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Finding Respectability: The Lived Experiences of Middle Class Divorced Women in Nairobi


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Finding Respectability

The Lived Experiences of Middle Class Divorced Women in Nairobi

Norah Wawira Kiereri

350 pages,

ISBN  978-1-80768-028-2 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (December 2026)

eISBN 978-1-80768-029-9 eBook Not Yet Published


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Description

Examining divorce in contemporary Kenya, this book explores how the end of marriage reshapes women’s social status and respectability in a context where marriage remains central to female adulthood, sexuality, and motherhood. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnographic research in Nairobi, and digital ethnography of Kenyan social media, it examines how divorced women navigate stigma, shifting identities, and moral expectations. Using Zigon’s concept of moral breakdown, the study shows how divorce creates both vulnerability and ethical possibility, enabling women to renegotiate respectable womanhood and motherhood. In doing so, it highlights the emergence of plural moralities of respectability in Kenyan society.

Norah Wawira Kiereri is a social anthropologist and SNF SPARK funding recipient, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She was previously a postdoctoral researcher on the SNF-funded FamilEA project (2023–2025). Her current research examines the everyday practices of relations of middle-class Nairobi women with their relatives-in-law. She has published in Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est and contributed to an edited volume on migration and on morality.

Subject: Anthropology (General)Gender Studies and Sexuality
Area: Africa


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