Cold War Along the Emerald Curtain: Rural Boundaries in a Contested Border Zone

This paper examines how anxieties about ethnic identity proliferate as state borders begin to shift and open in response to accelerating possibilities of cross-border cooperation. As the border becomes more porous, social and cultural boundaries become marked in other ways, spatially re-scaled to reflect new uncertainties consequent upon border change. Using an example from the Irish land border, the paper traces how national space is re-imagined and re-placed in the everyday practices of residents in a violent border zone from which the state is ostensibly retreating. It shows that communal division is as sharply drawn as ever at a time when the ‘visibility’ of the state border itself is beginning to diminish.

Family Histories and Rural Inheritance in Kenya

Inheritance systems and practices have a key role in people’s ability to exit poverty, or, conversely, plunging them further into it. As land is the major asset in low-income developing countries, how property is passed on and divided between future generations is a significant factor. This paper looks at inheritance through minimally-structured interviews with several generations of Kenyan families, seeking to explain that the how and why of poverty can be understood in the wider family context. It analyses their fortunes and misfortunes over a given time period in the context of property ownership rights. It also looks at the impact of education and the inheritance of cultural capital. When both fertility and survival are high, traditional patterns of land inheritance can lead to progression sub-division of land with long-term adverse implications for sustainability. While inheritance in Kenya is male dominated, the paper nonetheless examines the position of women in the chain as vectors of male property rights. The application of male-oriented customary law where inheritance is concerned, rather than the use of statutory legislation, was found to be the reality for the overwhelming majority of the participants in the study.