Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Africa: The Case of Tanzania

Description

Nationalism has generated violence, bloodshed, and genocide, as well as patriotic sentiments that encourage people to help fellow citizens and place public responsibilities above personal interests. This study explores the contradictory character of African nationalism as it unfolded over decades of Tanzanian history in conflicts over public policies concerning the rights of citizens, foreigners, and the nation's Asian racial minority. These policy debates reflected a history of racial oppression and foreign domination and were shaped by a quest for economic development, racial justice, and national self-reliance.

Ronald Aminzade is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. He has also taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the University of Lund, and the University of Amsterdam. His research on the political consequences of capitalist development in nineteenth-century France has been published in numerous articles and in two books, Ballots and Barricades and Class, Politics, and Early Industrial Capitalism. He is the co-editor of The Social Worlds of Higher Education (1999), on the sociology of education, and Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2001), on social movements and contentious politics. His current research focuses on nationalism and the politics of economic development in East Africa.

'This neatly structured and sophisticated book undoubtedly contributes to a better understanding of one of Africa's exemplary nationalisms - the Tanzanian nationalist struggle and nation-building project. In a well-documented narrative the author addresses a general audience, which is one of the strengths of the volume, while at the same time contributing to the growing scholarly literature. Aminzade highlights and connects the parts that constitute the nation-building context, thus providing an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of national identity formation.' Istvan Tarrosy, African Affairs