Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T08:14:54.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lifeworld and System: Of Water Systems and Grain Mill Development in Rural Tanzania*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Tony Waters
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I simply take it for granted that other men also exist in this my world, and indeed not only in a bodily manner like and among other objects, but rather as endowed with a consciousness that is essentially the same as mine…[and that] in the natural attitude of everyday life the following is taken for granted without question: (a) the corporeal existence of other men; (b) that these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially similar to my own; (c) that the things in the outer world included in my environs and that of my fellow-men are the same for us and have fundamentally the same meaning; (d) that I can enter into interrelations and reciprocal actions with my fellow-men; (e) that I can make myself understood to them (which follows from the preceding assumptions); (f) that a stratified social and cultural world is historically pregiven as a frame of reference for me and my fellow-men, indeed in a manner as taken for granted as the ‘natural world’ (g) that therefore the situation in which I find myself at any moment is only to a small extent purely created by me (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, 4-5).

Rural development projects involve the application of bureaucratic systems of consciousness to traditional areas where there have never been such normative systems applied before. This means that the values, norms, and ideals of bureaucratic institutions are implicit to how traditionally oriented rural villages are approached by outside development agencies and also how relationships develop between them.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , September 1992 , pp. 35 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper has evolved out of many conversations with a number of people who lived in Kasulu area from 1984 to 1987. Conversations with Fr. Hank VanderParver W. F. of Kakonko, and Karin Mahn of Kasulu were especially influential. Mzee T. B. Siweya and Mzee N. P. Mchonchele also contributed to the ideas described here. John R. Hall at UC Davis pointed me in the theoretical direction that this paper has taken. Much to his (Weberian) dismay, he pointed out that the absence of a Durkheimian social fact is what makes this paradox interesting. Professor Hall also assisted me by discussing Habermas' ideas with me at length. Two anonymous referees who read an earlier version of this paper also pointed me in directions that I had not thought of previously. All of these people as well as my wife Dagmar have my thanks and appreciation for what they have directly and indirectly contributed to my thinking, though I am solely responsible for the contents of this paper.

References

Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Division. 1916. A Handbook of German East Africa. Great Britain: Naval Intelligence Division.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L., Berger, Brigitte, and Kellner, Hansfried. 1973. The Homeless Mind. New York: Random House Google Scholar
Brain, James L. 1973. “The Tutsi and the Ha: A Study in Integration.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 8: 39–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunker, Stephen. 1987. Peasants against the State: The Politics of Market Control in Bugisa, Uganda 1900-83. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Cardoso, F. and Faletto, E.. 1979. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, P. 1988. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? Totowa, NJ: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Fortes, Meyer, and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., eds. 1940. African Political Systems. London: H. Milford.Google Scholar
Fowler, Alan. 1982. “Temperatures in Development Funding: The Hot Money Model.” Development (Journal of Society for International Development): 3.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1987. Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Grant, C. H. B. 1925. “Uha in Tanganyika Territory.” The Geographical Journal 66: 411–22.Google Scholar
Gwasa, G. C. K. and Mbwiliza, J. F.. 1976. “Social Production, Symbolism and Ritual in Buha: 1750-1900.” Tanzania Notes and Records 79/80: 13–21.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 1987. A Theory of Group Solidarity, Berkeley. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Homans, George. 1987. “Behaviorism and After.” In Social Theory Today, edited by Giddens, Anthony and Turner, Jonathan. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Horton, Robin. 1970. “African Traditional Thought and Western Science.” In Rationality, edited by Wilson, Bryan R., 131–71. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hyden, Goran. 1981. Ujamaa in Tanzania. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hyden, Goran. 1985. No Shortcuts to Progress, African Development in Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hyden, Goran. 1990. “Responses from Below, A Tale of Two Tanzanian Villages.” Food Policy 08: 299–305.Google Scholar
Illife, John. 1969. Tanganyika Under German Rule 1905-1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Illife, John. 1979. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kuper, Adam. 1988. The Invention of Primitive Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lan, David. 1985. Guns and Rain: Guerillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. London: James Currey Ltd.Google Scholar
Leakey, E. A. and Rounce, N. V.. 1933. “The Human Geography of the Kasulu District, Tanganyika, The Land of the Abaha.” Geography 18: 293–305.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. New York: Dutton.Google Scholar
Maliyamkono, T. L., and Bagachwa, M. S. D.. 1989. The Second Economy in Tanzania. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Tucker, Robert C.. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. 1954. The Gift: Forms and Function of Exchange in Archaic Society. Glencoe IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa, Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. O. 1983. “The Invention of Traditions in Colonial Africa.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, T. O., 211–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. O.. 1985. Peasant Consciousness and Guerilla War in Zimbabwe. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Rostow, W. W. 1959. “The Stages of Economic Growth.” Economic History Review. 12/1: 1–16.Google Scholar
Scherer, J. H. 1959. “The Ha of Tanganyika.” Anthropos. 54: 841–904.Google Scholar
Schutz, Alfred, and Luckmann, Thomas. 1973. The Structures of the Lifeworld. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, Mariam. 1976. African Odyssey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Tawney, J. J. 1944. “Ugabire A Feudal Custom Among the Waha.” Tanganyika Notes and Records 17: 6–9.Google Scholar
von Freyhold, Michaela. 1979. Ujamaa Villages in Tanzania: Analysis of a Social Experiment. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1976. The Modern World System, vol. 1. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Waters, Tony. 1989a. “Of Water Systems and Grain Mills: Observations of Felt Needs in Western Tanzania.” ISSUE; A Journal of Opinion 18/1: 47–50.Google Scholar
Waters, Tony. 1989b. “Some Practical Notes on a Names Taboo in Western Tanzania.” Disasters 13/2: 186–87.Google Scholar
Waters, Tony. 1989c. “Money and Development: Necessities and Contradictions.” Vita News 07: 17–19.Google Scholar
Waters, Tony. 1992. “A Cultural Analysis of Economies of Affection and the Uncaptured Peasantry in Tanzania. Journal of Modern African Studies 30/1: in press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, Volume 2. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar