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The Persistence of Subsistence and the Limits to Development Studies: The Challenge of Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Tony Waters
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Abstract

There are two general approaches to assessing what is known as ‘development’. First, there are classical accounts focusing on Europe's development during the industrial revolution. They describe how urban areas expanded at the expense of the social and economic resources of the rural areas, disrupting an independent subsistence peasantry. A major consequence is that today all Europeans are dependent socially, politically, and economically on the modern capitalist system. The second (more common) approach to development focuses on the modern Third World. This approach assumes that, as with Europe, the entire Third World is dependent on the modern capitalist system. Development studies focus on the assessment of how Third World countries can most effectively engage world capitalism. Discussion is typically reduced to comparisons between world systems theory and neoclassical economics. The Tanzanian government has used standard policies grounded in neoclassical and world‐system assumptions since independence. But both policies failed to produce the predicted economic growth. This article argues that both policies failed because the Tanzanian peasantry, like the early modern European peasantry, is not dependent on the operation of world capitalism for basic subsistence. In fact, as studies have shown, rural Tanzania is only weakly incorporated into the capitalist world system, and in consequence has not been an easy target for what world‐system theorists call ‘peripheral integration’. What makes Tanzania different is the fact that the rural peasantry do not use market mechanisms in the distribution of the ‘means of production’, especially arable land for swidden agriculture, or, for that matter, labour or cattle.

Résumé

Il existe deux manières générales d'aborder l'évaluation de ce que l'on appelle le «développement». La première approche correspond aux discours classiques axés sur le développement de l'Europe pendant la révolution industrielle. Ils décrivent l'expansion des zones urbaines au détriment des ressources sociales et économiques des zones rurales, bouleversant un paysannat de subsistance indépendant. Une des principales conséquences en est aujourd'hui la dépendance sociale, politique et économique de tous les Européens vis‐à‐vis du système capitaliste moderne. La seconde approche (plus répandue) du développement est centrée sur le tiers‐monde moderne. Elle est fondée sur l'hypothèse selon laquelle la totalité du tiers‐monde, comme l'Europe, est tributaire du système capitaliste moderne. Les études sur le développement portent essentiellement sur la manière la plus efficace dont les pays du tiers‐monde peuvent adhérer au capitalisme mondial. Le débat se réduit généralement à une comparaison entre théorie des systèmes mondiaux et économie néoclassique. Depuis son indépendance, la Tanzanie a basé sa politique sur ces deux hypothèses, à savoir l'économie néoclassique et la théorie des systèmes mondiaux. Or, aucune n'a engendré la croissance économique escomptée. L'article attribue l'échec de ces politiques au fait que le paysannat tanzanien, comme le paysannat européen moderne initialement, n'est pas tributaire du capitalisme mondial pour assurer sa subsistance. En fait, comme des études l'ont montré, la Tanzanie rurale n'est que faiblement intégrée dans le système capitaliste mondial et n'a donc pas été une cible facile pour ce que les théoriciens des systèmes mondiaux appellent «l'intégration périphérique». La Tanzanie se distingue par le fait que le paysannat rural n'applique pas les mécanismes du marché pour répartir les «moyens de production», notamment les terres arables destinées à la culture sur brûlis, ni même la main‐d'œuvre ou le bétail.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , November 2000 , pp. 614 - 652
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2000

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