeter, 1934); instead it is an extension of the pre-existing ties that were forged by shared social experiences, which were subsequently able to crystallize in the form of an enterprise that fulfilled the basic economic needs of its members.

4.2

The Institutional Context

We take the institutional context to include not only ‘the rules of the game’ (North, 1990:4), but also the agents that are furnished with the authority to implement those rules, including police and tax authorities. Although this creates unwanted scope to conflate institutions and organisations (North, 1990:7), it is necessary to illustrate that the rules are not always judiciously and equitably imposed. In settings with more robust institutional arrangements, it is assumed that these institutions provide entrepreneurs with an opportunity to earn profits, but the rent-seeking behaviour that is seen to be exhibited by the agents that are tasked with implementation is notable in the institutional context under study here. Insert Appendix 1 about here

4.3

The Social Context

The social context is understood here to represent the relationships which serve to integrate the Collectives and their individual members into the wider community, from the level of their family household to that of government. It is quickly evident that those relationships are often

malfunctioning or broken, leading to a strengthening of the ties that connect the members to each other. Also noteworthy are the rewards that are derived from these relationships, which often come to replace those that would otherwise be provided by one’s family or indeed the state. Insert Appendix 2 about here

4.4

The Spatial Context

We view spatial context not as the characteristics of the physical space itself, but rather how that space – both in a physical and social sense – is viewed as being different (or not) by those that inhabit it (Hess, 2004). Our findings show an acute awareness on the part of the entrepreneurs that we studied regarding the difficulties involved in conducting business in a setting like the slum; frustrations associated with infrastructure and electricity, for example, were near-constant. However, individual members from both Collectives were keen to accentuate positive aspects of the community which are typically overlooked, and they were occasionally found working to improve the slum’s environmental condition, taking it upon themselves, for example, to clear the drainage channels that run along the side of the streets, which tend to become clogged by litter, become stagnant, and pose a major health risk. Insert Appendix 3 about here

CONCLUSION This paper investigated how the four dimensions of context specified by Zahra and Wright (2011) influence the emergence of a form of entrepreneurship with which we are largely unfamiliar in the West, but which was noticeably prevalent in the slum community under study here and in other slums visited during the research. The research question guiding this study was predicated both on prior engagement with existing literature and on grounded observations made during early weeks of fieldwork, and yielded interesting insights regarding the multifaceted effects of (this) context on the processes of entrepreneurial formation. First, we illustrated how temporal shifts in demographics and in perspectives towards things like ethnicity have re-configured social strata, such that poor, urban youths are more likely to identify with peers that share their economic and spatial circumstances than those with whom they share a common ethnicity. Second, we showed how institutional failures have led this demographic to feel marginalised and persecuted, and, third, how these failures promoted togetherness and allegiance within the constructed social structure of the entrepreneurial collective. Lastly, we highlight some of the many features which distinguish a slum context from a more traditional and familiar context, and in doing so we draw attention to the broad range of perspectives that slum inhabitants have of their community and how this might encourage the type of collectivising we describe here. It is important also to signal the limitations of our study. We acknowledge that institutional theorists or social capital theorists may be frustrated that neither is presented as the singular lens through which we view our study context, and this was indeed a challenge in the analysis and write-up of data, exacerbated of course by the fact that institutional theory and social capital theory represent enormous bodies of knowledge in their own right, and that a more traditionally formatted study would focus not only on these theories as a whole but upon specific facets of them. This is an understandable critique, but our aim with this paper was to highlight the

pervasive and multifaceted effects of context on entrepreneurial processes, and we therefore made a conscious effort to give temporal, institutional, social, and spatial aspects an equal footing in our analyses. Although we believe that our methodology provided the best tools for the job, it is not without its limitations. Our focus was primarily on the perspectives and actions of the entrepreneurs themselves, and while we also incorporated insights from other actors in society (local political leaders, NGOs, academics), we acknowledge a certain leaning in the perspective of this study towards the informants with whom we spent most of our time, i.e. the members of the two Collectives. If this study were instead to take a more top-down perspective, it may well view the Collectives as being complicit in their own marginalisation because they operated on the fringes of legality and (certainly in the case of one of the two Collectives) did not make any meaningful efforts to formalise. Lastly, it would be remiss of us to pass these Collectives off as internally homogenous, i.e. that all members hold the same views, capabilities, and ambitions. This is simply untrue, although we argue that the Collectives exert strong isomorphic pressures leading to a convergence in perspectives among members. Still, the nature of the methodology means that more time was inevitably spent with some members than with others, and it is feasible that their worldviews shone through more clearly in our study than those of peripheral members that did not engage so easily with the research.

Appendix 1: The Institutional Context INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

This helps to illustrate

And subsequently

Hence, the idiosyncratic context of the slum guided the formation of these entrepreneurial Collectives by

That individuals feel disconnected from the institutions that were designed to protect them, and vulnerable to exploitation from the agents employed to implement those institutions, including the police and other government officials.

Imposing what were perceived to be wrongful institutional pressures on a particular demographic.

Steve: "And the cops don’t understand boys. They think we all are thieves." Brian: "Being in the slums, Philip, once Collective you are a boy, a youth, you’re always a suspect. Even if you’re doing your own stuff." Steve: "Even if you’re 1 small[time]." Brian: "Any time they can just gun you down." They spoke of the 8 young men that were shot dead by a policeman in Mukuru last year¹. They said that they were friends of theirs, and that the policeman shot them for being thieves. They said that these people were not thieves, Collective their lives were just worthless to the man that took them. They spoke also about the daily necessity to bribe police 1 officers with 1000/= or 2000/= [US$10 or $20] ... [although] they aren’t actually the ones paying the bribes, that’s the deliverer/recipient [of the goods they transport]. But still, the cost to them is that they become known by police, which undermines their standing in the community. That those studied here They made a point again to bring up the police. Brian: “Philip, you said you want to go to Korogocho…” Me: “Well I feel that they represent a don’t know, maybe, is that advisable?” Brian: “No, the police gunned down a population of four boys in a week persecuted and [recently].” After this they again went on to explain how the police harbour a constant and indiscriminate suspicion Collective marginalised towards young men, and that they think nothing of taking lives. I told them of my experience the other day in 1 demographic Mathare where people were celebrating at the sight of a photo of the young man lying dead on the street after being shot by police, with a gun lying on the ground near his hand. “Often, the police will place the gun beside you after they gun you down, they get your fingerprints [on the gun].” He also told the story of being arrested just because "the police didn’t have enough people in custody" at the time. Collective He said that he was in town and on his way to a class with a laptop and some papers when the police arrested him 1 for no reason. He and everyone else in the cell had to pay 3,000/= [$30] to be released. A bit later I was chatting to S. and Yassin came up to get me, telling me that Brian had been arrested “for wearing Collective combat shorts” … in the end a bribe of 1.5k [$15] was agreed upon … L. told me that he suspected they were in fact 1 not police but just con men. [Sherifa] also said that the police had spent the morning going around Mukuru seizing all of the Chinese slot machines [footnote needed], since the businesses that housed them were not permitted to offer any kind of gambling facilities ... He also said that “The police chief came to the holding cells and asked the officers how many Collective people were currently being held, the officer said ‘23’. The chief said ‘Let them all go, the store room is full of 1 gambling machines, we can take our money from there.’” This might have been untrue, but again it’s indicative of perceptions towards the police. (Also, I was speaking later to a policeman who did tell me that their store rooms are full of gambling machines)

That they, and others in society, are rendered vulnerable by institutional inadequacy.

Timo took me to his house to meet his girlfriend, and on the way back told me that there are rumours of the cops Collective cracking down on the chang’aa ² brewery, so there were no deliveries today. He’s not sure if it will carry on into 1 tomorrow. He said that he hadn’t earned anything today and that was the reason there was nothing to “take” (eat/drink) at his house.

That business activities which are seen as socially acceptable but which remain illegal are not always tolerated.

"Yeah, police come. Because they want, I don't know what they want, give them 1,000 bob [US$10] and they go. … Collective They just come and arrest you, they demand any amount they want. That's another challenge that we are passing 2 through here."

That having a formal business does not fully compensate for weak institutional arrangements.

Appendix 1 continued: The Institutional Context INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT (continued)


And subsequently


[After going nine weeks without power, Collective 1] paid an official Sh2k [$20] to install a direct, illegal connection to the car wash. Then [the owners of] the other car wash across the road began to threaten to call the police, as That a weak institutional they were afraid of losing customers. So Sharifa was patrolling the area throughout the afternoon, ensuring that framework incurs costs Collective the peace was kept and that if any police or officials came he could reason with them. Eventually one did come which some economic 1 (another official) and he was paid another Sh1k [$10] to reinstall the wires, as the previous ones were poorly wired actors find difficult to That negotiating the and were a major fire risk. Sharifa was pleased with this outcome. I asked him whether everyone had paid an equal bear. institutional environment Encouraging the pooling of resources share of this fee and he said no, some paid Sh200 [$2], some paid only 50/= [50c]. “People bring whatever they successfully is more difficult among trusted friends that have few have.” for those with fewer resources individually. “City council normally come [to our internet café] weekly to see the certificate … and the people around are always resources. That even within a weak struggling because they don’t have [one]. When they are coming they close the business and you find out they are institutional framework, Collective losing a lot … For you to register a business, it gives you a lot of opportunities when it comes to tenders and all that some protection can be 2 … There is this job that I got from Embu County, it was a government job [doing graphic design for a poster obtained by adhering to campaign], and the people who were seeking the job [against me] were not registered, and I got the job only formal regulations. because I was registered.” [O]n these main streets [the busiest thoroughfares in Mukuru kwa Njenga, where he used to have a business], a That in the absence of small group of people have tight control over the business environment, and they do not take kindly to people from business-friendly Collective outside of kwa Njenga that try to locate there. He said that his costs (like rent) went up because he wasn’t commercial regulations, 2 associated with these “Godfathers” and that they would call the police to give him hassle. They are part of a Sacco ³, power is assumed locally which he could not become a part of, and was therefore always marginalised. After a few months he had to pull to serve private interests. out. That the community itself is He told me also about the dangers of being cheated while buying property. He said that it’s common for a vendor fragmented by poor Encouraging individuals to transact to sell the same piece of land to four different people, so you as the purchaser are left without a legitimate claim to institutional with trusted friends rather than anything ... “Everyone in Kenya is negatively creative,” he says. He said that also when we were having a That community implementation (allowing, unknown persons, as weak contract conversation about the electricity, which was coming and going as we were talking. People are still wiring electricity members feel that their for example, cartel enforcement allows for opportunism to their homes and businesses directly to avoid paying the metered charges. “Everyone in Kenya looks for peers will take advantage behaviour and forged title and profiteering. shortcuts. Everyone here is negatively creative.” ... This was a massive project bankrolled by the World Bank which of institutional loopholes deeds). Collective was to provide everyone in the community with a dependable electricity supply at an affordable cost, but there are to serve their own 2 quite a lot of people that are willing to put the community’s ‘dependable electricity supply’ on the line in order to immediate interests secure for themselves free electricity. For people like [Collective 2] and many others around [including Collective 1 rather than the long-term also], this is very frustrating and it is having a hugely detrimental effect on their business. In the lower cyber café interests of the today, the electricity was coming and going; in Freddy’s it was out for a solid three hours, during which time no community as a whole. work could be done. Steven even laughed and said that in the evening you can even see old women climbing up ladders to directly wire their houses to the transformers.

Appendix 2: The Social Context SOCIAL CONTEXT


He grew up 500 miles away from Nairobi, but he came to Nairobi and lived in Mathare for a while... He came to Collective [High School in Mukuru] in Form 1, but when he was in Form 3 or 4 his father died and he dropped out so he could 1 earn some money and support himself.

That self-reliance is demanded at a young age, in particular where family ties are broken down.

“Kenya is the first best country in the world for corruption… marathon running and corruption, we are the best… You have come into this country and you have seen: the government doesn’t help any youth[s]. They are just lying. Collective They are just lying. They are just lying to big companies and telling them, 'We are helping youths from the ghetto.' 1 But you see in [the] ghetto we struggle for ourselves to survive. The government doesn’t help us. It doesn’t help us. It doesn’t help us for real.”

That this demographic feels neglected within its national society.

There are fifteen people in their group, they said. Brian: ‘We know eachother very well, we do hustle together, Collective when it’s time to enjoy ourselves…’ Steve: ‘… we just go and enjoy ourselves.’ Brian: ‘Yeah … it’s a social group.’ … 1 Steve: ‘You know, people die. People do die. You can find, maybe, [hypothetically speaking I] passed on last year. Everybody in the group will go to my burial.'

And subsequently


That individuals that feel That individuals are guided Posing a broad and unique set of vulnerable within their to coalesce in groups for challenges that individuals feel they do society prize the strong their physical, emotional not have the tools to face alone. association that they have and economic wellbeing. with peers.

Collective “You know, if you are on your own you will be disturbed, but if people know that you are [part of that group] then 1 nobody will disturb you.” That individuals consider The two of us took a long walk around the slum, first all the way over to the rubbish dump at the end of Falcon Rd, it dangerous to be seen in where he used to scavenge when he was younger. Now he says that even he is afraid to go back, because there are the community as being Collective “angry” boys there that might attack him... He spoke about the necklacings that he has seen, where men who are alone. 1 accused of things like theft get beaten up, wrapped in tyres, and burnt alive. He said he saw that for the first time, on the street in broad daylight, when he was 13, and couldn’t sleep afterwards. Someone from his class in [high school] was caught stealing a TV from a nightclub and was beaten to death. I think he said he was 15. (Steve)

Appendix 2 continued: The Social Context SOCIAL CONTEXT (continued)

There were around 7 or 8 of [Collective 1] sitting at the pool table laughing together. I asked Brian how things were Collective going and he said not so good. He said that it’s Friday evening and he should be preparing to go “raving”, but 1 instead he didn’t even have money for food.



That the bonds that connect individual members of these groups together transcend entrepreneurship in fundamental and important ways.

“We are musicians, we joined together like four years ago. But we used to get some disadvantages [sic] as a group – Collective maybe we’re going somewhere but we don’t have [the] fare, we don’t have [the] transportation fee and all that. So 2 we just decided to start up something [a small business] that will maybe get that money for us. So that if we go somewhere we can have something in our pocket.” That long-term economic objectives are often “Some of us have talents in football and music, there are several talents that we have here, but we have not got the secondary to short-term social objectives. chance to exploit them. The money we get is even less than $1 [per day], so you find that saving the money to go to Collective the studio to record the music or to go to where you can get the good training for the football is not there ... We 1 have artists here, rappers, dancers like my friend here, we have footballers; people who are really good in music, good in dancing..." "... But due to the society that we come from, the background ... You see that in Kenya background is everything. If you are from the poor background you can't make it. Up there you have to give some corruption... So you find that Collective getting [to] the top is a big problem. People like us, we can't get to the top, since there are some people up there 1 who have the money to have the voice. You can say, 'my son, go there, you'll be helped'. But for us, you can't go there without a promise [to pay].”

And subsequently

That the outcomes of the Providing rewards, a significant portion entrepreneurship that of which are non-financial, to these collectives engage in individual members via the group is multi-faceted, not only entity, encouraging sustained financial. interaction.

That individuals feel that achieving upward social mobility through the formal labour market is unrealistic for them.

That a conflice of [I a]sked him if there were opportunities for all of the young people here in these companies [the construction and perspectives exists between light-manufacturing companies located near the edge of the slum]. “Yes, but the young boys here, they don’t want Solidifyiing intra-group bonds ralative members of the collectives to do work that is hard. Even if you say to your friend, ‘I have something [an opportunity at a company], come with to those that connect individual and other members of me,’ the first thing he will ask is 'how [much] we will be paid?' and then it’s ‘is the work hard?’" [Some distance That other members of member to others in society. away we could see a group of young men unloading a lorry, and I asked him his views on such collectives. I later society do not agree that society vis-à-vis economic Other opportunities. found out that it was some members of Collective 1 but we did not know this at the time of the conversation, these individuals are informant therefore his response refers to this kind of collective entrepreneurship in general and is not necessarily a excluded from labour commentary on the individuals in Collective 1, some of whom this informant knows well]. “They will do some things opportunities. but they will never do anything without their friends. They will do this, they will get maybe 300/=, then they will just go back to the house, and chew on the majani leaves⁴. They will take a couple of bottles and then the day will be okaaaaay."

Appendix 3: The Spatial Context SPATIAL CONTEXT

Both of them repeatedly drew attention to the difficulty of survival in Mukuru, but they railed against outside judgement about their character or against the community at large. They know that outside perceptions of Mukuru and places like it are brutally negative, and that Wazungu [literally meaning 'wanderers', but denoting 'white Collective people' in common usage] tend not to go there, certainly not alone. Therefore they were pleased to hear that I had 1 gone alone and had shown myself to be willing to find out for myself, and that when I’m writing up I might bring some balance to the discussion – that people are generally just doing whatever bit of hustling they can to survive ... Steve: “Experience is the best teacher. Don’t judge a book by its cover, just come and see for yourself.” He told me also about a music video they’re [Collective 2] planning to shoot in December ... They’re going to film it Collective in Mukuru and their intention is to show the “beautiful” aspects of Mukuru, to balance the negative images that 2 tend to portray it. They need the ground to dry up first though.


And subsequently

That there is a shared sense That the slum is, for of place among those that them, a home, and that have spent much of their they are uneasy with the lives in the slum, and hence perceptions that people an affinity with others that have towards it. share that sense of place.

That the connection that I told them about the wider conceptualisations of poverty, where one is poor not only through a lack of money but they feel to their also by an inability to participate meaningfully in society. These ideas clearly resonated with them. They say immediate surroundings That there is an eagerness repeatedly how they are failed and neglected by government, and that they have talents that they can’t properly is strong, but they are not to be defined only by Collective exploit. Music is the form of expression that best allows them to transcend this neglect and general poverty. It both keen to reach out and this sense of place, and to 1 cements their identity as people that come from the bottom, and breaks down the barriers that separate them and feel connected to other be able to engage culturally the slum from the wider world. Their music is international – reggae from the Caribbean and hip-hop from the US – places and cultures also, with a globalising world. but it also bears the heritage of indigenous Kenyan music. which technology is helping them to do.

Appendix 3 continued: The Spatial Context


Compounding the 'fishbowl effect', where ties between like-minded friends strengthened, while ties to external parties were largely unaffected or weakened.

SPATIAL CONTEXT (continued)


And subsequently


That a baseline level of He said that the positive thing about Mukuru is that he can always hustle 50/= or 100/= [50c - $1] each day, which Collective opportunity is seen to wouldn’t be the case in other, less populated areas. This provides quite a lot of economic security, even if it is only a 1 exist in the slum, even if it small amount of money. (Timo) is minor.

Collective “The things I could tell you about [doing business in] this place - you think you’ve gotten somewhere, then 2 something happens and you’re right back to the start.”

That there is a frustration with the impediments to business that exist there, and a recognition that similar impediments do not exist elsewhere.

He said that the powercut that has been in effect for the past few weeks has lost him a lot of customers, and it seems likely that it will have a fairly lasting effect, given that other car wash facilities have been able to rewire to get Collective power and keep their businesses in operation. Electricity is a big issue – Steven from the cyber café told me that it 1 was one of the biggest hurdles to doing business in Mukuru, which has been illustrated by the fact that on the past two or three visits that I’ve made to Freddy, he has been without power and has had to turn away customers. After that ... I went to speak to Freddy. Again he was without power (as were Victor and his friend) though it That the slum lacks basic returned after I’d been there for a while. He said that the electricity problem is one of the biggest impediments to infrastructure that business, and that it loses him so many customers. He told me that it is worse now than it was before the new entrepreneurs feel that Collective meters were installed [through a World Bank-sponsored development project] because at least he used to have the they should be able to 2 option of changing the line (illegally), but now there is only one line that is no longer possible. I’ve noticed with depend on. [Collective 1] that the electricity issue does not affect everyone the same. For example, the boys that operate the car wash across the road from them were able to wire up an illegal connection and keep their business going while the CWBs were idle.

That the slum represents a distinct operating environment in which to carry out business, distinct even from nearby, Downtown districts.

The kibanda of the other lady that she introduced me to the previous day was empty and deserted, as were a Other couple of others around. I don’t think that it’s a sign of anything bad, it’s more likely to be associated with the rain informant and the bad ground. Veronica herself told me that, since I went to see her last Thursday, yesterday was the first day that she opened the shop [this conversation took place the following Tuesday]. He talked about Kenya’s corruption and how it is an impediment to the improvement of the slum. He said that politicians in Kenya are prone to “looting”. He said that it appeared for a while that Falcon Road [the main road into Other the slum, and one of the only tarred roads within its boundaries] was going to be paved, but that the money has informant been siphoned off by politicians and there isn’t enough left to complete the project (it has in fact barely started, bar a small piece of excavation at the entrance to the slum).

That the infrastructure of the slum is will not improve soon, as agents usch as politicians can exploit those in the slum with impunity.

That people that moved That the slum is not to the slum in later life (as perceived in the same way was the case with both by its inhabitants, with these informants) find it some seeing it as a stepping difficult to adapt, in stone rather than a longparticular to the physical term home. Other She has been in Mukuru for just a year and she stays there “only because of the pocket" [i.e. she does not have the environment. informant financial means to live elswehere]. She says that she prays that God will show her a way out of there. Her rent here is KES2,200 per month, and she says that she only stays here because it’s all she can currently afford. Other When she is able to grow her business enough to move somewhere better, she will. She made repeated reference informant to the dirt of the place and the “mudness”, and how during the rainy season she just goes home after work and does not leave the house for the rest of the evening (not because of the rain but because of the mud).

Compounding the 'fishbowl effect', where ties between like-minded friends strengthened, while ties to external parties were largely unaffected or weakened (continued from previous page).

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