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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Taking Stock: State Control, Ethnic Identity and Pastoralist Development in Tanganyika, 1948-1958 |
Author: | Hodgson, Dorothy L. |
Year: | 2000 |
Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
Volume: | 41 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | March |
Pages: | 55-78 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Tanzania Great Britain |
Subjects: | Maasai colonialism development projects Ethnic and Race Relations Politics and Government Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Development and Technology |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/183510 |
Abstract: | This article analyses the origins, objectives, implementation and results of the Masai Development Plan (MDP) of 1951-1955 in colonial Tanzania in order to explore the centrality of development to the maintenance, expansion and breakdown of colonial control and the importance of ethnic identities in mediating the relationship between the two. Despite its claims to merely address technical problems - building more water supplies, clearing tsetse-infested bush and experimenting with grazing controls and fodder production - the MDP was deeply entwined with colonial imperatives to expand administrative control over recalcitrant subjects. Broad notions of progress and development were used to justify increased interventions in Maasai lives against the backdrop of ongoing disputes between administrators and Maasai over land alienation, labour and appropriate livelihoods. Designed in part to build confidence among Maasai in government and development, the project backfired, failing to meet its own objectives and fuelling antigovernment mobilization for decolonization. Notes, ref., sum. |