Ambiguous Pleasures: sexuality and middle class self-perceptions in Nairobi by Rachel Spronk (review)

Recommended ‘to anyone interested in gender and sexualities in the African context’ (African Affairs), Rachel Spronk’s seminal work explores new inner territory as regards sexual behaviours and interactions among urban young professionals in Nairobi. Their views on sex and sexuality offer new insights into the mindsets, desires and lifestyles of a new generation, which seeks to reconcile ‘modernity’ with ‘being African’. As Spronk explains, her ambition is to establish ‘how sex feels personal, private and above all natural’ (p. 280) within this group. Leaving behind the traditional cultural values and norms as well as conventional morality of the gerontocracy among their parents, the younger members of such a Nairobi-born middle class–‘from backgrounds ranging from lower to upper middle class’ (p. 11)–seem keen to adapt to global (‘Westernized’) habits while careful not to surrender a local identity. They do not intend to abandon their African roots as a specific socialization but rather aspire to ‘being modern the African way’ (p. 13). Their new sexual liberties emerging in the time of HIV/ AIDS (Chapter 3) go hand in hand with a reorientation of being urbanized Africans in a setting in which the erstwhile rural–ethnic roots, traditions and lineages have not disappeared but become less influential.

Spronk analyses the shift towards new identities and self-perceptions among both men and women in this group, which, as she points out, is far from being homogeneous (p. 16). The two intertwined themes of her interest are ‘how sexuality and issues of cultural belonging or identification are interrelated’ and how these are experienced personally (p. 2). As she concludes: ‘Their cosmopolitanism does not imply a cultural orientation to the West; instead it indicates the convergence of global and local cultural compliance that they embody’ (p. 281). The young professionals’ preoccupation is Africanness: ‘sex suggests enjoyment but also the fear of becoming “un-African”’, since it is ‘disconnected from reproduction’ (p. 284).

But Spronk is also interested in taking ‘the analysis of sexuality further to incorporate the subjectiveness of sexuality’ (p. 282). Five women (Chapter 4) and five men (Chapter 5) share their views on female and male sexuality with the author. This makes it a very intimate undertaking by an ‘unmarried with partner, non-Kenyan, white female young professional’ (p. 43) engaging with people who are about the same age as her but from different backgrounds. The description of herself and the approach chosen ends with a revealing disclosure: ‘the fact that “dialogic” and participatory anthropological fieldwork may be considered as “conscription”–in that it reaffirms existing hierarchies–is an inevitable ethnographic and theoretical feature’ (p. 46). It is against this background that I would like to invite the author to reflect on the following problematizations. It is in the context of my admiration for Spronk’s continued work and in recognition of the insights this book offers that these questions are raised.

Linked to the subjective factor, Spronk wants to find out ‘how sex makes people feel themselves to be “woman” or “man”’ (p. 283). But same-sex relations as well as transgender identities are conspicuously absent throughout. Gays and lesbians simply do not feature in the book. Nor is there any mention of the LGBTI communities, who advocate their rights in Nairobi and certainly are an occurrence among the urban middle-class professionals, albeit restricted to social movement activities in a context of officially taboo daily interactions. It is noteworthy that the author since then has addressed the issue through her subsequent work, culminating in a volume coedited with Thomas Hendriks (Readings in Sexualities from Africa, 2020). But in her revised PhD thesis, heterosexuality remains the exclusive norm and any deviations are hardly acknowledged. What explains their absence despite the interlinkages between sexuality, modernity, tolerance and individual freedom(s), which are all ingredients in the deliberations and the repositioning of members of the group?

The other question for me is the nature of such ethnographic field research. Spronk shares the experiences with one man among her informants, with whom she:

continued to conduct the research despite the difficulties he...