Developmentalism and its failings: Why rural development went wrong in 1960s and 1970s Tanzania

The central puzzle addressed by this study is the remarkable persistence of development agents, be they state officials or otherwise, in their pursuit of often ineffective or even harmful development policies. I contend that most existing approaches to explaining this phenomenon and concomitant developmental failures rely far too exclusively on a strategy of asserting that development policies ‘fail* because they are typically usurped for unstated exploitative purposes. This study demonstrates that such an argument does not fit the Tanzanian record, suggesting also that the broader universe of cases might warrant a re¬examination. The study’s main empirical focus is the pillar of rural development policy in 1960s and 1970s Tanzania, the forced ujamaa/villagization program that culminated in the mid- 1970s and - according to official claims - resettled 70 per cent of Tanzania’s rural population into ‘planned villages. I seek to understand this policy and its problematic dimensions and failings as the product of what I call ‘developmentalism. At the toot of developmentalism lies state elites’ strong sense of developmental mission and their unshakable conviction that in this mission they, as competent developers, confronted ‘backward’ rural masses. This study centers on an examination of these developmentalist imaginings and hierarchies. Developmentalism’s most critical effect was that it apparently blinded Tanzanian developers to the fact that they often pushed initiatives with wholly inadequate forethought and preparation- As they read the rural populace as backward, ignorant, and in some instances indeed ‘savage*, riding roughshod over the often legitimate concerns of rural people - in the name of their development - seemed palatable to the interveners. I show through a series of micro-historical studies that coming to grips with developmentalism and its roots and effects is essential to an adequate understanding of the initiation and persistence of foiling rural development policies in Tanzania. Through a close-up focus on agents and actions within their historical, social, and discursive matrices, this study seeks to produce an ethnography of the Tanzanian state in development.