7 - Locked-in Metaphorically: The War on Hawking in Nairobi’s CBD and the Cat-and-Mouse Game
Corresponding Author(s) : Esther Wangui Kimani
Africa Development,
Vol. 45 No. 4 (2020): Africa Development
Abstract
This article investigates how hawking in the streets of the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) produces political spaces where processes related to belonging, inclusion and exclusion are played out and contested at both discursive and material levels. The article adopts the Conceptual Metaphor Framework to critically evaluate the conceptualisation of hawkers and hawking in Nairobi’s CBD by varied actors. The study finds that two dominant metaphors – the ‘war’ metaphor and the ‘cat-and-mouse’ metaphor – have persistently and resiliently defined the life-world of hawkers in the CBD and the hawkers’ relations with the City authorities. Further, that this conceptualisation has had adverse consequences, including providing a false clarity to this social phenomenon, which dehumanises the hawkers as well as naturalising and justifying the antagonistic relations between them and the authorities, thereby limiting the effective management of hawking within the CBD. The article concludes that there is a need for a revisionary framing of both the hawking phenomenon and the hawker-city-authorities relationship to facilitate broadened and progressive strategies and policies that would impact more positively on the material world of the hawker in the city.
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- Bednarek, M. and Caple, H., 2012, News discourse, London: A & C Black.
- Boniburini, I., 2015, ‘Production of hegemony and production of space in Nairobi’, Territoire en mouvement: Revue de géographie et d’amenagement, Vol. 27–28, pp. 27–28.
- Bromley, R., 2000, ‘Street vending and public policy: A global review’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 1–29.
- Brown, A. and Mackie, P., 2017, ‘Urban informality and ‘rebel streets’, in A. Brown, ed., Rebel streets and the informal economy: Street trade and the law, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–16.
- Brown, A. and Mackie, P., 2018, ‘Politics of street trading in Africa: Developing a comparative frame’, Journal of Urban Research, pp. 17–18.
- Brown, S. and Bradshaw, J., 2014, ‘Communication in the domestic cat: Within— and between – species’, in D.C. Turner and P. Bateson, eds, The domestic cat: The biology of its behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–59.
- Cira, D.A., Kamunyori, S.W. and Babijes, R.M., 2016, Kenya Urbanisation Review, Washington, DC: World Bank.
- De Angelis, R., 2005, ‘Of mice and vermin: Animals as absent referent in Art Spiegelman’s Maus’, International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 230–49.
- Dragsted-Mutengwa, B., 2018, ‘Street traders and “Good Officers”: Crackdowns as a relational form of urban governance in Nairobi’, Journal of Urban Research, pp.17–18.
- Flusberg, J., Matlock, T. and Thibodeau, P., 2018, ‘War metaphors in public discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 1–18.
- Forkuor, J., Akuoko, K. and Yeboah, E., 2017, ‘Negotiation and management strategies of street vendors in developing countries: A narrative review’, Sage, Vol. 7, No.1, pp. 1–13.
- Gordon, T., 2007, ‘Urban citizenship’, in T. Pink and G.W. Noblit, eds, International Handbook of Urban Education, Dordrecht: Springer Nature, pp. 447–462.
- Hartmann-Mahmud, L., 2002, ‘War as metaphor’, Peace Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 427–432.
- Hodges, A. and Nilep, C., eds, 2007, Discourse, war and terrorism, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2016, Micro small and medium establishment survey: Basic Report, Nairobi: KNBS.
- Kövecses, Z., 2010, Metaphor: A practical introduction, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press.
- Lakoff, G., 1992, ‘Metaphors and War: The metaphor system used to justify the war in the Gulf ’, in M. Putz, ed., Thirty years of linguistic evolution, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 463–481.
- Lakoff, G. and Frisch, E., 2006, ‘Five years after 9/11: Drop the war metaphor’, The Huffington Post, 11. Available online at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/five-years-after-911-drop_b_29181, accessed 30 July 2019.
- Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 1980, Metaphors we live by, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Lakoff, G. and Turner, M., 1989, More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Linehan, D., 2007, ‘Re-ordering the urban archipelago: Kenya Vision 2030, street trade and the battle of the Nairobi City Centre’, Aurora Geography Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 21–37.
- Lobato, R. and Thomas, J., 2015, The informal media economy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Mitullah, W., 1991, ‘Hawking as a survival strategy in the urban poor in Nairobi: The case of women’, Environment and Urbanisation, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 13 –22.
- Mitullah, W., 2003, Street vending in African cities: A synthesis of empirical findings from Kenya, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Uganda and South Africa, Nairobi: University of Nairobi, Institute for Development Studies.
- Morange, M., 2015a, ‘Participation, neoliberal control and the voice of street traders in Cape Town – A Foucauldian perspective on “invited spaces”’, in Claire Benit- Gbaffou, ed., Popular politics in South African cities, Cape Town: HSRC Press, pp. 171–195.
- Morange, M., 2015b, ‘Street trade, neoliberalisation and the control of space: Nairobi’s Central Business District in the era of entrepreneurial urbanism’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 247–269.
- Muhammad, N. and Rashid, S., 2014, ‘Cat metaphors in Malay and English proverbs’, Procedia –Social and Behavioural Sciences, Vol. 118, pp. 335–342.
- Musloff, A., 2012, ‘The study of metaphor as part of critical discourse analysis’, Critical Discourse Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 301–310.
- Musoni, F., 2010, ‘Operation Murambatsvina and the politics of street vendors in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 301–317.
- Parker, M., 1948, Political and social aspects of the development of municipal government in Kenya with special reference to Nairobi, London: University of London.
- Racaud, S., Kago, J. and Owuor, S., 2018, ‘Introduction: Contested street: Informal street vending and its contradictions’, Journal of Urban Research, pp. 17–18.
- Schudson, M., 2003, The sociology of news, New York: W.W. Norton.
- Scott, J., 1985, Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
- Semino, E., Demjén, Z. and Demmen, J., 2016, ‘An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer’, Applied Linguistics, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 625–645.
- Stenvoll, D., 2008, ‘Slippery slopes in political discourse’, in T. Carver and J. Pikalo, eds, Political language and metaphor: Interpreting and changing the world, London and New York: Routledge.
- Steuter, E. and Wills, D., 2008, At war with metaphor: Media, propaganda, and racism in the war on terror, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
- Steuter, E. and Wills, D., 2009, ‘Discourses of dehumanisation: Enemy construction and Canadian media complicity in the framing of the war on terror’, Global Media Journal – Canadian Edition, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 7–24.
- Steuter, E. and Wills, D., 2010, ‘“The vermin have struck again”: Dehumanising the enemy in post 9/11 media representations’, Media, War and Conflict, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 152–167.
- Talbot, M., 2007, Media discourse: Representation and interaction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Turner, D., 2014, ‘Social organisation and behavioural ecology of free-ranging domestic cats’, in D.C. Turner and P. Bateson, eds, The domestic cat: The biology of its behaviour, 3rd ed, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 63–70.
- Werlin, W., 1974, Governing an African city: A study of Nairobi, London: African Publishing House.
- Wikipedia, 2019, ‘Cat and mouse’. Available online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_and _mouse. accessed 1 January 2019.
- Wills, D. and Steuter, E., 2009, ‘The soldier as hunter: Pursuit, prey and display in the war on terror’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 195–210.
- Wills, D. and Steuter, E., 2014, ‘The hunter and the hunted: Metaphors of pursuit, prey and the intractability of difference in post 9/11 American counterterrorism discourse’, in D. Pisoiu, ed., Arguing counterterrorism: New perspectives, New York: Routledge.
- Winter, B. and Matlock, T., 2013, ‘Making judgments based on similarity and proximity’, Metaphor and Symbol, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 219–232.
References
Bednarek, M. and Caple, H., 2012, News discourse, London: A & C Black.
Boniburini, I., 2015, ‘Production of hegemony and production of space in Nairobi’, Territoire en mouvement: Revue de géographie et d’amenagement, Vol. 27–28, pp. 27–28.
Bromley, R., 2000, ‘Street vending and public policy: A global review’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 1–29.
Brown, A. and Mackie, P., 2017, ‘Urban informality and ‘rebel streets’, in A. Brown, ed., Rebel streets and the informal economy: Street trade and the law, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–16.
Brown, A. and Mackie, P., 2018, ‘Politics of street trading in Africa: Developing a comparative frame’, Journal of Urban Research, pp. 17–18.
Brown, S. and Bradshaw, J., 2014, ‘Communication in the domestic cat: Within— and between – species’, in D.C. Turner and P. Bateson, eds, The domestic cat: The biology of its behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–59.
Cira, D.A., Kamunyori, S.W. and Babijes, R.M., 2016, Kenya Urbanisation Review, Washington, DC: World Bank.
De Angelis, R., 2005, ‘Of mice and vermin: Animals as absent referent in Art Spiegelman’s Maus’, International Journal of Comic Art, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 230–49.
Dragsted-Mutengwa, B., 2018, ‘Street traders and “Good Officers”: Crackdowns as a relational form of urban governance in Nairobi’, Journal of Urban Research, pp.17–18.
Flusberg, J., Matlock, T. and Thibodeau, P., 2018, ‘War metaphors in public discourse’, Metaphor and Symbol, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 1–18.
Forkuor, J., Akuoko, K. and Yeboah, E., 2017, ‘Negotiation and management strategies of street vendors in developing countries: A narrative review’, Sage, Vol. 7, No.1, pp. 1–13.
Gordon, T., 2007, ‘Urban citizenship’, in T. Pink and G.W. Noblit, eds, International Handbook of Urban Education, Dordrecht: Springer Nature, pp. 447–462.
Hartmann-Mahmud, L., 2002, ‘War as metaphor’, Peace Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 427–432.
Hodges, A. and Nilep, C., eds, 2007, Discourse, war and terrorism, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2016, Micro small and medium establishment survey: Basic Report, Nairobi: KNBS.
Kövecses, Z., 2010, Metaphor: A practical introduction, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G., 1992, ‘Metaphors and War: The metaphor system used to justify the war in the Gulf ’, in M. Putz, ed., Thirty years of linguistic evolution, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 463–481.
Lakoff, G. and Frisch, E., 2006, ‘Five years after 9/11: Drop the war metaphor’, The Huffington Post, 11. Available online at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/five-years-after-911-drop_b_29181, accessed 30 July 2019.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 1980, Metaphors we live by, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. and Turner, M., 1989, More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Linehan, D., 2007, ‘Re-ordering the urban archipelago: Kenya Vision 2030, street trade and the battle of the Nairobi City Centre’, Aurora Geography Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 21–37.
Lobato, R. and Thomas, J., 2015, The informal media economy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Mitullah, W., 1991, ‘Hawking as a survival strategy in the urban poor in Nairobi: The case of women’, Environment and Urbanisation, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 13 –22.
Mitullah, W., 2003, Street vending in African cities: A synthesis of empirical findings from Kenya, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Uganda and South Africa, Nairobi: University of Nairobi, Institute for Development Studies.
Morange, M., 2015a, ‘Participation, neoliberal control and the voice of street traders in Cape Town – A Foucauldian perspective on “invited spaces”’, in Claire Benit- Gbaffou, ed., Popular politics in South African cities, Cape Town: HSRC Press, pp. 171–195.
Morange, M., 2015b, ‘Street trade, neoliberalisation and the control of space: Nairobi’s Central Business District in the era of entrepreneurial urbanism’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 247–269.
Muhammad, N. and Rashid, S., 2014, ‘Cat metaphors in Malay and English proverbs’, Procedia –Social and Behavioural Sciences, Vol. 118, pp. 335–342.
Musloff, A., 2012, ‘The study of metaphor as part of critical discourse analysis’, Critical Discourse Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 301–310.
Musoni, F., 2010, ‘Operation Murambatsvina and the politics of street vendors in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 301–317.
Parker, M., 1948, Political and social aspects of the development of municipal government in Kenya with special reference to Nairobi, London: University of London.
Racaud, S., Kago, J. and Owuor, S., 2018, ‘Introduction: Contested street: Informal street vending and its contradictions’, Journal of Urban Research, pp. 17–18.
Schudson, M., 2003, The sociology of news, New York: W.W. Norton.
Scott, J., 1985, Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Semino, E., Demjén, Z. and Demmen, J., 2016, ‘An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer’, Applied Linguistics, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 625–645.
Stenvoll, D., 2008, ‘Slippery slopes in political discourse’, in T. Carver and J. Pikalo, eds, Political language and metaphor: Interpreting and changing the world, London and New York: Routledge.
Steuter, E. and Wills, D., 2008, At war with metaphor: Media, propaganda, and racism in the war on terror, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Steuter, E. and Wills, D., 2009, ‘Discourses of dehumanisation: Enemy construction and Canadian media complicity in the framing of the war on terror’, Global Media Journal – Canadian Edition, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 7–24.
Steuter, E. and Wills, D., 2010, ‘“The vermin have struck again”: Dehumanising the enemy in post 9/11 media representations’, Media, War and Conflict, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 152–167.
Talbot, M., 2007, Media discourse: Representation and interaction, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Turner, D., 2014, ‘Social organisation and behavioural ecology of free-ranging domestic cats’, in D.C. Turner and P. Bateson, eds, The domestic cat: The biology of its behaviour, 3rd ed, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 63–70.
Werlin, W., 1974, Governing an African city: A study of Nairobi, London: African Publishing House.
Wikipedia, 2019, ‘Cat and mouse’. Available online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_and _mouse. accessed 1 January 2019.
Wills, D. and Steuter, E., 2009, ‘The soldier as hunter: Pursuit, prey and display in the war on terror’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 195–210.
Wills, D. and Steuter, E., 2014, ‘The hunter and the hunted: Metaphors of pursuit, prey and the intractability of difference in post 9/11 American counterterrorism discourse’, in D. Pisoiu, ed., Arguing counterterrorism: New perspectives, New York: Routledge.
Winter, B. and Matlock, T., 2013, ‘Making judgments based on similarity and proximity’, Metaphor and Symbol, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 219–232.