African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania
Between the Village and the World

This is the first major historical study of Tanzania's socialist experiment: the ujamaa villagization initiative of 1967–75.

Priya Lal (Author)

9781107104525, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 December 2015

278 pages, 22 b/w illus. 4 maps
23.6 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

'This is a superb, richly textured book. Priya Lal not only offers a very nuanced and convincing historical interpretation of the probably most ambitious version of African Socialism, ujamaa in Tanzania. Her study also carefully contextualizes this case within the broader framework of transformations that took place in Africa and the world during the 1960s and 70s.' Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University Berlin

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.

Introduction
1. A postcolonial project in the Cold War world
2. Militants, mothers, and the national family
3. Uneven development and the region
4. Remembering villagization
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Development economics & emerging economies [KCM], Economic growth [KCG], Politics & government [JP], African history [HBJH]