Preparing the Modern Meal - Urban Capitalism and Working-class Food in Kenya's Port City

This book explores how twentieth-century urban capitalism created a new food system in East Africa’s most important port city: Mombasa, Kenya. Inside households, the dynamics of urban life changed the gendered structures of cooking, while new businesses emerged to sell food to working-class communities that now had to rely on cash to acquire their daily sustenance.

About the author

Devin Smart is an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University, where he teaches courses in African, European, and global history. His most recent articles have appeared in the Journal of African History and International Labor and Working-Class History, and his current research projects examine Kenya's commercial fisheries as well as the energy transition that occurred in twentieth-century East Africa.

Product details

• Authors: Devin Smart
• Publisher: University of ohio press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 01.05.2025, delayed
• EAN: 9780821426227
• ISBN: 978-0-8214-2622-7
• No. of pages: 252
• Series: New African Histories
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous