Lena Kroeker - “Your Network is your Net Worth”: (In)Security of the Kenyan Middle Classes

Lecture abstract

A common notion is that the middle class is a social group of urban higher-earning consumers who consume certain products associated with a lifestyle of a global consumer culture. Advertisements in the streets of African cities compete for middle-income consumers, with a surprising number promoting household cleaners, electronic devices, international fast-food franchises and take-away sold at supermarkets in bustling shopping malls. 

This paper shifts attention away from short-term consumer culture and towards the underlying cultivation of social relationships in the Kenyan middle class, demonstrating that the value of the middle class lies in social relationships. Belonging to and maintaining networks can be compared to a credit system in which long-term savings deposits and debts can be accessed.

These networks and their resource flows have adapted to the demands of the neoliberal economic system and digitalisation, so that they could partly be perceived as a product of self-making and a marker of class.