An Anthropologizing and Archiving Bureaucracy

At the beginning of the colonial era, British authorities stepped into the dynamic sociopolitical, supernatural situations of the Kamba people. And, like the Kamba, British officials had their own way-of-being-in-the-world, a brand of “cosmology” centered on the core beliefs, practices, institutions, and authorities encompassed by colonial governmentality. In colonial imaginations, this “modern” colonial cosmology operated in stark, deliberate opposition to the “traditional” Kamba one. Yet, at the same time, the claims of colonial cosmology also worked to obscure the moments at which colonial authorities had to adapt to Kamba ways and means.

The cosmology of British officials quickly brought the institutions and actors of the state into conflict and competition with those of the Kamba. In the context of witchcraft and oathing, clashes resulted because British officials sought simultaneously to discipline and deny the efficacy of Kamba practices and beliefs while Kamba people refused to surrender authoritative sway over uoi to the state. And, more broadly, conflicts took place because both the colonial state and Kamba authorities claimed the right to exercise judicial violence through their own institutions – the colonial courts or the Kamba king’ole.