Spatial Visualization of Grassroots Activism in Kenya

Abstract

Contrary to the conventional perspective on grassroots activism as an organized activity, this article makes a case for its location within informal spaces, conceived to be unoccupied and empty. My ethnographic research in Nairobi (Kenya), conducted intermittently since 1978, reveals their potential in mending what has been broken through violence of colonialism and post-coloniality. Using the genre of spatial visualization, I illustrate small ways in which grassroots activism foster sociality and interconnectivity in a world divided by social injustice and inequities. Examples include ways in which “street vendors” connect rural farmlands with households in Nairobi and how a vibrant Masai market in a mall parking lot serves to interrogate capitalist market model, focused on individualism and profit-making. Nuanced reading of inanimate objects brings home the need for critical interventions from the bottom up. Spatial visualization of grassroots activism calls upon us, the viewers, to recognize the critical importance of informal spaces for an alternative world free of structural injustice.