Post-socialist micro-politics: Kilimanjaro, 1993

In what sense are current African politics explicable as efforts to 'domesticate' modernity? In Tanzania the post-socialist liberalisation has opened space for new forms and objects of competition. A scramble for control and for resources in the Kilimanjaro-Meru area in 1993 is described here. The variety of competitive activities involved is encapsulated in events in four radically different organisational arenas: in Chadema, a new national political party; in the Lutheran Church; in a sub-village on Kilimanjaro; and in a local patrilineage. These organisational frameworks are approached as partially autonomous, locally specific, sites of political activity. Each is visibly marked by a historical past while also being rapidly propelled to respond to immediate changes of circumstance in a large environment. The details suggest that classical theoretical definitions of 'modernity' do not always stand up as useful analytic devices.