Government of Development Peasants and Politicians in Postcolonial Tanzania [Paperback]

What drives state officials to force development projects on resisting beneficiary populations? In his new analysis of the Tanzanian states 1960s and 1970s campaign to settle the country's rural population in socialist villages, Leander Schneider traces the discourses and practices that authorized state officials to direct the lives of peasantsby coercive means if necessary. Government of Development shows that the practices constituting this project's mode of government far exceeded political elites pursuit of their own narrow interests, the go-to explanation for many accounts of similar instances of authoritarian rule and developmental failures in Africa and beyond.

Between 1968 and 1977 the Tanzanian government compelled some thirteen million citizensabout 75 percent of the populationto live in registered villages in a process known as ujamaa (socialist) villagization. . . [F]ocuses on official thinking and modes of governance that evolved from an emphasis on freedom and voluntary peasant participation in the mid-1960s to coercion backed by police force by the early 1970s, when most farmers were forced to move. 120.5No one in recent decades has written with such clarity and care about Tanzania and the rise and decline of its signal ujamaa vijijini policy as has Leander Schneider. Here, he views Tanzanian socialism more broadly, and in a suggestive, if controversial, comparative perspective, while also exploring the countrys once bold plans for transformation and their fatally flawed execution.Profoundly rich empirical evidence shows villagizations peculiar, personalized, and self-destructive aspects, soundly based on rare and exceptionally rigorous archival research; it alone makes this book worth reading.Responding to Tanzanias activist state, scholars have produced a rich literature on its governmentand society, carrying insights that travel well beyond its borders. Leander Schneiders compact new book carries this tradition forward honorably.l“!