Being Home: Living Spaces and Self-Images of the Kenyan Middle Class (A05)

• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 290045248

Building on the results of the first funding period, the focus will lie on the constitution of home as a key process of status work associated with middle-class oriented lifestyles. Taking into account the high spatial mobility of Kenyan middle-class people, their forms of subjectivation will be reconstructed both in Nairobi (Kenya) and in the diaspora of Berlin (Germany) – through an analysis of the everyday spatial relations made relevant in home-making practices. Examining the self-images of members of the Kenyan middle-class on the basis of their living spaces will generate important insights into refiguration processes at the level of subjective spatial knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1265: Re-Figuration of Spaces
• Applicant Institution: Technische Universität Berlin
• Project Heads: Dr. Jochen Kibel; Dr. Gunter Weidenhaus, until 12/2021