| dc.description.abstract | More than any other demographic, the question of negative ethnicity has been a scourge on the
African continent. In Kenya, the ethnicisation of politics has plagued the nation since it gained its
independence from the British. Ethno-politics persisted and reached its zenith in the 2007 postelection
violence which left more than 1000 people dead. This paper interrogates ethnicity’s ties
to geography; the power inhering in its situatedness. Using Appadurai’s concept of
‘deterritorialization’ and Appiah’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ the paper problematizes the idea that the
space within ethnic boundaries is home in a bid to illustrate how the more open, transferable
concept “good place that is no place” of Utopianism can help Kenyans detach from a localization.
The adoption of this concept as a frame of reference would then disrupt the ethnic voting patterns
of ethno-politics and finally usher in the age of voting based on issues and ideas. | en_US |
