BUSINESS AS USUAL - SOME REAL FOOD MARKETS IN KENYA

The focus of this paper is how food markets operate in Kenya, and how they differ from notions of an 'abstract market,' despite the country' s reputation for market orientation. While agricultural marketing has always been deeply 'embedded' in power relations and local social proc esses, the allocation (or evasion) of political controls and services by the state occurs increasingly through quasi-markets. So far, grain market liberalization in Kenya has remained largely a matter of rhetor ic. This is shown in the first half of the paper, which looks at natio nal crop marketing, focusing on maize. The second part examines a vari ety of local, partly informal,' marketing systems in Kisii District. T he paper concludes that even if external efforts to press Kenya into d eregulation of some formal markets were successful, this would inevita bly be ambiguous and patchy in its effects.