Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:24:19.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Middle class construction: domestic architecture, aesthetics and anxieties in Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2014

Claire Mercer
Claire Mercer*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the new styles of houses under construction in contemporary Tanzania and suggests that they can be understood as the material manifestation of middle class growth. Through an examination of the architecture, interior decor and compound space in a sample of these new houses in urban Dar es Salaam and rural Kilimanjaro, the paper identifies four domestic aesthetics: the respectable house, the locally aspirant house, the globally aspirant house and the minimalist house, each of which map on to ideas about ujamaa, liberalisation and the consumption of global consumer goods in distinct ways. The paper argues that these different domestic aesthetics demonstrate intra-class differences, and in particular the emergence of a new middle class.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 227 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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.)

References

REFERENCES

Askew, K., Maganga, F. & Odgaard, R.. 2013. ‘Of land and legitimacy: a tale of two lawsuits’, Africa 83, 1: 120–41.Google Scholar
Banerjee, A. & Duflo, E.. 2008. ‘What is middle class about the middle classes around the world?’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 22, 2: 3–28.Google Scholar
Benjaminsen, T.A., Maganga, F. & Moshi, J.M.. 2009. ‘The Kilosa killings: political ecology of a farmer-herder conflict in Tanzania’, Development and Change 40, 3: 423–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, H. 1977. ‘Notes on capital and the peasantry’, Review of African Political Economy, 10: 60–74.Google Scholar
Berry, S. 1985. Fathers Work for their Sons: accumulation, mobility and class formation in an extended Yoruba community. London: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birdsall, N. 2010. ‘The (indispensable) middle class in developing countries; or, the rich and the rest, not the poor and rest’, Centre for Global Development Working Paper 207, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Bolt, M. 2010. ‘Camaraderie and its discontents: class consciousness, ethnicity and divergent masculinities among Zimbabwean migrant farmworkers in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 36, 2: 377–93.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brennan, J.R. 2012. Taifa: making nation and race in urban Tanzania. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Brennan, J.R. & Burton, A.. 2007. ‘The emerging metropolis: a history of Dar es Salaam, circa 1862–2000’, in Brennan, J.R., Burton, A. and Lawi, Y., eds. Dar es Salaam: histories from an emerging metropolis. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 13–75.Google Scholar
Briggs, J. & Mwamfupe, D.. 2000. ‘Peri-urban development in an era of structural adjustment in Africa: the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’, Urban Studies 37, 4: 797–809.Google Scholar
Brockington, D. 2002. Fortress Conservation: the preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve in Tanzania. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Burke, T. 1996. Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: commodification, consumption and cleanliness in modern Zimbabwe. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, A. 2001. ‘The aesthetics of social aspiration’, in Miller, D., ed. Home Possessions. Berg: Oxford, 23–45.Google Scholar
Ellis, S. 2011. Season of Rains: Africa in the World. London: Hurst and Company.Google Scholar
Fernandes, L. & Heller, P.. 2006. ‘Hegemonic aspirations: new middle class politics and India's democracy in comparative perspective’, Critical Asian Studies 38, 4: 495–522.Google Scholar
Gardner, B. 2013. ‘Tourism and the politics of the global land grab in Tanzania: markets, appropriation and recognition’, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, 2: 377–402.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, R. 1996. ‘‘Now I stay in a house’. Renovating the matchbox in apartheid-era Soweto’, African Studies 55, 2: 127–39.Google Scholar
Heiman, R., Freeman, C. & Liechty, M, eds. 2012. The Global Middle Classes: theorizing through ethnography. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Seminar Series.Google Scholar
Iliffe, J. 1979. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ivaska, A. 2005. ‘Of students, ‘Nizers,’ and a struggle over youth: Tanzania's 1966 National Service crisis’, Africa Today 51, 3: 83–107.Google Scholar
Kelsall, T. 2013. Business, Politics and the State in Africa: challenging orthodoxies on growth and transformation. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
King, A.D. 1984. The Bungalow: the production of a global culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kombe, W.J. 2000. ‘Regularizing housing land development during the transition to market-led supply in Tanzania’, Habitat International 24: 167–84.Google Scholar
Kyhn, B. 1984. Single-storey Housing in Tanzania: evolution, design and construction. Ardhi Institute, Department of Architecture, Dar es Salaam, and Royal Academy of Art, Copenhagen, Denmark.Google Scholar
Lee, R. 2005. ‘Reconstructing “home” in apartheid Cape Town: African women and the process of settlement’, Journal of Southern African Studies 31, 3: 611–30.Google Scholar
Leke, A., Lund, S., Roxborough, C. & van Wamelen, A.. 2010. ‘What's driving Africa's growth’, McKinsey Quarterly, June.Google Scholar
Lentz, C. 1994. ‘Home, death and leadership: discourses of an educated elite from north-western Ghana’, Social Anthropology 2, 2: 149–69.Google Scholar
Leslie, J.A.K. 1963. A Survey of Dar es Salaam. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewinson, A. 2006. ‘Domestic realms, social bonds, and class: ideologies and indigenizing modernity in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 30, 3: 462–95.Google Scholar
Liechty, M. 2003. Suitably Modern: making middle class culture in a new consumer society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melly, C. 2010. ‘Inside-out houses: urban belonging and imagined futures in Dakar, Senegal’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, 1: 37–65.Google Scholar
Miller, D., ed. 2001. Home Possessions: material culture behind closed doors. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Miller, D. 2010. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Moore, S.F. 1986. Social Facts and Fabrications: ‘customary’ law on Kilimanjaro, 1880–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, S.F. 1998. ‘Changing African land tenure: reflections on the incapacities of the state’, European Journal of Development Research 10, 2: 33–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moyer, E. 2003. In the Shadow of the Sheraton: imagining localities in global spaces in Dar es Salaam. PhD thesis, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
National Bureau of Statistics. 2009. Housing Budget Survey 2007. Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics.Google Scholar
National Bureau of Statistics. 2012. Employment and Earnings Survey Analytical Report 2010–11. Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics.Google Scholar
Ncube, M., Lufumpa, C.L. & Kayizzi-Mugerwa, S., eds. 2011. The Middle of the Pyramid: dynamics of the middle class in Africa. Market Brief, African Development Bank. <www.afdb.org>.Google Scholar
Nyerere, J.K. 1966. Freedom and Unity: a selection from writings and speeches 1952–65. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Owens, G.R. 2004. On the Edge of a City: an historical ethnography of urban identity in the northwestern suburbs of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. PhD dissertation, Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
Owens, G.R. 2010. ‘Post-colonial migration: virtual culture, urban farming and new peri-urban growth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1975–2000’, Africa 80, 2: 249–74.Google Scholar
Posel, D. 2010. ‘Races to consume: revisiting South Africa's history of race, consumption and the struggle for freedom’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 33, 2: 157–75.Google Scholar
Raikes, P. 1978. ‘Rural differentiation and class-formation in Tanzania’, Journal of Peasant Studies 5, 3: 285–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravallion, M. 2010. ‘The developing world's bulging (but vulnerable) middle class’, World Development 38, 4: 445–54.Google Scholar
Research and Analysis Working Group, United Republic of Tanzania. 2009. Poverty and Human Development Report 2009. Dar es Salaam.Google Scholar
Roxburgh, C., Dörr, N., Leke, A., Tazi-Riffi, A., van Wemelen, A., Lund, S., Chironga, M., Alatovik, T., Atkins, C., Tefous, N. & Zeino-Mahmalat, T.. 2010. ‘Lions on the move: the progress and potential of African economies’, McKinsey Global Institute, <www.mckinsey.com>, accessed 12.4.2013.,+accessed+12.4.2013.>Google Scholar
Samoff, J. 1979. ‘The bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie: decentralization and class structure in Tanzania’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 21, 1: 30–62.Google Scholar
Seekings, J. and Nattrass, N. 2005. Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shivji, I.G. 1976. Class Struggles in Tanzania. London: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Sklar, R.L. 1979. ‘The nature of class domination in Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies 17, 4: 531–52.Google Scholar
Southall, R. 2004. ‘Political change and the black middle class in democractic South Africa’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 38, 3: 521–42.Google Scholar
Spronk, R. 2012. Ambiguous Pleasures: sexuality and middle class self-perceptions in Nairobi. Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar
The Economist. 2012. ‘A continent goes shopping: Africa's fast-growing middle class has money to spend’, 18.8.2012, London.Google Scholar
Visagie, J. and Posel, D.. 2013. ‘A reconsideration of what and who is middle class in South Africa’, Development Southern Africa 30, 2: 149–67.Google Scholar
Wacquant, L. 1991. ‘Making class: the middle class(es) in social theory and social structure’, in McNall, S.G., Levine, R.F. & Fantasia, R., eds. Bringing Class Back in: contemporary and historical perspectives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 39–64.Google Scholar
Weber, M. 1948. From Max Weber: essays in sociology, Gerth, H.H. & Wright Mills, C., eds. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Werbner, R. 2004. Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: the public anthropology of Kalanga elites. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
West, M.O. 2002. The Rise of an African Middle Class: colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2012. Tanzania: economic overview, <www.worldbank.org/en/country/tanzania/overview>, accessed 22.6.2013.,+accessed+22.6.2013.>Google Scholar