What's in a name? The politics of naming ethnic groups in Kenya's Cherangany Hills

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article analyses the politics of names and naming among the Sengwer–Cherangany community from Kenya's Cherangany Hills. Two requests submitted to the World Bank Inspection Panel (WBIP) by Sengwer and Cherangany leaders in 2013 in protest of alleged harms that resulted from a World Bank supported National Resources Management Project are the focus of the analysis. The requests articulated a dispute as to whether ‘locals’ were ‘indigenous peoples’, or ‘vulnerable and marginalised groups’, and whether they should be called ‘Sengwer’ or ‘Cherangany’. The struggle that ensued illustrates the local and extraversion strategies that are deployed to assert rights over cultural, socio-economic, ecological and political space through an insistence upon a specific ethnic label or brand. The case illustrates the extent to which names are imbued with cultural and legal meaning, and used to help legitimise certain engagements and interventions while delegitimising others. The analysis also highlights how bodies such as the WBIP can be used to protect and promote community interests through their recommendations and the production of ‘authoritative’ accounts or documentary archives.