The chapter also tells a story of resistance showing how Africans unified,
organized, bonded, and tapped into their own power systems to challenge
European authority and domination in Kenya.
The Model Methodology
In order to represent the complexity of the Mau Mau oath model, the oath
is centered as the object for analysis with all other structures and relationships
organized around it. This approach provides a center to a dynamic process.
Part of the difficulty in communicating complicated systems such as oathing is
limited tools available for analysis. Currently, historians are restricted in the ability
to present findings because of this limitation, especially for complex historical
analysis. It is surprising that this has not surfaced as a field issue, but part of the
problem is that history is often treated narrowly along fixed categories, missing
the varied interactions and changes that complicate history making.
However, for this treatment of the Mau Mau oath, it is necessary to show
how oathing worked together dynamically with other objects and relationships. In
other words, there is a need to show the true complexity of the oath experience.
For this reason, the software tool Dezign is used to manage the model objects,
descriptions, rules, and connections. There were a wide variety of graphical
design tools that could have been used; however, for the limited functionality of
this model, this tool was the most effective. The tool offers flexible visual
representations of information that are easily maneuvered to understand the
complexity of the existing structures and its connections. The different objects
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