Violent Respacing in Kenya?

Post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008 was fuelled by land conflicts, identity politics, social inequality and widespread complaints about regional marginalization. This panel at the European Conference of African Studies, co-organised and supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, sets out to analyse the post-election clashes against their historical background and points to the options and challenges faced by the new coalition government. How should Kenya’s ethno-regional power balance and resource distribution (especially land) be reshaped?

Organisation and Moderation:

• Dr. Axel Harneit-Sievers (Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Regionalbüro Ostafrika / Horn von Afrika, Nairobi) &
• Dr. Dieter Neubert (Universität Bayreuth)

With:

• Ralph-Michael Peters: The 2007 Kenyan Cross Roads Elections
• Thomas P. Wolf (Nairobi): Poll Positions, Poles Apart: The Ideological Chasm Revealed by Reactions to Opinion Polls in the 2007 Kenya Election
• Felicia A. Yieke (Egerton University) Competing Discourses in Kenya’s Political Space: The Case of the 2007 Kenyan General Election
• George Otieno Ogola (University of Central Lancashire): (Re-)imagining Home, Homeliness and Nation-State: The Kenyan ‘Digital’ Diaspora and the Constructions of Identities Online During the 2007 Post-Election Crisis
• Dieter Neubert (University of Bayreuth): Protest, violence, war? The Kenyan clashes between escalation und de-escalation
• Jérôme Lafargue (IFRA, Nairobi): A Weird Atmosphere. Hidden Spread of Violence and Political Apathy
• Stephen Kabera Karanja (Univsity of Oslo): Post-Election Violence in Kenya: Sowing Democracy in a Constitutionalism Vacuity
• Winnie V. Mitullah (University of Nairobi): Bridging Nationalism and Regionalism Gap in Post Elections Violence, Kenya
• Nelson Kasfir (Dartmouth College): Power-Sharing, Parties and Fundamental Reform in Kenya