Facebook Feminism: Engendering Political Advocacy for Land and Natural Resource Rights through Social Media in Kenya
Caroline Archambault & Jennifer Glassco
In the wake of subdivision of communal rangelands in Southern Kenya, an alarming trend of land and natural resource sales and grabbing has arisen among Maasai communities. Seeing their future resource base under threat, and often excluded from official decision-making, the young generation is turning to social media outlets, like Facebook, to unite and protect community resources from misappropriation. A number of young and highly educated women are active participants in this form of on-line activism. Through long-term ethnographic fieldwork and mixed method approaches, including detailed case studies of three active and pioneering female contributors, this article explores how women are engaging with political activism on Facebook, how they shape debates and facilitate change, and what implications this form of social media has on gender relations and other aspects of social-political life apart from the specific issues being addressed. Further, the paper demonstrates how Facebook facilitates direct contact between these young women and local politicians. Although not withstanding important challenges, Maasai womenns experiences with Facebook advocacy suggest that this new channel of political engagement promises to not only foster greater shared prosperity and social justice around natural resource allocations but is also changing gender and social community relations more broadly.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
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