To browse Academia. This thesis investigates the perceptions of development held by the supposed beneficiaries of various interventions over time in South-Eastern Tanzania, particularly focusing on the views of older individuals wazee. It critically engages with the historical context of development in Tanzania, examining the material and spatial inequalities that shape these perceptions.
Employing a multi-disciplinary approach, the research emphasizes the significance of localized knowledge and historical understanding in interpreting development experiences.
Ultimately, it challenges mainstream narratives of development, highlighting the complexities and absences perceived by older Tanzanians. This paper considers African local knowledge by establishing two themes: social relations that form African local knowledge and the relationship between African local knowledge and livelihood activities. While continuing to accumulate several case studies based on long-term fieldwork, we have also begun to work with residents to create new technologies and techniques based on these findings.
Chapters specifically examine agriculture, forestry, and water programs, as well as programs intended for women, including population control through family planning. The research shows agriculture programs to depict rural Africans as barely capable of achieving subsistence, while Malangali residents make farming and labor decisions based more upon considerations of profit than of yield.
Forestry programs were designed to combat deforestation that planners asserted but never demonstrated with reference to a local ecology featuring areas of thriving miombo woodlands; even so, many male residents engaged in tree planting when they foresaw high enough potential financial benefit. Projects for women were aimed to address what planners perceived as conditions of gender oppression, but Malangali women never came to agree with the details of that analysis.
