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.

This volume brings together anthropologists, historians and political scientists from around the world to reflect on how to build up empirical and juridical statehood, how to forge a nation after colonial divide-and-rule, and how to position themselves in an international order not of their making.

A riveting account of the first decade of the work of a retired Professor of Medical Statistics. Filled with a variety of eye-opening episodes, it covers lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam, the life of a political exile in a remote rural area and the challenges of setting up from scratch a one-of-a-kind educational institute in Africa.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Introduction Worldmaking of Architecture -- Chapter 2 A Global Development Path Accra, 1957-66 -- Chapter 3 Worlding Eastern Europe Lagos, 1966-79 -- Chapter 4 The World Socialist System Baghdad, 1958-90 -- Chapter 5 Socialism within Globalization Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City, 1979-90 -- Epilogue and Outlook -- A Note on Sources -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Image Credits.

Socialism as a political system may be on the wane, yet no one can doubt that its cultural legacies will make themselves felt for years to come, and on a worldwide scale. The contributors to this volume adopt a variety of anthropological approaches to illuminate changes which have removed socialists from power in many countries. Presenting detailed ethnographic accounts across a wide range of countries, they bring out the factors which have given socialism such a profound worldwide impact, including a substantial impact upon the discipline of anthropology itself. The first sustained and wide-ranging investigation of socialism by social anthropologists, this volume will enable readers to understand better how socialism has been experienced by millions of people and thereby to now better understand how they may cope with post-socialist dilemmas.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.