African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania
Between the Village and the World

Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources, this book tells the story of Tanzania's socialist experiment: the ujamaa villagization initiative of 1967–75. Inaugurated shortly after independence, ujamaa ('familyhood' in Swahili) both invoked established socialist themes and departed from the existing global repertoire of development policy, seeking to reorganize the Tanzanian countryside into communal villages to achieve national development. Priya Lal investigates how Tanzanian leaders and rural people creatively envisioned ujamaa and documents how villagization unfolded on the ground, without affixing the project to a trajectory of inevitable failure. By forging an empirically rich and conceptually nuanced account of ujamaa, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania restores a sense of possibility and process to the early years of African independence, refines prevailing theories of nation building and development, and expands our understanding of the 1960s and 70s world.

Reviews & endorsements

'An eloquent, engaging and immensely gratifying work. Priya Lal's nuanced analysis of the complexities and contradictions of the imaginaries, implementation and experiences of ujamaa not only challenges dominant readings of Tanzanian history (and African history more broadly), but provides a sophisticated model for how oral and archival history can be interwoven and why this kind of history matters.' Dorothy L. Hodgson, Rutgers University, New Jersey

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Product details

• Date Published: December 2015
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9781107104525
• length: 278 pages

• dimensions: 236 x 157 x 19 mm
• weight: 0.52kg
• contains: 22 b/w illus. 4 maps
• availability: Available