The Nature of Decline: Distingushing Myth from Reality in the case of the LUD of Kenya. pp.117 - 142.

Narrative is an important means of structuring and giving meaning to experience. While the resulting framework is incomplete because human being choose only particular aspect to remember, narratives often persist and influence behaviour, often to poor effect. Considering this, the example of the Luo of Kenya is a cautionary one, particulaarly given African neapatrimonial understandings of state and society. Luo lore estabishes the group as once elite and now in abject poverty, victim of a powerful and the means by which group members have re-sponded to particulart indicators at the expense of others. This re-examination invites questioning of Luos' conclusion that they were, as respondents says, 'put out in the cold' from a position of prominence, a stance that has helped shape Kenya into ethnic rather than policy interests.