In these three volumes, Ambreena Manji, Barbara Thomas, and Julie Zollman detail how poor people in Kenya navigate everyday struggles against restrictive social, economic, and political constraints to build livelihoods through their individual and collective efforts in order to access basic social services, land, markets, and employment, and to participate in the social, economic and political arenas. In the latest edition of her book, Politics, Participation and Poverty: Development Through Self-Help in Kenya, first published in 1985, Thomas chronicles innovative ways in which the rural poor in six locations in Eastern, Central, and Rift Valley Provinces have exploited the complex competitive web of Kenya’s electoral patron-client linkages at local and national levels to access scarce resources for community development projects. The trend of unequal development based on region, class, gender, and ethnicity that informed development through self-help in the 1970s and 80s persist to date, as elaborated in Zollman’s Living on Little: Navigating Financial Scarcity in Modern Kenya. While Manji, in The Struggle for Land & Justice in Kenya, focuses on struggles over land and justice from the colonial era to the present, Thomas and Zollman highlight continuing struggles by people living on little to access scarce essential services and land in their quest for personal and community development. While these titles fit into distinct disciplinary fields and use diverse methodological approaches, they meticulously weave profound narratives of the resilience of ordinary Kenyans building livelihoods, families, and communities with little resources.

在这三本书中，Ambreena Manji、Barbara Thomas 和 Julie Zollman 详细介绍了肯尼亚的穷人如何通过个人和集体的努力来克服限制性的社会、经济和政治限制，以建立生计以获得基本的社会服务、土地、 、市场和就业，并参与社会、经济和政治领域。在她最新一期的著作《政治、参与和贫困：肯尼亚的自助发展》中，首次出版于 1985 年，托马斯记录了东部、中部和裂谷省六个地区的农村贫困人口利用肯尼亚在地方和国家层面的选举赞助人-客户联系的复杂竞争网络的创新方式，以获取稀缺资源社区发展项目。1970 年代和 80 年代通过自助实现发展的基于地区、阶级、性别和种族的不平等发展趋势一直持续至今，正如 Zollman 的《靠小钱生活：在现代肯尼亚应对金融短缺》中阐述的那样。而 Manji，在肯尼亚的土地与正义斗争中，重点关注从殖民时代到现在的土地和正义斗争，Thomas 和 Zollman 强调了生活在贫困中的人们在寻求个人和社区发展的过程中为获得稀缺的基本服务和土地而进行的持续斗争。虽然这些书名适用于不同的学科领域并使用不同的方法论方法，但它们精心编织了关于普通肯尼亚人在资源匮乏的情况下建立生计、家庭和社区的韧性的深刻叙述。