The frontier on the doorstep: development and conflict dynamics in the southern rangelands of Kenya

Rural parts of Kenya are undergoing or are expected to undergo massive social-ecological change as a result of the government’s ambitious development agenda driven by infrastructure and extraction. The pastoralist rangelands near the dormant Mount Suswa volcano in Narok, Kajiado and Nakuru counties have witnessed the creation of a modern railway and a geothermal project, and plans for further geothermal developments are expected together with a large inland port and industrial park. Other scholars identify structural, discursive, organisational and directly violent frontier characteristics which occur at the interface of two social orders and are well recognised in parts of northern Kenya. This article considers how these phenomena play out in a frontier inhabited by marginalised pastoralists but ‘on the doorstep’ of Nairobi and other urban centres. It concludes that most frontier phenomena are also present in marginalised areas closer to the centre and as such, the frontier is not necessarily geographically determined. However, formations of violence and dynamics of policing are different to the north and proximity to the economic and political centre makes a difference, allowing the state to remain more in control.