Council on African Studies (CAS) Lecture at Yale: Samar Al-Bulushi

April 13, 2017

On 12 April 2017, the Council on African Studies will be hosting a lecture and conversation with Samar Al-Bulushi on “Citizen-Suspect: Navigating the Transnational Security State in Urban Kenya.” Samar Al-Bulushi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Yale. Her work has appeared in Transforming Anthropology, The Guardian, Africa is a Country, Jacobin, Al-Jazeera, and Pambazuka News.

Description: “Even as they celebrate Kenya’s 2010 Constitution for its commitments to human rights, middle class Kenyan Muslims living in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa experience daily reminders that their newfound rights mean little in the face of transnational regimes of surveillance and counter-terror. In the wake of recent attacks attributed to the Somalia-based militant group Al-Shabaab, “terrorism” has permeated the urban middle class imaginary, with Kenya’s Muslim minority population at the epicenter of anxieties about law and order. Drawing on ethnographic research between 2013-2015, this talk grapples with the expansive, yet often illegible nature of counter-terror policies, and with the subjectivities and micro-political practices of those under its closest gaze. How does surveillance and policing unfold in daily life, and what forms of participatory politics does it produce?”