NAIROBI, KENYA : MATERIAL CULTURE

 

There are two homes featured here: A middle class apartment and a "modest," or lower middle class house. There is quite a gap in amenities and material culture between the two, although the Nairobi "lower middleclass" home (for want of a more descriptively accurate term) is by no means utterly impoverished. They are feeding themselves, their children attend school, they have an outhouse shared by only a handful of residents, and they have a house. Some people are living in single rooms or far worse, make-shift shanties or cardboard shelters. The latter may have woefully inadequate sewage and share one outdoor latrine among a frighteningly large number of people. Some of the material culture items featured here (like the comfy chair) may strike you as too "normal" to be on a web page like this. Yet material culture is the stuff we use everyday--it is "normal" or "mundane" for all who use it, and exotic to those who don't.

VIDEOS

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Nairobi Middle Class	Nairobi Lower Middle

 

PHOTOGRAPHS

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MIddle Class Comfy Chair	MIddle Class Household Items	Middle Class Pots	MIddle Class Stove

Middle Class TV and Stereo	Modest Home Kitchen Utensils	Modest Home Sofa	Modest Home Kerosene Stove

Modest Home Wall Decorations	Modest Home Water Containers