TY - BOOK ID - 117343725 TI - Matatu : a history of popular transportation in Nairobi PY - 2017 SN - 022647139X 022613086X 022647142X PB - Chicago, Illinois ; London, [England] : The University of Chicago Press, DB - UniCat KW - Transportation KW - Minibuses KW - Local transit KW - Urban transportation policy KW - State and urban transportation KW - Urban transportation KW - Urban transportation and state KW - Transportation and state KW - Urban policy KW - City transit KW - Mass transit KW - Municipal transit KW - Public transit KW - Rapid transit KW - Transit systems KW - Urban transit KW - Ridesharing KW - Buses KW - Public transportation KW - Transport KW - Transportation, Primitive KW - Transportation companies KW - Transportation industry KW - Locomotion KW - Commerce KW - Communication and traffic KW - Storage and moving trade KW - Government policy KW - Economic aspects KW - Kenya's political economy. KW - Nairobi. KW - Obama. KW - Urban history. KW - historical ethnography. KW - indigenous entrepreneurship. KW - matatu. KW - organized crime. KW - social media. KW - transportation history. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:117343725 AB - Drive the streets of Nairobi, and you are sure to see many matatus—colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or extravagantly colored, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto the socioeconomic and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs, they reflect multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life—including, for example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, and popular culture—at once embodying Kenya’s staggering social problems as well as the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu and explore the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world. ER -