| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is based on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork among Kenyan anthropology students at the Institute of Anthropology, Gender & African Studies (IAGAS) at the University of Nairobi. I explore anthropology students 1) everyday life, interests, aspirations and motivations; 2) the relationship between their personal background and approach to anthropology; and 3) how they interpret society and assess their potential to contribute to it as social scientists. A prevalent theme of this thesis is an ambivalence toward anthropology in Kenya, which can be seen to be derived from a tension between traditionalism and modernism in the cultural politics of postcolonial Kenya. This ambivalence further manifests itself in current students evaluations of their academic endeavors. I begin my thesis with a historical overview of the emergence of anthropology in Kenya, assessed within a broader context of decolonization, Africanization of academia and concurrent shifts in developmental discourse. In chapter 2, I direct my focus to current anthropology students and how they perceive their education and prospects as anthropologists-to-be in a political-economic situation where education is becoming geared towards the market, and which questions the very relevance of the anthropological project. In chapter 3, I discuss the economics of Kenyan anthropology in more detail, with particular attention on the influence of political-economic conditions on research selection. In the final two chapters, I address the students worldviews and their ideas of work, discuss the ambivalence of their pursuits and multiple meanings of being relevant in Kenyan society. These chapters serve to illustrate that student aspirations reflect a transcendence of economic constraints and opportunistic self-interest to include a commitment to benefitting society and giving back to their own communities. While my thesis is limited to Kenyan students in 2014, triangulation with my own experiences as a student of social anthropology in a very different economic and cultural context suggests that the lessons learned from the Kenyan field site might have wider purchase for the discipline. In an increasingly globalized world where the logic of the market is propagated at all costs, the significance of all social science is called into question. An anthropologist in the making myself, I shared, across obvious contextual differences, many of these concerns and dreams about the future. In this sense, my ethnography is premised on an assertion of likeness rather than difference. | eng |