Abstract:
Abstract
Before and during the emergency women in Kenya were increasingly moving into larger cities as prostitutes and
causing discomfort to the colonial authorities, and as such they interfered with the preoccupation of the state in
countering the Mau Mau insurgency. Consequently, these prostitutes resulted into disobedience. For long
Thuku demonstrations had provided them with an opportunity to show their dislike of the authorities and the
police. This paper therefore, examines prostitution as a crime and how the state formulated laws to control the
vice. We argue that colonial rule was not only maintained by brute military power but also by subtler methods
of discipline and control: through legal codes, penal practices and criminological discourses. This paper
examines the history of colonial criminality in Kenya. As we will see, ideas of criminality and methods of
disciplining prostitutes took distinctive forms in colonial contexts, in no small part because of notions of racial
difference at the heart of the European imperial project. We will explore this interaction examining as we
interrogate the related histories of systems of punishment such as colonial prisons, corporal punishment and
police violence.
Key words: Colonialism, Mau Mau, Nairobi, Prostitution, Women
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