Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:31:29.726Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF INDEPENDENCE AND SOCIALISM IN NORTH PARE, TANZANIA, 1961–88

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2004

MICHAEL J. SHERIDAN
MICHAEL J. SHERIDAN
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article draws on archival sources and oral histories to describe changing post-colonial land management in the North Pare Mountains of Tanzania. The independent state transformed colonial institutions but did not maintain colonial common property regimes for water source, irrigation and forest management. Farmers responded by encroaching upon and dividing the commons. After 1967, Tanzania's socialist policies affected environmental conditions in North Pare indirectly by increasing the ambiguity and negotiability of resource entitlements. The material, social and cultural legacies of these processes include environmental change, declining management capacity and persistent doubt about the value of ‘conservation’.

Keywords

EnvironmentsocialismconservationTanzania
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 81 - 102
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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

Ethnographic and archival research for this article was conducted in Usangi Division, Mwanga, Dar es Salaam, Moshi and Arusha in 1997–8. It was supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Fulbright program. Informants were selected based on their status as the managers and caretakers of common property resources, such as water sources, irrigation systems and sacred forests. Interview transcripts are available upon request from the author, Sociology/Anthropology Dept., University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405 USA. The author thanks the anonymous reviewers of the JAH for their perceptive comments.