Taking Bourdieu to Nairobi. Space, Symbolic Goods, and a Reversed Discourse of Modernization.

In this article, the prevailing assumption that the socio-economic advancement of a so-called global middle class would be accompanied by a decline in traditional value orientations is contested. I will show that for wealthier residents of Nairobi, the orientation towards traditional forms of housing and the associated values are gaining significance. However, traditional values are more likely to be rejected by Nairobians who are threatened by downward mobility. I argue that it seems functional for city dwellers with fewer economic and spatial resources to reject the demands of a traditional “economy of symbolic goods” (Bourdieu). If the resources to meet these expectations are lacking, traditional obligations towards the “ancestral home” are often ironized or rejected. In contrast to the income-based interpretation of the discourse of a supposed global middle class, I will use Wacquant’s adaptation of Bourdieu’s spatial sociology to demonstrate how value orientations of subjects are structured by the spatial dimensions of their housing conditions. In addition to the well-established critique of the economistic definition of an alleged global middle class, this analysis along social, symbolic, and physical spaces offers a more nuanced understanding of why traditional loyalties are currently criticized by Kenyans who feel cheated out of their promise of upward mobility, rather than by the saturated parts of society.