Evolución temporal de la inestabilidad hemodinámica en el postoperatorio.

This chapter examines governmental interventions by the emerging colonial state that shaped and transformed leadership and land issues in Loita. It traces how the introduc- tion of the positions of ‘PA chief’ and ‘councillor’ by the state articulated with existing leadership positions and gave rise to what are called ‘double authorities’ here. The term ‘double authority’ (or occasionally ‘triple authority’) is used here as shorthand to refer to the accumulation of two forms of authority in one social figure. This should not be confused with the ‘double structure of authority’ found in West Africa between immi- grant chiefs with political authority and autochthonous earth priests with ritual authority (Luning 2010, 2007). Double authority is a phenomenon that has persisted until the pre- sent and is relevant to an understanding of the forest conflicts (Chapter 8). This chapter also shows how different land categories were introduced in Loita as new boundaries were drawn in the colonial period. ‘The categorization of land in the colonial period had far-reaching effects upon the development of local tenure’ (Colson 1971: 209). Chapter 9 will discuss how one of the new land categories, namely the ‘location’, has become the backdrop against which certain strategies of land appropriation have been devised by Loita Maasai families and reflects changing tenure practices.

The conceptual focus in this chapter is the idea of ‘legibility’ (see Chapter 2), as ad- vanced by James Scott in Seeing Like a State (1998). The concept is used here to exam- ine the articulations and effects of colonial state interventions in Loita after the War of Morijo ended in 1902. After playing a key role in the pacification and stabilization of Maasailand by aiding Olonana and the Purko to defeat Senteu and the Loita, the British could then turn to the task of establishing order and building up an administrative state structure. To accomplish this, the various Maasai groups needed to be known and the lands they inhabited had to be mapped. This chapter discusses how, in the process of identifying and mapping, the lands and people in Loita were gradually made legible to the Kenyan colonial state.

State practices that increase legibility involve state simplifications (Scott 1998). These categorize and bring order to a complex and dynamic socio-environmental reality

so that state officials can manage, tax and govern their people. Administrative legibility in colonial Kenya was seen as a necessary step in asserting political control. Control, and not necessarily legibility, was the ultimate aim: legibility was more a means of at- taining this goal. The early colonial state of Kenya, in the form of an institution called Provincial Administration, thus attempted to make the newly acquired territory and its diverse population legible for administrative purposes of order and control. State simpli- fication in the process involved attaching and mapping ethnic groups (‘tribes’) with ter- ritories (‘tribal’ areas) and appointing ‘native authorities’ to represent and administer these ethno-territorial units as part of their strategy of indirect rule. In Loita, such inter- ventions of legibility and simplification happened in stages. From 1908 onwards, Loita Maasai started to be appointed as ‘headman’ and, two decades later in 1928, after some redrawing and renaming, the boundaries were finally drawn that demarcated an ethno- territorially based administrative unit called the Loita Location. New leadership posi- tions and land categories defined the way state power started to be experienced in Loita during the colonial period. In 1955 when the position of PA chief was first accorded to the Loita, the process of making Loita legible was accomplished. The first section of this chapter describes this process and its implications.

The second section introduces another state institution, namely Local Government. Local Government, like Provincial Administration, introduced its own leadership posi- tions (the councillor) and its own land categories (the county and later the ward). As Local Government developed later than Provincial Administration, its interventions of legibility were calibrated against those of Provincial Administration. For example, counties came to cover the same area as districts, and all the PA chiefs in a district would automatically become a member of the council of the coterminous county. This early institutional interlacing became less strong and Local Government developed as a separate state institution with its own government and administration structures that ran parallel to those of Provincial Administration. Local Government actually challenged the monopoly on government held by Provincial Administration in the early colonial period. The second section of this chapter focuses on the struggles and tensions between Provincial Administration and Local Government by reviewing their interlinked histo- ries of formation. By historicizing the state and exploring state formation, two distinct elements are shown. First, the state is not a unified and homogeneous entity but consists of separate state institutions that may (or may not) develop in competition with each other (Hansen & Stepputat 2001: 7; Geschiere 2007: 130). And second, indigenous leadership structures, though traditional in appearance, are in fact deeply affected by processes of state formation (Geschiere 1993). A detour into the institutional formation of Provincial Administration and Local Government is necessary to appreciate the posi- tion of Loita’s PA chiefs and councillors in the Kenyan state apparatus. It also shows that, in their competition for the right to govern, each state institution had its own pro- jects to make leadership and land legible.

The final section of this chapter wraps up the issue of legibility by summarizing how Provincial Administration and Local Government categorize land in Loita today.