Harnessing the ‘hustle’: struggle, solidarities and narratives of work in Nairobi and beyond Introduction

In a workshop entitled ‘Harnessing the Hustle’, held at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) in April 2017, a group of academic researchers and community activists came together to discuss a concept that resonated across ethnographic findings and everyday life alike: hustling. For many of us working in Nairobi for years, we considered the real ‘experts in the room’ to be our Kenyan interlocutors, many of whom have become research collaborators and friends. Most of them lived and worked in different corners of the city, but they had the following in common: they were born and raised in Nairobi, and they self-identified as ‘hustlers’ and with the practice of ‘hustling’ in their everyday life. Alongside our friends and collaborators, we reflected on each paper’s empirical context in which hustling featured as a narrative and set of urban practices and positionings. Throughout the afternoon it became clear that the theoretical registers of hustling merited attention. Hustling was not only a street vernacular; it had also become a way for youth to conceptualize their own struggles, politics and agency. Ironically, the BIEA, which hosted our discussion, is located in the leafy ex-colonial neighbourhood of Kileleshwa. Seemingly removed from Nairobi’s familiar sounds and sensory bombardment, we discussed the need to decolonize ethnographic research and theory, guided by our Kenyan colleagues, artists, collaborators and critics in the workshop.