The name is absent

issues, themes, debates and discussions around the Mau Mau oath while
showing the gaps and problems with categorization. Although scholars have
added tremendously to our understanding of the origins, details of oathing
ceremonies, nuances of oathing, and different types of oathing, the topic has
been flatly studied. This work offers an intervention in the historiography by
situating the oath as the center category for analysis. It aims to treat the oath
without the limitations, labels, categories, objectives, and classifications that can
narrowly define and restrict.

Writers on the oath have not been able to address the complexity of the
Mau Mau oath. There was not a single Mau Mau oath; each oath was unique.
The oath was a conditional system of many components, variables, structures,
relationships, and rules that changed over time.⁷² This study aims to simulate
and offer a new way to conceptualize the Mau Mau oath that would allow for a
clearer interpretation of the oathing experience while providing scholars with a
model for understanding and explaining and communicating the layers of
descriptions, meanings, and connections. With this in mind, it is important to start
at the beginning of the oath story. The oath was a system that was established
long before the Mau Mau period and was not confined to Kenya.

⁷² This will be explored in more detail in subsequent chapters of this dissertation.

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