A story with the Kenyan Digo of coastal social-ecological changes using an assemblage lens

This paper explores the social-ecological changes experienced by the Digo community of coastal Kenya, using an assemblage lens to present a composite narrative that captures the community’s complex interactions with modernisation, environmental change, and cultural adaptation. This relational research approach conceptualises social, ecological, and material elements as dynamically connected and continuously reconfigured wholes, emphasising uncertainty, heterogeneity, and processes of becoming over fixed structures. Through narratives gathered in the FoRel project, which employed participatory Forum Theatre, we offer a grounded perspective on how these coastal communities navigate tensions between traditional values and global forces. The presented assemblage, including researchers as active participants, highlights the layered dynamics of coastal life, from resource conflicts to intergenerational shifts in digital literacy and identity. The narrative reveals that the obstacles to climate change adaptations often stem from Digo social life, bringing together disparate topics and exemplifying why coastal communities like the Digo may be disempowered in the face of such environmental change(s). This study contributes to less fragmented understandings of environmental and climate change by focusing on the entangled, relational dimensions of human-nature interactions through research participants’ accounts of their daily practices and relations.