Can you do social science research while sitting at the bar of a golf club? ? D. Connan takes us into these clubs where the Kenyan personalities with the most power rub shoulders. The history of these institutions allows us to study the transformations of the Kenyan state and the elites that compose it.
Dominique Connan takes us into the clubs in Kenya. These places are central institutions of elite sociability and are quite unique: they have no explicit mission (other than leisure) and use is reserved for co-opted and selected members. They are conservative institutions, resistant to change, quite secretive by being, for example, reluctant to make their activities public and, above all, to communicate on the identity of their members. Secrecy is the rule there. Immersing yourself in these clubs over several years as part of a social science investigation is therefore remarkable.
This work shows an elite social class in training for XXe And XXIe centuries by answering two main questions: who forms the elite in Kenya ? And what are the places where these elites socialize? ? These two questions encourage the author to recall that we must always speak of elites in the plural, as they are so diverse, and to understand how and why the Kenyan elites were renewed, particularly at the time of decolonization and the Africanization of the State and its bureaucracy. But this entry through the clubs also allows us to see that in these places complex intersectional relations of class, race, generation and gender are at play and that state elites and economic elites mix and merge.
Be part of the club is aimed less at researchers specializing in Kenya and East Africa, than at a broader audience interested in elites, the State, domination and who will find there fascinating reflections on the imagined global bourgeoisie (in the sense of Benedict Anderson) and the transformation of capitalism. All from specific places: clubs. The work, with careful, sometimes romantic writing, is full of extracts from interviews, ethnographic observations and long portraits. Be part of the club is an example of what French research in social sciences does best today.
“ The clubs are so many magnifying glasses (…). They are thus an institution of interface between the imagination of a global bourgeoisie to which the elites aspire, and the multiple practices to which their wealth constrains them. They are geographically located in the large cities and towns of the richest agricultural regions of the country, which are by definition the most extroverted, where international capital, in all its forms, is most present (…). The clubs nevertheless allow us to understand that in Kenya there is no elite in power, any more than there is a ruling class supported by cultural hegemony. In a country often praised for its stability, despite occasional but brutal political crises, they present a disorderly elite. This book therefore invites us to consider the fragility of domination » (p. 37).
Dominique Connan takes us with him to these clubs among the caddies and bartenders and produces, with his materials, an extremely original reflection on elites, the State and power.
Reinventing tradition
Investigating clubs in Kenya inevitably invites us to look at their history and ask ourselves why these institutions, symbols of colonization and the British Empire, were preserved at independence – unlike neighboring countries where most European clubs disappeared. In Kenya, the transitional government decided, not without controversy in Parliament, to maintain them and above all to abolish discrimination. These institutions therefore become the theater of postcolonial revenge against the white elite and a model of the decolonization of an imperial legacy.
This opening of clubs to non-white elites marks several permanences, such as that of an elite lifestyle associated with the dominant. Clubs always symbolize the imagination of success, forms of individual honorability as well as collective prestige. The practice of golf constitutes a dominant mode of elite subjectification. But this opening also involves several ruptures. Black and African elites bring distinctions and solidarity of their own, notably generation and ethnicity. The opening of the clubs recomposes, in fact, on a racial basis, their internal division since the African and Indian entries will induce a new distribution of social practices within these institutions.
“ As Indians and Africans became more numerous, then the majority within them, they invested in the most central practices of the institution, such as golf and, to a certain extent, abandoned the others: tennis, squash, lawn bowling. In establishments soon dominated by Africans, such as the Nairobi Club or Limuru, Europeans focused on these subaltern practices » (p. 80).
By investing in clubs, African elites bring their own distinction. The club is a very good example of an institution that continues to reinvent tradition. This Africanization of clubs is taking place at the same time as the Africanization of public administration and economic sectors, proving how the sociohistory of these clubs is inseparable from that of the State. Dominique Connan clearly demonstrates that the study of clubs and the elites who compose them is closely linked to the trajectory and nature of the State. Clubs and the practice of golf even establish a relationship with public institutions and political power: they most often make it possible to assert legitimacy to govern, but clubs can also sometimes embody places of counter-power.
An elite, elites
By taking up a central questioning of the sociology of elites, Dominique Connan also studies the homogeneity of the elite, and rather, the homogeneity of Kenyan elites. But always doing it from the point of view of the clubs and looking at what he calls the order of the clubs, that is to say the social hierarchies between the clubs, and the social hierarchies within the clubs. For example, social composition is a crucial element of their positioning since members’ economic capital, their proximity to state power, and, most importantly, their racial composition affect the perceived position of clubs. This order is never completely established and consensual but on the contrary, the object of continual struggles of (de)classification. This is for example the case when the opening of clubs to non-whites causes the latter to leave and concentrates them in places where they still have most of the powers.
It is also because of these movements that the criterion of race helps to create a geographical order between the clubs according to a center-periphery model. The clubs with a strong white component, which are the most prestigious, are located in the most affluent neighborhoods of the capital Nairobi. As for the second-tier clubs, they are found in the suburbs and in the countryside far from the capital. This hierarchy between clubs can be seen everywhere, from the cost of entry to dress codes.
“ Most clubs thus show a spatialization of the social differences of the upper classes, whether race, gender, generation or even ethnicity — and their combinations. This observation contradicts the idea that clubs are a form of “completed” sociability which would allow the maintenance of the social capital of the dominants. » (p. 170).
Kenyan clubs are, despite appearances, institutions of difference where a multitude of modes of belonging are expressed between groups which, ultimately, only interact on the margins. Furthermore, the majority of members do not need these institutions to know each other and to meet each other to the extent that the world of the upper classes is demographically quite restricted in the country.
To be inside, to be caught up by the outside
Studying the elites through the clubs finally allows us to better understand how the elites find themselves in an elite community, but that they are, at the same time, always caught up in what is happening outside. The work proves to us that the club has the particularity of being a falsely closed institution and that logics overlap from within And from outside.
“ By joining, members, particularly Africans, seek to detach themselves from their ordinary social obligations, which bind them to a clientele. The presence of the “village” otherwise translates, on a daily basis, into incessant, repeated requests to pay school fees, hospital fees or, more mundanely, a drink. For elected officials, the inhabitants of their constituency constantly remind them of their promises and beg for a donation ; During election periods, staying at the club offers them a respite. The club, its walls and its guardians appear as a welcome protection » (pp. 233-234).
Moreover, Dominique Connan reminds us how the club’s resources are a godsend that allows the elites to serve and serve themselves. There are many discussions in bars or on golf greens where the practices of accumulation, private enrichment and redistribution of such president or secretary are discussed and denounced. eat » club resources.
The production of standards of behavior, which are written in documents and recalled orally, must make it possible to prevent the tensions that these problems generate in order to limit these predatory practices, if not able to prevent them. Above all, in recent years, managerial rationalization procedures have developed, reminding us, always by mimicking the functioning of the State and the market, of how clubs must respond to economic and budgetary constraints and balance their budget like ultimately any organization that does not want to disappear. But these norms and these procedures, helping to shape bureaucratic sociability, are the most controversial, because they go against the interests of the many people for whom the club remains above all an income.
Be part of the club engages a whole set of scientific discussions on power, the renewal of elites and their places of sociability which undoubtedly go beyond the simple case of Kenya and the continent. It is indeed a work of social sciences before being a monograph in African studies. Finally, Dominique Connan illustrates all the ingenuity that researchers deploy to study those who exercise power. We generally think of places of official power, or even the corridors of these institutions ; it will now be necessary to consider studying more closely the spaces where the elites practice their sport in private.