MILITANTS, MOTHERS, AND THE NATIONAL FAMILY: UJAMAA, GENDER, AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN POSTCOLONIAL TANZANIA

Abstract

ABSTRACTBetween 1964 and 1975, development politics in Tanzania came to be organized around a version of ujamaa that normalized distinct gender roles and celebrated a generic ideal of the nuclear family. Yet as ujamaa villagization unfolded on the ground in the south-eastern region of Mtwara, rural people's practices rarely conformed to the ideas about gender and family implicit in official discourse and policy. Just as the institution of the family on the ground proved to be a complicated and fractured one, the Tanzanian state's understanding of familyhood and the larger project of ujamaa were deeply riddled with internal tensions.