1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910727269203321

Autore

Mutongi Kenda

Titolo

Matatu : a history of popular transportation in Nairobi / / Kenda Mutongi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, Illinois ; ; London, [England] : , : The University of Chicago Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

0-226-47139-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (350 pages) : illustrations, maps

Classificazione

LB 85546

Disciplina

388.4096762/5

Soggetti

Transportation - Kenya - Nairobi

Minibuses - Kenya - Nairobi

Local transit - Kenya - Nairobi

Urban transportation policy - Kenya - Nairobi

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- PART ONE. Background -- INTRODUCTION. Matatu -- ONE. “The Only Way to Get There Was on Foot” -- PART TWO. Moving People, Building the Nation, 1960–73 -- TWO. “It Is a Difficult System to Beat” -- THREE. “We Are Making a Living by Constitutional Means” -- PART THREE. Deregulation, 1973– 84 -- FOUR. Kenyatta’s Decree, 1973 -- FIVE. “Jump In, Squeeze, Jump Out—Quickly!” -- PART FOUR. Government Regulation, 1984– 88 -- SIX. The Matatu Bill of 1984 -- SEVEN. “Only Those Who Are Afraid Use Force” -- PART FIVE. Organized Crime? 1988–2014 -- EIGHT. KANU Youth Wingers -- NINE. Mungiki: Fighting a Phantom? -- PART SIX. Generation Matatu, Politics, and Popular Culture, 1990– 2014 -- TEN. Music, Politics, and Profit -- ELEVEN. “Pimp” My Ride -- PART SEVEN. Self- Regulation, 2003– 14 -- TWELVE. The Michuki Rules -- CONCLUSION. Making It in Nairobi -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Drive the streets of Nairobi, and you are sure to see many matatus—colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket



detailing. They can be stately black or extravagantly colored, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto the socioeconomic and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs, they reflect multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life—including, for example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, and popular culture—at once embodying Kenya’s staggering social problems as well as the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu and explore the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.