Positioning Class in African Studies

The study of class in Africa reveals a rich body of literature about social transformations throughout the twentieth century (Gutkind & Waterman Reference Gutkind and Waterman1977; Katz Reference Katz1980). In the 1960s to 1980s there was a preoccupation with class analysis in Africa due to the deepening inequality between the emerging, prosperous, elite group and the largely uneducated population after independence from colonial rule. This period also coincided with the resurrection of Marxist thinking in the West (Young Reference Young1986). An ambitious and radical African intelligentsia developed an African Marxism with a wide variety of theoretical or intellectual inflections. Class analysis was not the exclusive preserve of Marxism, however, but was considered pivotal by scholars of other ideological approaches as a key to understanding African societies. For a long time debates in African studies were dominated by the “mode of production” concept that focused on the ways that capitalist relations of production created ruling groups and subordinate groups. The rich tradition of Marxist political economy has offered a critical lens through which the relationships between dominant groups and their association with state control have constituted the changing political and economic landscape of postcolonial Africa.

A much smaller body of literature dealt with the specific study of the middle class in Africa. The introduction to the edited volume The New Elites of Tropical Africa (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1966) notes that a decade earlier, most contributors preferred the concept of elites to that of middle classes. The discussion centered on the question of whether or not a class structure, based on differences in property ownership and consciousness, even existed in Africa. Extended kinship solidarities, together with the effects of economic modernization, was believed to inhibit the development of class distinctions. Yet researchers in the 1960s could not deny the increasing social stratification, and had to concede that focusing on modes of production could not properly capture processes of social change.

The subsequent dramatic decline in Marxist analysis is attributable to a number of developments, including the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dramatic reduction in academic research and scholarship in Africa as a result of years of persecution and university mismanagement (Young Reference Young1986). Simultaneously, the consequences of the (neo)liberal world order—in the form of one of its offshoots, the ubiquitous structural adjustment programs—forced matters of poverty and social insecurity onto the research agenda, which became dominated by policymaking issues.^{Footnote 1} The debate about alliances between dominant economic groups and the state remained central, but by the 1990s the concept of ethnicity had replaced class as its leading principle (Berman Reference Berman1998).

The focus of research in this area shifted to the question of access to resources such as education, and also to occupational categories and people’s strategies in shaping their own economic choices. In a study of a Giriama ethnic community in Kenya, Parkin (1972) describes how the younger householders became the wealth accumulators, with the elders losing out. This process was accompanied by a divergence in marriage patterns, education, and “way of life” (1972:74–75) between affluent young men and poorer elders. Other studies focused on urban dwellers and how particular urban groups succeeded in being vehicles for social change by providing forums for the articulation and adoption of new values and norms (see Furedi Reference Furedi1973; Berman & Lonsdale 1998; Stichter Reference Stichter, Parpart and Stichter1988). It was recognized that differential access to formal education and better-paid jobs enabled a small minority to climb the social ladder in the twentieth century. And when the concern with resources became focused on the strategies of individuals to gain access to the larger economic resources of the society, gender also became an important lens through which to understand processes of social stratification (Robertson & Berger Reference Robertson and Berger1986; Berger & White Reference Berger and White1999).

Kitching (Reference Kitching1980) describes how in early twentieth-century Kenya, a pattern of stratification emerged through a process known at the time as “straddling,” by which couples and/or families worked their way up by engaging simultaneously in paid employment and household agricultural production. More and more, family wealth, in the form of land, became an advantage for social mobility. Obbo (Reference Obbo, Robertson and Berger1986), in her Weberian analysis of social stratification in Uganda, shows how two aspects of the colonial encounter have been pivotal. First, during colonialism, individual ownership of private property, particularly land, was encouraged. Second, formal education became a prime criterion for measuring one’s place in society, linked to wealth, power, and honor as markers of social ranking. “The striking feature,” she writes, “is that educated people possess the economic wherewithal to acquire property, which in turn gives them the economic clout to enjoy lifestyles associated with high social status” (1986:178). Sadly, with the decline of class analysis in the late 1980s, the analysis of wealthier groups in Africa also waned.

Few contemporary studies that contain the term “middle class” use it as a descriptive term to identify a social group in which the members have salaried positions or are successful small entrepreneurs and conspicuous consumers (Akinpelu & Olayinka Akanle 2009; Frahm-Arp Reference Frahm-Arp2010; Latvala Reference Latvala2006). Some authors speak of “elites” (Yarrow Reference Yarrow2008:334–58), although the social profile of their informants would fit my definition of middle class. In general, in the field of African studies groups from the middle classes have been studied without any explicit discussion of their socioeconomic status.

In his work on middle classes in Nepal, Liechty (2003) observes that when writing about class in the global South, one has two basic options. The first is to consider social class as a taken-for-granted, natural, universal category that speaks for itself: according to this point of view, the middle class is a group located between the poor masses on the one hand and the small wealthy elite on the other. However, this conception is not adequate for understanding the complex composition of postcolonial societies (see Besnier Reference Besnier2009).The second option, as Liechty argues, is to explain class by describing it as cultural life—undertaking a Weberian analysis of the self-identity of the group and the esteem associated with it. Following Obbo (Reference Obbo, Robertson and Berger1986), I believe this to be a fruitful line of inquiry. Whereas Marx paid scant attention to the role and nature of the middle class, Weber (Reference Weber, Gerth and Wright Mills1946) focused almost entirely on this group in response to the new mass production–based consumer society that was dawning in the early twentieth century. He considered class to be a function of a person or group’s position in the capitalist market: both in terms of relations of production, and in terms of their ability to consume goods and services. Social status is related to this position, as it has to do with a person’s or group’s education, lifestyle, training, social skills, and inherent or occupational prestige. Weber’s distinction between class (economic power) and status (honor or prestige) helps to foreground the role of culture in class practice, as well as forms of capital that are not, strictly speaking, economic. This, of course, is also Bourdieu’s province.

Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1984) developed a theory of class stratification and its reproduction that rests on a group’s differential access to material, social, and cultural capital, and the convertibility of one form of capital into another. He took from Marx the basic insight that people’s actions are shaped by whether or not they control capital. However, he also showed that even practices that are not designed to directly manipulate economic conditions are in fact driven by similar designs. Leisure may look neutral at first glance, but it is driven by the desire to increase gain of some sort, even if the benefit has a nonmaterial nature. Class, therefore, is derived from both the material and the ideational. The nature and significance of consumption, for example, are crucial to understanding class both as positioning and as practice. As Grillo (Reference Grillo1973) shows in the case of railway workers in postwar Uganda, status variables such as income, occupation, and level of training resulted in the selection of particular friends and social networks. These variables, moreover, correlate with marked differences in lifestyle and its accorded prestige.

Bourdieu has been criticized for failing to pay attention to agency, despite claiming to do so, and for providing a picture of society as a structured sum total that does not easily allow for change. As such, Bourdieu’s analysis is seriously challenged by studies on diasporic and postcolonial communities composed of ongoing new formations that focus on people’s aspirations for a better life and for more comfort and prestige, and the strategies they use in their pursuit of social mobility. Ortner’s study (2003) on the history of Jewish upward mobility in the United States shows similarly that subjectivity is crucial for understanding the interconnection between social change and individual behavior. This article, hence, focuses on the middle class as it is practiced, thus allowing for a perspective that considers individual agency and foregrounds people’s self-perceptions in relation to class.

In African studies at the turn of the twenty-first century, a debate emerged about modernity and the position of Africans in a globalizing world (see Geschiere, Meyer, & Pels Reference Geschiere, Meyer and Pels2008). Ferguson (Reference Ferguson1999), criticizing essentialist ideas of unchanging rural “Africans” unable to adapt to urban situations, uses the term “cultural style” to account for the changing urban culture of the Zambian Copperbelt. Instead of seeing cultural style as a “secondary manifestation or a prior identity which style then expresses,” he considers style as “a signifying practice” that marks socially significant positions and allegiances: “It is not simply a matter of choosing a style to fit the occasion, for the availability of such choices depends on internalized capabilities of performative competence and ease that must be achieved, not adopted” (1999:96). This approach opens up various ways of helping us understand people’s agency in processes of social stratification. First, cultivating a viable style requires investment: not only in the figurative sense of investment—in appreciating the socioeconomic changes one embodies (such as in the case of the young professionals)—but also in the literal sense—in how these changes are expressed in manners, speech, social contacts, and so on. More important, the notion of cultural style breaks with the old dualist concern of either traditional or modern orientations by making it possible to talk about cultural difference without implying that modernity is only Western. Perceiving young professionals’ lifestyles as signifying practices implies understanding their local and cosmopolitan lives and experiences as coeval social phenomena (see Fabian 1983).

Ferguson (Reference Ferguson1999) argues that cosmopolitanism is not simply an expression of class or social status, because cosmopolitan styles can be found at every socioeconomic level. Yet there are distinct differences between, for example, factory workers (or miners, in Ferguson’s book) and white-collar workers in Nairobi. Both groups have salaried incomes and both groups exhibit self-confidence, yet young professionals in Nairobi are regarded with more admiration. In the media, for example, the yuppies figure as examples of sophistication in a way that factory workers are not (see Spronk Reference Spronk2011). In order to explain these differences in prestige among social groups I make use of Weber’s emphasis on class status as based on prestige and cultural capital. In short, I look at “middle classness” as a practice that results from the productive interconnections among three factors: (1) access to education and the resulting salaried occupations, (2) consumption patterns and lifestyle choices, and (3) modern self-perceptions.

The young adults whom I studied during the first decade of the twenty-first century were working their way up the social ladder through hard work, continuous educational pursuits, and maneuvering within the job market. I concentrated primarily on people pursuing careers in the private sector, mainly in multinational companies and in local and international nongovernmental organizations. They did not constitute a homogeneous middle class, as there are status differences between young professionals working in the public sector and those in the private business sector. The majority of the public-sector professionals could be labeled lower middle class and work mainly as teachers, lower ranking managers, and civil servants. The parents of the young people in my study tend to be lower middle class themselves, although their children aspire to climb the social ladder. The elite, by contrast, have family capital and are the political-economic ruling upper class of Kenya. Their children, unlike the young professionals in my study, do not have to advance themselves via education and jobs.^{Footnote 2} Having followed the cohort since 2001 I can say that the particular group that is the focus of this article can be called upper middle class.

The Development of Middle Classes in Kenya

During the colonial era Nairobi, unlike capital cities in other settler societies, had no industrial base, as the wealth of Kenya was in the agricultural sector. A system of “hut tax” was introduced to coerce much needed Kenyan labor to work for cash on the settler farms and for the colonial infrastructure. The migrant labor system prohibited women from following their husbands to the urban centers, so the “native” locations in Nairobi became occupied by single men. Nevertheless, women started moving to Nairobi as early as 1900, manipulating the colonial system to their advantage wherever possible (see Bujra Reference Bujra1975; Robertson Reference Robertson1997; White Reference White1990). Once there, people found work in what is now commonly called the informal sector as well as in formal employment. By the mid-1940s, what Furedi (Reference Furedi1973) describes as the “political élite”—those who had a certain level of education and remunerative positions within government, or who were wealthy traders—had become well integrated within the colonial system. And from the 1950s, shifts in the colonial labor system enabled more and more people to settle in Nairobi. In short, through possibilities generated by the cash-crop economy and labor migration, urbanization, schooling, and formal employment, people devised strategies to make a living and improve their lives (House-Midamba Reference House-Midamba1990; Mutongi Reference Mutongi2007; Parkin Reference Parkin1975).

These societal processes, in turn, opened up new possibilities and new forms of consciousness. Throughout the twentieth century there was much variation in the ways people entered the middle class, and different ethnic groups had differential access to the resources generated by the cash-crop economy, schooling, and migration to cities (Parkin Reference Parkin1978). Kitching (Reference Kitching1980) argues that it was differential access to formal education, and hence the better-paying jobs, that enabled a small minority, the nascent “petty bourgeoisie,” to emerge in the late 1920s and 1930s. In the 1920s, Jomo Kenyatta and his associates represented a young and ambitious generation characterized by “Christianity, literacy, urban residence, and economic individualism” (Berman & Lonsdale 1998). According to Kanogo, “formal education became [not only] a vehicle . . . for vocational training and job acquisition, but also an instrument of social mobility and cultural shift” for women’s constructions of self (2005:2,7). Taxi drivers and clerks of colonial Nairobi were considered middle class in their time to the extent that they had “modern” lifestyles and disposable income (Furedi Reference Furedi1973). From the 1950s, more and more Kenyans could for the first time afford to express their emerging urban identities in the consumption of leisure. Odhiambo describes the urban subculture as “epicurean hedonism” marked by raha (KiSwahili for “pleasure”) (2002:162). Kula raha (to make or have pleasure) signified a lifestyle characterized by a love of music and dance, liquor, fashion, and sex. The 1960s were an era of sophistication, with a lively music scene, dance halls, and the emergence of a consumer culture with a cosmopolitan character. Some of the young professionals I interviewed were shocked to discover that their parents had been considered “wild” in their youth.^{Footnote 3} A characteristic pattern is that their grandfathers were the first laborers to migrate to Nairobi or Mombasa or to settler farms, while most of their grandmothers remained in their rural homesteads. Many of the grandparents were eager to educate at least some of their children, who were sent to mission schools in the rural areas. These mission school–educated children, the parents of the young professionals in my study, were among the group of Kenyans to receive formal education during the last two decades of colonialism, which allowed them to work in the administration of the colony and later the newly independent nation-state (see Sandgren Reference Sandgren2012). Many of them migrated to Nairobi to work while maintaining a bond with their rural “homes”—giving a helping hand, participating in local rural organizations, or building their own house in the family compound as custom required. Nevertheless, as these members of the parents’ generation became more and more involved in life in the city, their bonds with their rural homes weakened, while their urban nuclear family bonds became stronger.

The children of the second generation, the young professionals in my study, were born and raised in Nairobi.^{Footnote 4} For them, the bonds with the rural homes are even weaker; and their parents’ efforts to incorporate them into activities at “home” have diminished over time. For example, most of them recalled how they would visit their grandparents during their school holidays but how the frequency and importance of these visits lessened as they grew older. Their nuclear families are smaller compared to the families of their parents—most young professionals have at most two or three siblings. They represent a relatively small, socially mobile group whose parents have invested a great deal in the education of their children and persist in supporting their ambitions for upward mobility. Most seek careers in the private or nongovernmental sector, unlike the situation during the colonial and early postcolonial periods when most middle-class and white-collar workers were employed by the state. They typically start working as junior employees and advance professionally through further education and promotions. Depending on the stage of their careers, they live in self-contained one-bedroom houses in traditionally lower-class neighborhoods like South B, or in small and comfortable apartments in middle-class Kilimani. They visit typical middle-class churches, such as the Nairobi Chapel in the city center or the Don Bosco and the Nairobi Baptist Church.

The character of today’s middle-class Kenyans is also a by-product of the introduction of the multiparty political system in 1992, which not only liberalized the economy but also led to the liberalization of the press laws, thus boosting mass media. Nairobi can be called a “worlding” city (Simone 2001), part of the global homogenization of urban space in Africa. It is a regional headquarters for international banks, nongovernmental organizations, and transnational corporations, and a major site for accounting, legal, and informational services. Both the private and NGO sectors are well represented, since Nairobi functions as the regional center of East Africa. The cityscape is dominated by office developments, shopping malls, and hotels. White-collar employment is expanding, as are residential areas for the middle classes, all served by growing media and entertainment centers. These developments are taking place alongside the informal ways of living and working characteristic of the city’s poorer groups. The gap between the small wealthy elite and the impoverished masses has increased steadily over the last decades (Sure et al. 2009). In the midst of this diversity, young professionals are inspired and oriented toward diasporan Kenyans, working alongside expatriates and engaging with global investment and media. They are the driving force behind a middle-class popular culture. According to Mark Kihenja, a Nairobi-based journalist, the media and “the trendy and hip [people] of Nairobi” are mutually dependent on each other: they follow each other as to what is “hot,” and this has only intensified since in the ever expanding media landscape (interview, Oct. 3, 2001). In short, the contemporary yuppies of Nairobi are part of a larger tradition of urban middle-class life throughout the twentieth century, with each generation having to carve out its aspirations in relation to kinship expectations and available economic opportunities.

Ethnic and Family Relations

On a Saturday in late November 2001, Tayiani (age 28) and Kinyua (age 30), the only couple in my study, got married after a four-year courtship.^{Footnote 5} She had been working as an accountant with Deloitte & Touche, an international accountancy firm, while he was a manager at a steel company. They are prototypical yuppies: ambitious, fashionable, and self-assured. For their wedding they rented a lush garden and put up white tents adorned with white ribbons. There was an enormous wedding cake, a band, and hundreds of visitors. The wedding merriment was in stark contrast to the strenuous preparations and the tensions that existed between the couple’s families, who were from different ethnic groups. With due respect to their relatives’ feelings, Tayiani and Kinyua had tried to show that ethnicity didn’t matter. “For us, their ideas are outdated. I respect their opinion, but they must also understand how our lives are different,” explained Tayiani. She knew the families would resist the marriage but had not expected the fierce opposition that arose. At one point she had demanded that Kinyua promise that while they would support their families (if called upon) once they were married, this would not also mean that they would have to accommodate extended family in their home (something that is not uncommon for Kenyan families). Expectations from one generation to the next have always shifted with time. In this case, I observed how the customary expectations of the older generations, and the various tensions that existed, did not detract from the respect that the parents and grandparents felt for the professional success of Tayiani and Kinyua.

In general, the parents of the young professionals I interviewed had been preoccupied with advancing their children’s social positioning from an early age. They wanted their children to have opportunities to advance in the competitive English-language school system, and most of them addressed their children in KiSwahili and/or English rather than the local language of their rural roots. The majority of the young professionals do not speak the mother tongue of their parents, although they understand it. The exceptions are those who identify themselves as Gîkûyû and speak the Kikuyu language, although even in this subgroup some parents addressed the young professionals in English. For example, Dana, an engineer who identified herself as Gîkûyû, was taking Kikuyu language lessons at the language school of the Anglican church. Among a group of foreign missionaries, development workers, and researchers taking the classes, she stood out as being the only local Kenyan. She explained her presence by asking: “How can I be African and not speak an African language?”

Another reason for not speaking a vernacular is that the parents of fourteen out of the forty-nine people from my sample themselves came from different ethnic or national backgrounds, and therefore addressed each other and their children in KiSwahili and English. Tom, a program manager for an international NGO, said “Imagine, me being a so-called Kamba, and when I meet my cousins we can hardly speak with one another. . . . It’s too embarrassing. In fact, my grandparents mock us and it makes me feel bad.” Among themselves, young professionals speak mainly English and KiSwahili as well as Sheng—the youth or slang language combining elements of both. At their workplaces English is the official language in both speech and written communication.^{Footnote 6} While at times they deplore not being able to speak a vernacular, they justify this as part of their commitment to overcome “tribalism,” perceived as one of the worst sociopolitical maladies in postcolonial Kenya.

Overall, therefore, these young professionals see themselves as interethnic. In this they are part of the long history of Nairobians who cut across existing patterns of ethnicity and family organization, making it difficult to neatly categorize Kenya into separate ethnic identities (see Nyairo Reference Nyairo2011). Many make a point of repudiating dominant political discourse that nevertheless divides groups into ethnicities. Martha, a young woman about to attend a pilot school in Australia, said “Me? I am an African, well first of all Kenyan, naturally, but I refuse to call myself ‘Meru,’ or ‘Kamba’ or ‘Luyha’ for that matter.” “African,” in this context, stands for a broadly interethnic definition of Africanness. The social networks of these young professionals are interethnic, as are their neighborhoods, churches, and most important, their professional associations. Their friends are often work colleagues, reflecting how the professional context has become an important social environment, and they date people from different ethnic groups. They cannot detach themselves completely from the existing politics of belonging; ethnicity remains a political divider in Kenya, and some of them tend to have more friends from their own ethnic background than from others. Their families—apart from those with a multiethnic parentage—tend to be monoethically oriented, and many of them are less vocal about their interethnic attitudes in interactions with their parents. In general, however, young professionals, among others in Nairobi, highlight the diversity and energy of the cultural melting pot, with a multitude of identities based on a mix of local and global qualities.^{Footnote 7}

Financial and personal independence is another important characteristic of young professionals as a social group. Since they value their independence, they choose to live on their own or with friends or relatives instead of staying at their parents’ house. For young women, this independence is sometimes interpreted as a moral breach despite social transformations regarding gender roles in Nairobi society (Spronk 2012). Women are generally expected to live with parents or relatives until marriage—unlike men, who are considered independent after their circumcision.^{Footnote 8} Many women in my sample described the struggle to leave their parental homes. Grace, for example, had been living with her maternal uncle in an upwardly mobile Nairobi neighborhood (her retired parents had returned to Kisumu) when, at age twenty-three, she moved to a women’s hostel and then, despite her relatives’ objections, into an apartment that she shared with a female friend. In response her aunts organized a “committee” of female relatives to discuss her “case.” Grace had to appear before them to respond to criticism that she was disrespectful in rejecting the care of her relatives. While her attitude was deferential, she nevertheless refused to give up her apartment. For more than six months Grace avoided her relatives, including her parents. By the time I met her, five years later, everybody seemed to have forgotten about the situation or at least tolerated it.

Education, Ambition, and Career

One Friday evening I sat with Tom and his (female and male) colleagues in Kengeles, a typical middle-class bar. They were visibly tired, but elated to be at the final stage of a major project. They became somewhat rowdy and started making plans for a “night out.” Tom quickly announced that they should not try to persuade him to join them as he had classes the next day and needed to study. Like many of his peers Tom was both working at a demanding job and enrolled in a postgraduate training program at one of the local universities, and I was impressed with the ambition and determination of these young adults.

The availability of finances or scholarships for pursuing an education continues to be an important factor for families or individuals who want to improve their socioeconomic status. Even within families, there are large disparities in career development. For example, Martha’s parents had managed to send all their children to university to attain a first degree, and from there the sisters had managed to establish a career, although the brothers had not. Martha attended the airline pilot school in Australia in 2001 on scholarship, while her younger brother was trying to make ends meet as a small trader. Her sister was working at an international bank as a junior manager and had married a lecturer at a university. Her elder brother relocated to Meru to work on their family farm because for three years he had not managed to find a job, despite his sociology degree. Notwithstanding cases such as his, education continues to play a significant role in the lives of both women and men even once they are employed. Of those in this study, twenty-seven out of the forty-nine were pursuing a degree or course after working hours in 2001.

Although young professionals place a high value on financial independence, their jobs can be more or less stable depending on the vicissitudes of the employment market. Like other Kenyans, they are vulnerable to the irregularities of employers, as the protective labor laws are hardly being enforced.^{Footnote 9} There is also always a fear of a downfall because of fluctuations in foreign subsidies (in the case of NGOs) or economic changes such as those of the tourism industry. As a result of the highly fluctuating job market, salaries varied widely. The lowest salary in the group, earned by a woman working for a private hospital, was KS23.000 a month, equivalent to U.S.$360 at the time. More successful people earned on average a monthly income equivalent to U.S.$1,500–$2,000. Seven people from my study have established successful careers in the ICT field, but in general this job sector has been particularly unreliable, offering short-term employment only, with months-long intervals of unemployment. During the 2001 fieldwork most of the people I met were looking for better jobs, and this continues to be the case. Some felt that they were underpaid, while others were working below their qualifications or objected to working conditions such as unpaid overtime. Others were very good at networking and preferred to move from one job to the next. Tom, for example, had progressed from earning U.S.$650 at a small NGO in early 2001 to U.S.$900 a month in a larger NGO in early 2002 and eventually left this relatively well-paid job for a short but even better-paid contract with UNICEF. Most take it for granted that they will have to work on Saturday mornings and late at night. Tayiani, the accountant with Deloitte & Touche, was several times required to work up to sixty or seventy hours per week. She did not complain, and in fact felt proud to be part of a wider network of hard-working professionals—quite unlike civil servants, as many of the interviewees often pointed out. It was rare for anyone in the group to complain about working overtime, and like Tayiani they had a sense of pride in socializing only late at night after leaving the office.

Many critics see the flexibility of the neoliberal market in the global South as evidence of the manipulations of capitalist globalization, which places the responsibility for economic growth on individual actors (see Castells 1998). Yet for most young professionals this flexibility provides opportunities for self-invention, social mobility, and independence in the face of economic flux and change, just as capitalism in the first half of the twentieth century did for their forebears. I have kept in touch with the majority of the people I studied more than ten years ago, and I can conclude that this cohort of young professionals has done well. Apart from a few who ended up working below their qualification level and/or in the government sector, the others have secured stable jobs, live in typical middle-class neighborhoods, and have started families. They continue to work very hard, and improving their qualifications remains a priority, with most of them attending evening classes or taking courses provided by their employers. When in 2011 I asked Pamela how she regarded herself, she answered “proud and happy. Proud, because it has not always been easy . . . but I labored on; and happy for what I have achieved: a solid job, money for a small holiday at the beach, you know. . . .” As one walks the streets of Nairobi it is clear that yuppies have become a stable part of the urban landscape.

Modern Self-Perceptions

Progressive attitudes and lifestyle choices are important vectors articulating social and cultural identity and changing needs, while consumption is a field of action that reveals people’s agency (Miller Reference Miller, Silverstone and Hirsch1992). Comaroff (Reference Comaroff and Howes1996) has shown how, during colonialism, fashion opened a new social space for independent expressions of identity. The people I spoke to were not always aware that former generations of Kenyans had also experienced fashion crazes. On one occasion when I was with Pamela, we visited her grandmother in her rural hometown and she came across family photo albums. Pamela was astonished to see her mother wearing miniskirts that were even shorter than those of her own generation. At one point she screamed out, “The hypocrites! Look at them. How dare they complain about my indecent dresses!” We were looking at her parents in their early twenties, both with large Afro hairstyles, her father dressed in soul trousers, her mother wearing a skirt 30 cm above the knees and platform shoes.

Changing lifestyles are also expressed in the creation of new social bonds in which lifestyle choices and the sharing of new forms of taste become central, as Grillo (Reference Grillo1973) has shown for the early colonial railway workers. In Nairobi since the 1990s, a yuppie subculture has developed that displays a vibrant cosmopolitan consumer culture. A relatively high disposable income plays a major role in this group’s ability to spend money on clothing and recreation, which includes frequenting the dozens of upmarket bars, clubs, and restaurants that dot the urban nightscape. They distinguish themselves by their fashionable dress: at work the women typically dress in skirt suits or trouser suits, whereas for social occasions they choose trendy, sexy, or chic outfits. Hair styling is also a distinguishing feature for fashionable women. The daring ones wear their hair very short or braided in rows. While most Kenyans associate these styles with children, or consider them old-fashioned, they have become hip in urban circles. Another trend is to change one’s look every three or four weeks, which is possible using hair extensions. Women consciously maintain a well-kept image, not only in their dress, but also through manicured hands (and feet) and maintaining a good figure. Men, too, are fashion conscious and work on their physiques. They invariably wear suits at work, while outside the office they wear fashionable clothes from well-known labels and keep up to date with gadgets such as the latest mobile phones. The most welcome present I could give a man in this group was eau de cologne. A significant majority of both women and men work out in the gym, or swim in one of the many pools of the international hotels.

Leisure, intrinsically related to contemporary consumer societies, is crucial to the lifestyles of young professionals. As a group they have created a subculture in clubs, bars, and sports centers where they meet their peers. People meet in small groups and go out dancing on Friday and Saturday nights, moving from one club to another depending on where the “fun” is. An enjoyable evening out can include nyama choma and ugali (roasted meat and pounded maize meal) in an open-air restaurant, followed by dancing in one of the many stylish clubs such as Carnivore or Klup House, or drinks in a hip bar, or a late-night movie at the cinema. Often people meet after office hours to have a drink at places such as Kengeles or have a snack at Steers, a trendy fast food restaurant.

In explaining their choices, both the women and men I interviewed drew comparisons with their parents’ or grandparents’ lives and sometimes the lives of people in the rural areas. This is a common intergenerational reaction; as Thomas (Reference Thomas and Barber2006) shows in her study of schoolgirl letters during late colonialism, their parents’ generation had reacted in the same way. Every generation perceives itself as modern: the interesting issue is how they do so. According to Kinyua, “We, our generation, will make a difference I think. Things have changed so much and it all comes together in our generation. I will marry Tayiani because of the modern woman she is. I could not marry a woman from upcountry because . . . our styles are different. I think the future of Kenya as a modern nation depends on us.” When asked why he could not marry a woman from the rural area he explained that such a “traditional” woman would not want to pool her income with his, as Tayiani and he had decided to do. And indeed, for most young professional couples pooling their salaries was considered the most progressive or “modern” thing they could do, because it breaks with the customary gendered division in providing for the nuclear family.

The young professionals see themselves as the frontrunners of a contemporary identity in which professional pride, progressive attitudes, and a fashionable outlook are important markers. Their self-perceptions as “modern” or “sophisticated” are important for their pursuit of upward mobility, which directs them beyond the borders of Kenya. They have unlimited access to the Internet and hence communicate with friends and relatives abroad. They remain in tune with global trends by surfing the Internet, reading magazines, listening to music, and watching films. Every person from the study is currently on Facebook, and writing and reading blogs are extremely popular. They are very conscious about their cosmopolitan tastes and practices and are proud to be part of a larger world beyond Kenya, orienting themselves toward South Africa and the African diaspora.

I believe that it is here, in their interest and communication with non-Kenyan peers, that we can see most clearly how contemporary young professionals deviate from their forebears. If we compare them to clerks from the colonial era and public servants of the postcolonial era, the distance between these young professionals and Kenyans outside the middle classes has widened. Some of those interviewed marveled at the fact that they had more in common with me (a fellow young professional) than with some of their relatives “in shacks” (in the rural areas). The Web site Ushahidi (meaning “witness” in KiSwahili—www.ushahidi.com) is a good example in this respect. Ushahidi came into existence in reaction to the postelection violence in 2008, when the blogger Ory Okolloh wrote about what was happening and asked readers to e-mail her or post details of incidents they witnessed. Soon she was overwhelmed, and together with others she organized an online platform that enabled individuals and groups to submit reports via SMS or e-mail detailing acts of violence and trouble spots. The success of Ushahidi was dramatic, nationally and internationally. While Kenyans of all walks of life have access to the mass media, fewer have the know-how to capitalize on the possibilities of the media and mobilize large groups. This came from a group of typical urban young professionals who had the cultural capital needed to do so. And unlike their fellow Kenyans they had the means, the knowledge, and the contacts to enact their social and political aspirations.

The Downside of Sophistication

While the young professionals are respected for their accomplishments, some aspects of their lifestyles also disturb others in society at large. Much criticism from older generations focuses on the nightlife scene, the dress styles of women, the postponement of marriage, and perceived “immoral” sexual behavior (Spronk Reference Spronk, Cole and Thomas2009). This is expressed through the churches or in social critiques in the media—for example, via columnists or politicians. The most disturbing aspect for these critics is that young professionals are seen to embody a moral breach with a past that is glorified by many Kenyans, even though it does not exist anymore: a past referred to as “tradition,” or “roots,” or “culture.” These notions have become generic phrases of discontent, because specific traditions or cultural practices are hardly ever mentioned. Young professionals are the visible result of a longer process of slow but steady social and cultural transformation; the changing nature of Kenyan life has increasingly undercut the legitimacy of social structures such as the gerontocratic authority and its customary institutions. The yuppie subculture is blamed for affecting and infecting local cultural heritage.

Some of their critics accuse young professionals of being “Westernized” and “un-African.” This accusation cuts deep with the young professionals themselves, who feel that they are in fact highly conscious of their culturally inclusive “African” or “Kenyan” identity, in contrast to what they see as debilitating “tribalism” in Kenya. They told me on several occasions that “we have an identity crisis.” According to Laura, criticism for being “un-African”

Laura captures the feelings of ambivalence very well: while young professionals fear that they are not part of Kenyan culture, at times they do not want to be part of it. The heart of the matter is that, despite their potential as “agents of transformation,” and despite being applauded, they live in a reality that is inherently diffuse. All over Africa, calling people “un-African” has become a tool to try to force people into a normative social mold (see Ferguson Reference Ferguson1999; Sackey Reference Sackey2003). This is nothing new: the generation of their parents, labeled ado a madaraka (the independence generation), was similarly both admired and criticized. Upward mobility is both revered and disapproved of because it reveals how only certain groups are able to capitalize on the available opportunities. Laura’s remark that she and her peers find themselves “standing outside history” is not factually true, but it highlights this discrepancy.

In the 1940s Max Weber, remarking on the different cultural formations, lifestyles, and status claims that compete within the middle classes in the U.S., identified a particular anxiety, based in materialistic values and competitiveness, that he saw as the hallmark of the middle classes. The situation is somewhat different among young professionals in Nairobi. While processes of emulation do indeed create a certain anxiety, the real tension is not related to status competition within the middle class itself, but more to the general stresses involved in their cultural position. This dialectical tension seems to be unavoidable for groups enacting the opportunities accompanying the rapid changes in postcolonial societies, as Miller (Reference Miller, Silverstone and Hirsch1992) argues in the context of Trinidadian youth and their preoccupation with consumerism (see also Besnier Reference Besnier2009; Freeman Reference Freeman and Padilla2008). Miller suggests in general that the experience of rupture underpins the assertion of particular forms of self-identification through a preoccupation with style among black diasporan populations. Embodying and enacting social change is a fraught endeavor.

In short, young professionals are highly conscious of their distinctive position in Kenyan society. Their positioning is twofold. First, in embodying postcolonial opportunities, they have the potential to rise in social status as compared to their fellow countrymen, who lack the financial means to pursue the higher education that is essential for a career in the private sector. Second, one needs particular know-how in order to navigate the highly competitive job market, access global resources, and avoid ending up in the limited, and what they consider tainted, government sector. The cultural capital of young professionals draws on the cultural capital and ambition of their middle-class forebears, while embodying the most recent social and cultural transformations.

Conclusion: “Middle Classness” as Signifying Practice

While the African Development Bank (2011) defines the new African middle class in terms of its economic and income-based position, a truer measure of this phenomenon is sociocultural. We also cannot rely on the Marxist definition of class as only the outcome of capitalist relations of production that give rise to fixed groups. To the contrary, social stratification connotes broader processes that have different impacts on communities, families, and individuals: while it creates opportunities for some it severely disadvantages others, sometimes within the same family. Societal transformations have always caused shifts in social organization that enable new forms of consciousness and new modes of living. Despite this historical continuity, many young professionals whom I interviewed described their lifestyle choices in relation to, and sometimes in opposition to, the lives of their parents and/or rural Kenyans, and considered their lifestyles to be an important marker of their identity as the avant-garde of Kenya.

This avant-garde is not unique to Nairobi, as similar groups can be recognized in all African cities. In fact, there are extensive networks of young professionals both across the continent and in the diaspora. The media, including the many popular magazines like New African or television channels like M-Net, play an important role in creating an African subculture of music, fashion, and politics. The media articulate how lifestyle choices—those made among competing practices of everyday living such as careers, living arrangements, family, sexuality, consumption, and leisure—become the very core of people’s identities. Young professionals are inclined to forge friendships and relationships that center on the pursuit of similar lifestyles. The emergence of a middle-class culture that can be found in every African metropole increasingly legitimizes lifestyle choices as an intrinsic feature of socialization into adulthood. Seen in this way, the young professionals’ lifestyles are not merely an expression of desires, but can be understood as realizing and maintaining subjective realities.

To conclude: young professionals embody the effects of social transformation. They can be seen as the vanguard of modern life in Kenya, and their social aspirations point to the continuation of social transformation in Kenyan postcolonial society. The triad of mutually constitutive factors—education resulting in salaried occupations, lifestyle choices, and modern self-perception—provides insights into the way their middle-class identities are forged in a globalizing world. A focus on “middle classness” thus illuminates how education, urbanization, and social stratification have contributed to social and cultural change in Africa. A consideration of class as an aspirational category and the ways in which it is practiced allows us to see that forms of capital that are not, strictly speaking, economic, are central to understanding middle-class formation.