PROFILE

My current book project, ‘I’ll never eat the sweat of another: The ethics and economics of masculine self-accomplishment in central Kenya’ examines the long-term effects of a process of ‘de-peasantization’ in central Kenya, its gendered and generational effects from an anthropological perspective. I study the transformation of a landscape of successful smallholder farmers in the 1960s into a contemporary landscape of masculine destitution. In an era of ‘surplus people’ – of mass unemployment, forcing the majority to ‘hustle’ for low, piecemeal wages in the informal economy – my work explores masculine discourses about how to be an upstanding man within a world of male alcoholism, suicide and family breakdown. Looking at how an older generation of male farmers moralises about the importance of ‘hard work’, whilst the young wonder if they will ever ‘make it’ to a ‘stable’ status, my book looks at the economic struggles of rural families trying to achieve economic stability within a wider landscape of precarity. The research draws upon over 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork on Nairobi’s peri-urban outskirts where I lived in a ‘localised patriline’ of post-peasant families, exploring the struggles my interlocutors face as they try to achieve a ‘good life’, epitomised by a successful patriarchal household, within what they experience as a world of runaway greed, alcoholism and self-destruction.

Outside of my research on masculinity and morality, I have a long-standing interest in Kenya’s politics, and have published pieces in respected African Studies journals on Kenya’s 2017 elections, exploring the salience of ethno-nationalist alliances (Journal of Modern African Studies) and moral debates over patronage (Journal of Eastern African Studies). 

My experience conducting research adjacent to Nairobi has also informed an interest in the city, and over the last four years I have worked with a team of scholars to curate Nairobi Becoming, an innovative, multi-authored ethnography of the city featuring the work of scholars, writers and artists from Kenya and Europe. 

I am an Affiliated Lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, where I have convened seminars on the anthropology of kinship over the past two years, as well as supervising undergraduates on a wide range of themes across social anthropology.
I have also contributed to wider debates about economic life within Kenya’s public sphere itself, publishing a piece in online newspaper The Elephant about a recent banking scandal in Kenya, generating major discussion online.

Country of Origin: United Kingdom
 

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph

• ‘I’ll never eat the sweat of another: The ethics and economics of masculine self-accomplishment in central Kenya’. In preparation. 

Edited volumes

• with J. Fontein, C. Smith & T. Diphoorn. Nairobi Becoming: a multi-authored ethnographic portrait of a 21st century African City. Volume 1: Security, Certainty and Contingency. Forthcoming from Punctum Books, 2023.

Journal articles

• Lockwood, P. 2020. Impatient Accumulation, Immediate Consumption: Problems with Money and Hope in Central Kenya. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology 64 (1): 44-62. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2020.640103 
• Lockwood, P. 2019. “Before there is power, there is the country”: Civic nationalism and political mobilisation amongst Kenya’s opposition coalitions, 2013-2018. Journal of Modern African Studies 57 (4): 541-561. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X19000491 
• Lockwood, P. 2019. The Buffalo and the Squirrel: Moral authority and the limits of patronage in Kiambu County's 2017 gubernatorial race. Journal of Eastern African Studies 13 (2): 353-370. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2019.1592332 
• Lockwood, P. 2015. The Solitude of the Stance: The Bodily Autology of Gym-work and Boxing in an Essex Town. Suomen Antropologi: The Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/article/view/59047  

Book chapters

• Lockwood, P. and C. Smith. 2020. Economic anthropology. Oxford Bibliographies Online in African Studies. Ed. Paul Zeleza. New York: Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846733/obo-9780199846733-0217.xml

Other publications and outputs (selected)

• Lockwood, P. 2022. Pressure to Succeed: From Prosperity, Stress (A reflection on aspiration in the new Kenya). Developing Economics. https://developingeconomics.org/2022/03/18/pressure-to-succeed-from-prosperity-stress-a-reflection-on-aspiration-in-the-new-kenya/ (Accessed 20 March 2022).
• Lockwood, P. 2021. Wolf in Shepherd’s Garb: Bishop Gakuyo and Stolen Middle Class Dreams. The Elephant https://www.theelephant.info/features/2021/07/23/wolf-in-shepherds-garb-bishop-gakuyo-and-stolen-middle-class-dreams/ (Accessed 3 August 2021).
• Lockwood, P. 2021. Pitfalls and promises in the anthropology of Africa. Review essay. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13497 
• Lockwood, P. 2020. Kenya: how stark inequality frustrates the dreams of Nairobi’s jobless young men. Article commissioned by The Conversation UK. https://theconversation.com/kenya-how-stark-inequality-frustrates-the-dreams-of-nairobis-jobless-young-men-136818 (Accessed 15 October 2020).