Contemporary Kenya: Politics, Economics, Environment, and Society

Abstract

The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Kenya is a bold attempt to address a wide range of themes and ideas in one volume, covering the country’s contemporary society, culture, economics, politics, and environment from multiple disciplinary perspectives that are critical and innovative. This volume is pioneering in many ways. First, it explores the politics of the country from single-party authoritarianism shortly after independence to the multi-party era beginning in 1992 and beyond. Second, it explores critical themes in contemporary Kenya’s society, including issues of the environment, gender and politics, civil society and the politics of democratization, as well as the political economy of democratization and political reform. Third, the volume examines how the external global context has impacted Kenya and, perhaps most importantly, the role of Kenya in the global context within the processes of globalization. Essentially, this volume focuses on many themes, ideas, and discourses on contemporary Kenya from the time of independence to the present. The volume builds on its companion, Palgrave Handbook of Kenya’s History, which details the country’s history from precolonial times through independence to the first decade of post-independence political consolidation. The volume is divided into three parts, covering 34 chapters, that focus on the aforementioned themes, as briefly summarized in the following sections.