caa a22 4500 386344256 CHVBK 20180307111805.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198903 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0021853700030929 doi S0021853700030929 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0021853700030929 Ambler Charles H. University of Texas, El Paso The Renovation of Custom in Colonial Kenya: the 1932 Generation Succession Ceremonies in Embu [Elektronische Daten] [Charles H. Ambler] The role of custom and tradition in the development of colonial rule in Africa has received little attention from scholars. Historians of colonial Kenya, particularly, have focused on the powerful transforming impact of the colonial state and economy and on the growth of opposition movements; they have had little to say about the processes through which previously autonomous societies negotiated their incorporation into the Kenya state. Yet by the 1920s and 1930s that state had acquired a substantial degree of popular legitimacy. ‘Customary' institutions and rituals played an important part in the development of that legitimacy. This essay examines the institution of the genealogically defined ‘generation' in the Embu-Mbeere area in colonial central Kenya and the ceremonies held in 1932 to mark the transition from one generation to the next. These ceremonies attracted considerable attention because they provided the occasion for the proclamation of rules, supported by the British administration, relating to the bitter issue of genital mutilation in female initiation. But this was not a crude case of the manipulation of custom. The attempt to reform female initiation was part of a larger process, of which the rituals of generation succession were elements, of building the ideological basis of a new ‘tribe' in a society previously characterized by local autonomy and collective authority. As investigation of the succession ceremonies makes clear, the notion of a tribe dominated by appointed chiefs and identified with an exclusive territory lay at the centre of this ideology. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989 The Journal of African History Cambridge University Press 30/1(1989-03), 139-156 0021-8537 30:1<139 1989 30 AFH https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700030929 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700030929 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Ambler Charles H. University of Texas, El Paso NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- The Journal of African History Cambridge University Press 30/1(1989-03), 139-156 0021-8537 30:1<139 1989 30 AFH CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge