Complex communities and relational webs - Uncertainty, surprise and transformation in machakos

Poststructural applications of actor-network theory and complexity theory p romise a means to encompass uncertainty, diversity and surprise in changing communities and complex human ecologies. Local organisations and social movements mediate relations within and betwe en households, groups and communities based on gender, class, age, occupati on and political affiliation. Community groups tend toward multiple members hip, complex identities and flexible webs of affinity between disparate gro ups. Coalitions gel, melt, collide and coalesce according to need and do no t follow narrowly circumscribed economic or ideological lines. An example from Machakos Distinct, Kenya draws upon a landscape and a commu nity dramatically shaped in the last hundred years by global empires, inter national economies and militaries, foreign and civil wars, local innovation and resistance, and changing gender and class relations. The case study fo cuses on the changing nature of community groups, their representation of m ultiple local constituencies and the shifting and pivotal roles of various groups in interactions between people, their lands and external forces (sta te, market and civil society).