Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Is the ‘economy of affection’, as suggested by Goran Hyden, the key factor determining social relations in East Africa and elsewhere? According to this thesis, both villagers and city-dwellers are tied together in webs of kinship and tribal obligation that mitigate against the accumulation of wealth or capital necessary for the formation of either industrial modes of production or class-based societies. Hyden claims that the high values placed on personal relationships are dependent upon ‘a peasant mode of production’, and that, in the case of Tanzania, their persistence and perseverance has been the most significant factor inhibiting economic development. In short, the ‘smallness’ of the peasantry is a source of power.
1 Griswold, Wendy, ‘A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture’, in Clogg, Clifford (ed.), Sociological Methodology (San Francisco, 1987), pp. 1–35.Google Scholar
2 Hyden, , No Shortcut to Progress, p. 8.Google Scholar
3 Ibid. p. 10.
4 Tawney, R. H., quoted by Scott, James, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, 1976), p. 1.Google Scholar
5 Scott, op. cit.
6 Moore, Barrington, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar
7 Boserup, Ester, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: the economics of agrarian change under population pressure (New York, 1965).Google Scholar
8 Popkin, Samuel, The Rational Peasant: the political economy of rural society in Vietnam (Berkeley, 1979). Cf. also Scott, op. cit. for descriptions of the ‘moral’ economy in Burma and Vietnam.Google Scholar
9 Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor (New York, 1965).Google Scholar
10 See Marx, Karl, The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Tucker, Robert C. (New York, 1978 edn.), p. 608.Google Scholar
11 Malinowski, Bronislaw, Agronauts of the Western Pacific: an account of native enterprise and adventures in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (New York, 1922),Google Scholar and Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies (Glencoe, 1954).Google Scholar
12 Marx, op. cit. p. 608.
13 Moore, op. cit. p. 477.
14 Hyden, , Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania, p. ix.Google Scholar
15 Samatar, Abdi Ismail, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986 (Wisconsin, 1989), p. xviii: ‘I was born in a pastoral camp in the region in the early 1950s…In fact, my parents granted me a she-camel at birth—Mandeeq was its name—in keeping with pastoral tradition, so that I could start my own herd when I came of age.’Google Scholar
16 See ibid. p. xix, and Samatar, Abdi and Samatar, A. I., ‘The Material Roots of the Suspended African State: arguments from Somalia’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 25, 4, 12 1987, pp. 669–90.Google Scholar
17 It should be noted that few who adopted such personalistic approaches in response to the ‘economy of affection’ had heard of Hyden, let alone read his books. Rather, such management styles emerged on a trial-and-error basis without reference to any school of thought, mainly because of the wide gap between the findings and analyses of scholars and actual practice in the field.
18 See Waters, Tony, ‘Practical Problems Associated with Refugee Protection in Western Tanzania’, in Disasters (London), 12, 3, 1988, pp. 189–95,Google Scholar ‘Some Practical Notes on a Names Taboo in Western Tanzania’ in ibid. 13, 2, 1989, pp. 186–7, and ‘Of Water Systems and Grain Mills: observations of felt needs in western Tanzania’, in Issue: a journal of opinion (Los Angeles), 18, 1989, pp. 47–50.Google Scholar
19 As pointed out by Hyden, one of the fundamental differences between rural Tanzania and an industrialised society is that latter is no longer able to shift into a subsistence mode of existence if road/school/water systems fail.
20 Opoku Agyeman, ‘The Peasantry and Underdevelopment in Africa’, a review of Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania by Hyden, , in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 19, 4, 12 1981, pp. 722–8,Google Scholar and Cliffe, Lionel, ‘The Debate on African Peasantries’, in Development and Change (London), 18, 4, 1987, pp. 625–36.Google Scholar
21 Nelson Kasfir, ‘Are African Peasants Self-Sufficient?’, in ibid. 17, 2, 1986, pp. 335–58.
22 Gavin Williams, ‘Primitive Accumulation: the way to progress?’, in ibid. 18, 4, 1987, pp. 637–60.
23 Griswold, loc. cit. See also Wuthnow, Roger and Witten, Marsha, ‘New Studies in the Study of Culture’, in Annual Review of Sociology (Palo Alto), 14, 1988, pp. 649–70.Google Scholar
24 See Malinowski, op. cit. for a description of the necklaces and armbands in the Trobriand islands which could be bought and sold for cash, albeit used primarily for ceremonial barter and boundary establishment.
25 The newness of the city in East Africa means that it is not possible to say whether the generation now being born there will maintain social networks rooted in a peasant lifestyle–or, in reverse, whether the economy of affection can persist in an urban environment without strong rural-urban migration.
26 Julius Nyerere has written extensively about the disadvantages of capitalism in an African context in a number of political documents, of which The Arusha Declaration and TANU's Policy on Socialism and Self-Reliance (Dar es Salaam, 1967) is the best known.Google Scholar
27 Hyden, , Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania, p. 254.Google Scholar