Tracing the Chinese Crayfish Trade in Kenya

In this talk, Amanda Kaminsky will present a paper that untangles the supply chain of Kenya's crayfish industry, to explore how multispecies landscapes come to manifest and shape our social and cultural norms. Amanda draws from one year of ethnographic fieldwork to analyze the historical political ecology of crayfish in Kenya and its contemporary meaning among Chinese consumers. As a nonnative species feeding a primarily Chinese market, crayfish highlight the ambiguity of foreign and native categories, as well as the ambiguous position occupied by China in the Kenyan imagination.

Amanda Kaminsky is a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Michigan. Amanda earned an M.S. in Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan School of Environment and Sustainability, and a B.A. in Chinese from Middlebury College.

This event is hosted by the Migrations initiative, and co-sponsored by the East Asia Program and Institute for African Development.

RSVP to save your spot for a vegan/vegetarian Thai lunch.