The Political Economy of Ethnic Identity Conflicts

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The book adds a powerful codicil to a rapidly growing body of research that has coyly attempted to bring out the dialectics of identity-political conflicts in Africa in general and Kenya in particular. It painstakingly details the instances and the underlying dynamics of ethnic conflicts and offers one of the most comprehensive treatments of ethnic identity conflicts from a political economy point of view. It roots ethnic identity-political conflicts in colonial and post-colonial history of Africa, unravels the involvement of state-patrimonialism, free-market capitalism and ethnic diversity in the mutual distortion of class and ethnicity. It makes a powerful case that ethnic conflicts are the consequence of the delay of class-politics in a capitalist society and conceals the primitive accumulation and concentration of capital by the elite on behalf of the emerging ruling classes behind the facade of biosocial closures. Ethnic chauvinism, the study reveals, is a historical phenomenon, that arises in concrete historical situations in a hegemonic social environment. It intercepts the masses that are disappointed arising from the delay in the resolution of the national question and therefore the greatest enemy of democracy in Africa.