Hustling for Justice: An Analysis of Kenyan Justice Entrepreneurs’ Role as New ‘Agents of Change’ for ‘Sustainable Development’

Justice entrepreneurs are increasingly being proclaimed as ‘game-changers’ within global development discourses coalescing around ‘sustainability.’ With the leveraging of digital solutions for social service provision during the Covid pandemic and the inclusion of ‘access to justice’ on the international development agenda in 2015, market-based and digital justice innovations have gained relevance in the justice sector, particularly in the Global South. In conjunction with the formal recognition of formal and informal channels to justice in Kenya’s justice system and the global development framework, market-based pathways to justice are said to be transformative, as they provide new solutions to defining, achieving, and creating access to justice on people’s own terms. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic and anthropological research in Kenya, this article critically explores the contested and dynamic terrain of justice entrepreneurship and innovation in Kenya. The paper analyses how, as new actors, justice entrepreneurs are themselves becoming ‘responsibilized’ and ‘responsibilize’ for defining and delivering justice by bringing closely entangled debates about humans as ‘agents of change’ and individuals’ responsibilities for the Anthropocene and sustainable development into a conversation. In exploring these issues, the paper aims to reflect critically on the importance of a definition of justice for academics and practitioners and disagreements over it.