Cosmopolitanisms : premise naming in Dagoretti and Nairobi West as a site for exercising identity

Abstract

What happens when a space is at once seemingly ancestral but with ties to a brash city like Nairobi? How does its residences define themselves? What can populate some of its signage for business premises? This paper is interested in comparing the naming of business premises in Dagoretti, in an area known as Kawangware Market, and what obtains in Nairobi West’s market area off Lang’ata road. The paper is interested in how names point to different kinds of cosmopolitanism, as well as the problematic idea of gentrification. In what ways has the kind of gentrification in Dagoretti as opposed to Nairobi West’s suggest a marriage of ethnicities, where no one is unafraid of performing their own identity? What can this imply?