Foucault (2001) uses the terms governmentality and the ‘art of government’ inter- changeably. Calling government an ‘art’ ‘suggest[s] that governing is an activity that requires craft, imagination, shrewd fashioning, the use of tacit skills and practical know- how, the employment of intuition and so on’ (Dean 2010: 28). The art of government by Loita leaders in their attempt to guide and change people’s conduct in the context of land dispute meetings is considered in Chapters 10 and 11. A focus on the governing practices of Loita leaders, elucidates an ‘art of not being governed’ at the same time. James Scott’s (2009) book entitled The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist Histo-
ry of Upland Southeast Asia,15 describes how the remoteness and inaccessibility of up-
land South East Asia (Zomia) enabled its inhabitants to devise social practices that would ward off attempts by classical states in the valleys to govern them. He argues that social practices as disparate as the choice about which crops to grow, levels of literacy and local leadership patterns should be seen as ‘political choices vis-à-vis state power’ (Ibid.: 32). Although differences in time, scale and place exist, similarities between Zomia and Loita are to be found not only in their relative distance from state centres but also when looking at the political strategies employed by Loita leaders in response to increasing state influence and interventions since the colonial period.
The strategies by Loita leaders vis-à-vis an encroaching state have, however, been more than only an attempt at not being governed and are also a claim to autonomy and self-government. Li (2007a: Ch. 4 & 5) discusses a political response that conveyed claims to self-government, something that was triggered by a number of governmental interventions. These interventions fell under the label of ‘integrated conservation and development’ and were devised by transnational donors and NGOs. They targeted the inhabitants of the villages that bordered the Lore Lindu National Park in the Central Sulawesi highlands in Indonesia because they crossed park boundaries illegally for agri- culture, hunting and the harvesting of timber and rattan. The project’s objectives ranged from increasing the agricultural productivity of land outside the park and promoting alternative sources of income for the landless or near-landless to educating villagers and officials about the value of conservation. An unintended and adverse effect of these in- terventions, as a result of mixing with other processes and struggles, was the large-scale occupation and clearing of the forest inside the park in the Dongi-Dongi Valley by vil- lagers who called themselves the Free Farmers’ Forum in 2001. A very concrete way in which the claim to self-government by this group was conveyed was the banner they hung over the road at the entrance to the occupied area that read: ‘You Are Entering the
Sovereign Domain of the Free Farmers Forum’ (Li 2007a: 158). When farmers were quizzed about the banner and the word ‘sovereignty’, Li (2007a: 162) was told that:
‘It means we can organize ourselves according to our own customary laws,’ they answered. ‘We can work together; we are not organized by the government.’ Or, more simply, ‘It means we have our own rules.’ Despite the brave words, the forum leaders were finding it quite difficult to organize more than a thousand families and enforce ‘their own’ rules.
The case of the Free Farmers’ Forum is a clear example of a struggle for self- government.16 It emerged as a response to the unmet promises of the governmental in- terventions that were experienced ‘as one among other forces shaping and constraining their lives’ and the failure to address their landlessness (Li 2007a: 155). It expressed the wish for freedom and independence from the state and other governing actors so they could organize themselves according to their own laws and rules. The quote above also highlights the difficulties that the Forum leaders encountered when trying to make self- government work. It is against the backdrop of these debates on the art of not being governed and self-government that the struggle by Loita leaders for the authority to govern Loita is analysed in this thesis.
To understand the struggle for self-government and for not being governed in rela- tion to the state, it is necessary to briefly discuss how the state is viewed in this thesis. In line with an anthropological and historical approach, this study moves away from seeing the state apparatus as a unified and homogeneous entity and instead recognizes that it consists of separate state institutions that may exist and develop amid tensions and rivalry between each other (Geschiere 2007: 130; Hansen & Stepputat 2001: 6-7). Processes of state formation (Geschiere 1993, 2007: 130) and everyday practices of state-building (de Vries 2012) therefore receive attention as they affect and co-produce Loita’s dynamics and changes surrounding leadership, land tenure and forest conflicts. To understand how Loita was gradually made ‘legible’ by and for the state in the pro- cess of (colonial) state formation (Scott 1998), I consulted archival sources, particularly the official (state) Kenya Gazette, where legislative notices and public announcements are placed, and which is now available online.17Chapter 4, for example, draws on these sources to discuss how emerging state institutions created new leadership positions in Loita that shaped and transformed Loita’s existing political organization. The focus will be on how the state manifests itself empirically in Loita, how it is experienced in daily life (Hansen & Stepputat 2001), how it is present in people’s ‘encounters’ with state power (Trouillot 2001), and how it is ‘seen’ (Corbridge et al. 2005) by the people. En- counters can take the form of personified meetings with state representatives, officials, employees or even Prime Minister Raila Odinga (see Chapter 1). People also experience the state through its policies and programmes of improvement and their effects (Trouil- lot 2001: 131). In this sense, the state is seen as a provider and patron of development. The state is also viewed as the source of an alternative legal system. Chapter 11 will show that the state was present at a land dispute meeting in the form of a piece of paper
16 The case of the Zapatista autonomy movement in Mexico is a more extreme example (Stahler-Sholk
2007; Stephen 1997).
17 See http://books.google.co.ke/books/about/Kenya_Gazette.html?id=SiZddRcP0BcC accessed
íWKHVR-FDOOHG3IRUPíWKDt is a legal document that can be produced in court as evi- dence of bodily harm and, as such, implies the arrest of an offender. It thus symbolizes the power of state law in Loita. In summary, the state will be studied in its localized forms, its empirical manifestations, its personifications and its interventions and effects. Akin to the notion of the land dispute meeting as an arena I consider the idea of a broad, more abstract and historically produced ‘arena’ useful when mapping and analys- ing the powers and struggles reviewed in this section.18 This will allow an evaluation of how social change is linked to governmental power, the political struggle for self- government and not being governed, and the dynamic power relations between trustees and targets as well as those between differently positioned governing actors.