The Socialization of Private Sector Elites in Kenya

ended

SOPRISEKEN focuses on the sociability of professional and managerial elites in modern Kenya. Studying socialization, and in particular the membership organizations in which it takes place, is a particularly fruitful way to understand how these elites have experienced the social and economic changes triggered in Africa by the “structural adjustment” policies of the 1980s; how they have come to understand themselves as a distinct social group - the “private sector” - sharing comparable social aspirations, lifestyle and economic ethos; and how the articulation of their interests has led to the development of similar civic and political attitudes.