Bruce J. Berman

Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914

By drawing on the current Marxist debate about the nature of the capitalist state, this article argues that the colonial state was obliged to be more interventionist than the mature capitalist state in its attempts to manage the economy, since colonies were distinguished by the way in which they articulated capitalism to local modes of production. This posed severe problems of social control, since the capitalist sector required the preservation of indigenous social institutions while also extracting resources from them. In early colonial Kenya this problem was mitigated by a rough compatibility between the needs of settler capital and the patronage exercised by African chiefs within a peasant sector which was expanded to solve the colonial administrations initial need for peace and revenue. The peasant sector was not destroyed, rather it was represented in the state, which never ceased thereafter to be plagued by the conflicts between the two modes of production over which it presided.

Multiparty Politics in Kenya: The Kenyatta and Moi States and the Triumph of the System in the 1992 Election

The independence struggle and the Kenyatta state 1957-1978 the creation of the Moi state 1978-1990 the regime in crisis - January 1990 to December 1991 the rise and fall of the opposition - December 1991 to October 1992 KANU fights back - December 1991 to October 1992 the electoral process the beginning of the campaign and the party primaries - October to November 1992 the election campaign election day and the results why KANU won KANU rules the nation, January 1993 to December 1995.

Perfecting the machine: Instrumental rationality and the bureaucratic ideologies of the state

Abstract Bureaucracy represents the most consistent effort to apply science and instrumental rationality to the control of human behavior. Recent studies of the sociology of science have undermined the positivist distinction between science and ideology and revealed the role of human interests in the ‘social construction’ of all forms of knowledge. This provides a basis for understanding the ideological character of the discourses of science and expertise, discipline and control, anti‐politics and depoliticization which characterize the forms of professional knowledge practiced in modern bureaucracies. Such ostensibly objective and disinterested knowledge obscures the contradictions and conflicts of social structure and maintains existing distributions of wealth and power. Other accounts of reality, reflecting the experience of dominated groups, are silenced by the claims of scientific expertise. However, bureaucratic ideologies cannot comprehend or deal with the ‘great issues’ of politics which continue ...

Artificial Intelligence and the Ideology of Capitalist Reconstruction

The growing interest in AI in advance capitalist societies can be understood not just in relation to its practial achievements, which remain modest, but also in its ideological role as a technological paradign for the reconstruction of capitalism. This is similar to the role played by scientific management during the second industrial revolution, circa 1880–1930, and involves the extension of the rationalization and routinization of labour to mental work. The conception of human intelligence and the emphasis on command and control systems of much contemporary AI research reflects its close relationship with the US military and corporate capital, which are the sources of many of AIs key metaphors and anolgies.

Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination

Professor Berman argues that the colonial state was shaped by the contradictions between maintaining effective political control with limited coercive force and ensuring the profitable articulation of metropolitan and settler capitalism with African societies. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP