Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29

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Political Geography
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

Geopolitics at the margins? Reconsidering genealogies of critical

a b s t r a c t
Keywords: Critical geopolitics has become one of the most vibrant parts of political geography. However it remains a
Subaltern geopolitics particularly western way of knowing which has been much less attentive to other traditions of thinking.
Pan-Africanism
This paper engages with Pan-Africanism, and specically the vision of the architect of post-colonial
Critical geopolitics
Postcolonialism
Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, to explore this overlooked contribution to critical engagements with geopoli-
tics. Pan-Africanism sought to forge alternative post-colonial worlds to the binary geopolitics of the Cold
War and the geopolitical economy of neo-colonialism. The academic division of labour has meant that
these ideas have been consigned to African studies rather than being drawn into wider debates around
the denitions of key disciplinary concepts. However Nyereres continental thinking can be seen as a
form of geopolitical imagination that challenges dominant neo-realist projections, and which still has
much to offer contemporary political geography.
2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY license.

We, the people of Tanganyika, would like to light a candle and and 1970s and to the discourses and practices of Pan-Africanism
put it on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, which would shine which sought to forge alternative post-colonial worlds to the bi-
beyond our borders, giving hope where there was despair, love nary geopolitics of the Cold War and the geopolitical economy of
where there was hate and dignity where before there was only neo-colonialism e what I have referred to elsewhere as subaltern
humiliation. President Julius K. Nyerere on Tanganyikas inde- geopolitics (Sharp, 2011b, 2011c). Specically, I want to discuss the
pendence, 1961. geopolitical vision of the architect of post-colonial Tanzania, Julius
Nyerere, who, as the opening quote suggests, offered a geopolitical
Critical geopolitics has become one of the most vibrant parts of
vision of hope and inclusion, one that recognised shared precarity
political geography since the concept was rst introduced by
rather than sought to shut out difference. The geopolitics of the
Gearoid Tuathail in the late 1980s. From its initial concern with
academic division of labour, so brilliantly explained by Pletsch
the scripting of global geographical political relations in the formal
(1981), has meant that Nyereres ideas have been consigned to
realms of statecraft, critical geopolitics has undergone a number of
African studies rather than being drawn into wider debates around
revisions and reworkings; broadening from the rareed workings
the denitions of key disciplinary concepts. I suggest that Nyereres
of statecraft to the ways in which hegemonic geopolitical narratives
contribution to geopolitical thinking is signicant; his continental
are established in wider society, and shifting from a focus on the
thinking is a form of geopolitical imagination that challenges
statements of (male) political elites to the embodied experiences of
dominant neo-realist projections. While the optimism of the hey-
scalar politics by a range of people and publics.
day of Pan-Africanism might have dissipated in the face of neolib-
However, through all of this, and although not the initial
eral structural adjustment programmes, such visions may still have
intention,1 critical geopolitics remains a particularly western way of
much to offer contemporary political geography.
knowing which has been much less attentive to other traditions of
thinking through international politics and the role of the nation
and citizen within these narratives. I wish to return to the 1960s Genealogies of critical geopolitics

The study of geopolitics is the study of the spatialisation of in-

* Tel.: 44 1413305405. In an editorial in Geopolitics in 2010, Power quotes Perrys

0962-6298 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY license.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2013.04.006
 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29 21

still being largely relevant to the subdiscipline today: Anglo- despite the importance of other scales of political activity and
American political geography poses and pursues a limited and identity, the state is still the preeminent actor, and thus the goal for
impoverished version of the discipline, largely ignoring the political Third World societies; after all, Third World societies came into
concerns of four fths of humankind (Perry, 1987, quoted in Power, post-colonial being as states e however false their boundaries e
2010: 433). Despite the global gaze of political geography, it is still, and have had to struggle for independence. Thus, subaltern realism
in many ways, subject to parochial forms of theorising (Robinson, is a critique of conventional realism which considers only the ex-
2003). Although, of course, there is much political geography based periences of the Great Powers as having relevance to the unfolding
outside the west (see, for example, Sidaway & Simon, 1993; Slater, of world events. Realist champion Kenneth Waltz famously argued
2004), Darbys (2004: 6) critique of the core concepts in interna- that Denmark does not matter. Such accounts serve to perpetuate
tional relations theory is equally relevant here: the decolonisation the western-centrism of IR theory as they are complicit in hiding
of the international has barely begun (see also Tickner, 2003). the myriad ways in which international politics is made and
More specically, James Tyner has argued that Our geographies, remade. The alternative is not to suggest that Denmark e and
and especially our political geographies, remain largely distant Tanzania e always matter in and of themselves, but is instead to
from non-European theorists and theories. Our texts on nation- challenge the ontological basis of much IR and geopolitical theory.
alism and identities, in particular, are woefully ignorant of Pan- John Agnew (2007) has argued that IR has been dominated by US
African nationalism and other African diasporic movements and European understandings of the state and world-economy and
(Tyner, 2004: 343; see also Gilmore, 2008). so has argued for the need for attention to be given to the geog-
Slater (1998), following Chakrabartys (1992) insistence of the raphy of knowledge in international politics:
need to provincialise Europe, argues that it is necessary to go
Such geographies, however, are not ends in themselves. The
beyond an image of the Third World as a conceptually empty space
point is to understand the ontological bases of knowing from
to be lled with western knowledge, on the one hand, and as a
perspectives that do not either privilege a singular history of
place full of resistance to western ways and indigenous knowledge
knowledge associated with a specic world region (a typical
on the other. Third World2 scholars should be regarded as theorists
relativism) or presume conceptions of knowledge that implicitly
in their own right, not only offering reection on local conditions
or explicitly assume their own self-evident universality
(see also Mignolo, 2002; Pletsch, 1981). Despite their suggestion of
(a typical positivism) (Agnew, 2007: 139).
universalism, conventional western accounts of cosmopolitanism
have tended to marginalise other expressions of transnational Instead, Agnew (2007: 146) highlights the fact that knowledge
connection. Expanding on this point, Featherstone (2007: 434) is made as it circulates; it is never made completely in one place
outlines a subaltern cosmopolitanism which emphasizes the and then simply consumed as is elsewhere.
multiple geographies through which different forms of cosmopol- Recognising these tensions, Ayoobs concept of subaltern real-
itanism are constituted [which.] permits a focus on the diverse ism presents an apparently oxymoronic pairing of terms, tying
forms of political identity and agency constituted through different together a position of structural weakness with a dominant way of
forms of cosmopolitanism. While his work focuses on rather more seeing, ordering and organising the world and it is this tension that I
unruly patterns of ows, his description is also apposite for wish to bring to subaltern geopolitics too. My intention is not to
challenges such as Pan-Africanism which he suggests evokes types appropriate subaltern nor, in some grand gesture, to claim to offer
of political activity that have contested dominant forms of global- up some conceptual space for the term. Rather, by combining the
ization, but have eschewed, challenged or exceeded bounded forms notions of subaltern e a presence relegated to the lower orders e
of the local (Featherstone, 2007: 435, 2012; see also Slater, 1998). and geopolitics e a dominant form of knowledge that has attemp-
The importance of recovering these alternative networks of global ted to order and regulate e I seek to present a term with the same
connection is to challenge even the most critical forms of cosmo- kinds of internal tensions and contradictions intended by critical
politanism in which, it is the privileged and hospitable we that geopolitics (but perhaps now forgotten given the ubiquity of the
extends the invitation to liberal planetary consciousness when term (see also Dalby, 2010)). Subaltern geopolitics aims to draw out
cosmopolitanism is normalised as universality; cosmopolitanism a complex and entangled geographical imagination which recog-
itself becomes a god trick (Jazeel, 2011: 84). The challenge is to nises that western thought has always been e and must always be e
recognise difference without rendering it purely as exotic. so much more marked by its apparent other than has been recog-
Similar discussions have also been taking place in international nised, just as the history of contact and exchange means that the
relations theory, which has been characterised as equally struggling idea of an unchanging other presence is an equal ction. However,
to think past Western IR, to paraphrase Bilgin (2008; see also so much of the subaltern has been silenced in global discourse,
Guillaume, 2007). Among the challenges to classical realism is where only the concerns of the great states are noted. So, subaltern
Mohammed Ayoobs project of proposing a subaltern realism geopolitics is an attempt to write against a logic which is always and
which highlights the dominance of subalterity: It is the common everywhere tending to write a universal, to see instead how things
experience of all human societies that these are the elements that might look otherwise if we admitted that Denmark did matter (to
constitute the large majority of any members of any social system return to the famous example), that women matter, that during the
(Ayoob, 2002: 40e41). Certainly in the post-colonial era, the vast Cold War, non-aligned states mattered, that various imaginations of
majority of violent conicts have taken place in the territory of Pan-Africanism matter. It is not, then, an argument for the inherent
subaltern states, even when dominant states have been involved in, value of any one projection but instead for the need for a political
or indeed have been the driving force behind, conict. Ayoobs geography that is open and engaging with a number of voices.
(2010: 129) perspective offers a different set of principles for in- While studying political resistance and opposition to statecraft
ternational relations; as he puts it, the tension between the heg- is clearly important, it is necessary also to consider the ongoing
emonic and subaltern perspectives of international order can be struggle over the role of the state as this formal politics must not
summarised in the following fashion: While the former emphasizes get completely overlooked as critical scholarship looks to alter-
order among states and justice within them, the latter stresses native spaces of politics. The postcolonial grounding of subaltern
order within states and justice among them. geopolitics offers a challenge to those accounts which simply reject
Ayoobs realism is one which acknowledges the interdepen- the state and formal politics, recognising the ongoing lived
dency of international and domestic politics, but insists that, importance of such scales while simultaneously highlighting their
22 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29

social and spatial construction. This then represents a post-colonial freedom of expression, of movement, of religious belief, and of
sensibility structured around the gure of the hybrid (Bhabha, association. This was a declaration for Tanzania but was outward
1994), and especially the concept of mimicry, which is dened looking, stating also that Tanzania would seek liberation and unity
through strategy, subversion and survival; it may be a way of for all of Africa e and Tanzania maintained this commitment in its
doing world politics in a seemingly similar yet unexpectedly subsequent status as a front line state in the ght against the
different way (Bilgin, 2008: 6). Mimicry does not suggest the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Other wishing to become the same, or that it is radically different, This placed the country at the forefront of Pan-Africanism, as a
but instead destabilises these binarised categories. It sets a different place which promised a genuinely new way of organising society,
path from anti-geopolitics which represents an assertion of per- and a beacon for radical thinkers and activists from around the
manent independence from the state whoever is in power world. Nyereres thinking beyond colonial-imposed boundaries and
(Routledge, 1998: 245, emphasis in original). towards a continental geopolitical imagination promised Africa a
Thus, unlike anti-geopolitics, subaltern geopolitics does not presence and voice on the new world stage. Many have commented
position its subjects outside of the state and associated institutions. on the importance of Tanzania, especially after the Arusha Decla-
It shares the utopian instincts of progressive geopolitics (Kearns, ration, in the geopolitical imagination of Pan-Africanism, giving it a
2008, 2009) but with a desire to keep open to a range of voices magnetic appeal to the Black World [.] Tanzania captured their
what such utopias might be (Sharp, 2011a). It is a positioning that hopes, it set re to their imagination for its uncompromising
recognises the possibility that political identities can be established commitment to human dignity, regardless of skin color (Karioki,
through geographical representations that are neither fully inside 1979: 200). On visiting the country, US activist Angela Davis pro-
nor outside (hooks, 1990), and thus seeks a model of political claimed that Tanzania was an inspiration (Karioki, 1979: 205)
subjectivity to challenge that perpetuated by dominant western while CLR James famously claimed that the Arusha Declaration was
geopolitics that does not rely on otherness (see, for example, the the highest stage of resistance ever reached by revolting blacks.
contributions to the special issue of Geoforum on Subaltern Initially Tanzania experienced impressive improvements in life
Geopolitics: Harker, 2011; Koopman, 2011; Sharp, 2011b, 2011c; expectancy and achieved nearly universal literacy (rising from a
Smith, 2011; Woon, 2011). Hence, in my use of the term subaltern I gure of around 15% at independence), although this was in large
want to return to the original military meaning of this as a lower part the result of signicant foreign aid. With the signicant
rank (Childs & Williams, 1997: 333)e neither the commander, nor exception of the events leading to the union of Tanganyika with
outside of the ranks e an interpretation that I think nds similar- Zanzibar in 1964 (see, for example, Mwakikagile, 2008; Shivji,
ities with Ayoob. This recognises the entangled nature of global 2008), post-colonial Tanzania has been relatively peaceful,
political relations but in such a way that does not deny the without the intertribal conicts characteristic of other states in the
asymmetry of power relations and the reproduction of subordi- region. Nyerere and subsequent presidents stood down at the end
nating modes of representation (Sharp, Routledge, Philo, & of their terms in ofce, and, again unusually in the region,
Paddison, 2000; Slater, 2004: 194). A revisiting of post-colonial continued to live in the country; there have been no presidential
Tanzania is illustrative of such subaltern geopolitics. assassinations in Tanzania.
However Nyereres economic policies have been less successful.
Commentators have linked this to a combination of, on the one hand,
Post-colonial Tanzania: Binadamu wote ni ndugu zangu, na
structural changes in the global economy and, on the other, the
Afrika ni moja (all people are brethren and Africa is one)
failure of collective socialism e with the exact combination of
reasoning reecting the ideological position of the observer. Despite
From the rubble of World War II rose a bipolar Cold War that
the legacy of this failure, Nyerere was e and is still e held in high
threatened the existence of humanity. Hair-triggers on nuclear
regard in Africa and around the world. His name is nearly always
weapons alongside heated debates on poverty, inequality, and
preceded by Mwalimu, the Swahili word for teacher which conveys
freedom threatened even those who did not live under the U.S.
a particular sense of experience and wisdom. Young (2004: 47) ar-
or Soviet umbrellas [.] Thrown between these two major for-
gues that although the Nyerere vision of the popular socialist polity
mations the darker nations amassed as the Third World [.
failed by any measure in the policy realm, the moral rectitude of the
Through the UN], aspects other than political equality came to
Mwalimu preserved his image as a charismatic leader dedicated to
the fore: the Third World project included a demand for the
the common weal. After his retirement from Tanzanian politics,
redistribution of the worlds resources, a more dignied rate of
Nyerere lead the Organisation of African Unity and the South Com-
return for the labor power of their people, and a shared
mission, and was regularly called in to negotiate regional disputes.
acknowledgement of the heritage of science, technology, and
His vision for a united Africa is perhaps his greatest legacy. However,
culture (Prashad, 2007: xvexvii).
it is not a legacy that has found a place in political geography.
Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika to independence from Britain in
1961, with Tanzania being created from the union with Zanzibar in Nyereres Pan-African geopolitics
1964. Although initially seen as close to the west (and especially
Britain) because of the non-violent nature of the independence . every possible attempt is made to squeeze African events into
movement and the respect Nyerere attained internationally as a the framework of the cold war or other Big Power conicts. The
statesman, Nyerere was clear that Tanzania would avoid either of big question is always: Is this or that African country pro-East or
the Cold War blocs and was a prominent advocate of both Pan- pro-West? These kinds of questions [.] are based on a very
Africanism and the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1967, the ruling fundamental mistake e and, I would add, an unwarranted de-
party introduced the Arusha Declaration which promoted equality, gree of arrogance! They imply that Africa has no ideas of its own
self-reliance, traditional African communal values, and the virtues and no interests of its own. They assume the exclusive validity of
of education and hard work. Paralleling Fanons (1963) warning of the international conicts which existed when we achieved
the pitfalls of national consciousness shaping newly-independent nationhood. They are based on the belief that African actions
African states, the Arusha Declaration was a stand against the must inevitably be determined by reference to either the
emerging indigenous elite, the wabenzi.3 The state would have Western liberal tradition or to communist theory or practice.
ownership of the means of production while citizens were to have (Nyerere, 1969 cited in Nyerere, 1974b: 43).
 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29 23

Nyereres was a geopolitical vision that recognised the shared thing called the international market, even though what poor
precarity of the new post-colonial states, seeing this precarity as Zambia has lost some wealthy countries have gained. The poor
the result of both a militarised Cold War geopolitical system and a of Zambia are without inuence in this matter. But the gov-
dominant and manipulative capitalist neo-colonial one. He pressed ernment of Zambia has no inuence either. [.] The rich and
for Third World solidarity or, as he put it, a trade union of the powerful countries of the world preach democracy to the poor
poor. While he was clear in recognising the signicance of military nations and when it suits them they are liable to apply sanctions
power in geopolitical affairs, discussing the inuence of quite against those countries which they designate as undemocratic
conventional geopolitical discourse e such as proximity and the or acting against human rights. But the same preachers of de-
facts of geography and history e he was quick to emphasise that mocracy at the national level ght actively against any kind of
the basic reality of that situation, the real cause of our military democracy at the international level. (Nyerere, 1999: 585e586).
circumstances is our economic weakness. While military geopo-
Nyereres example perfectly illustrates Archibugis argument
litical power has carved up the Cold War world, he acknowledged
that democracy at a country-level is meaningless if in a truly global
that the big powers can have their way without using military
world there is no democracy beyond country boundaries (in Painter
power at all:
& Jeffrey, 2009: 90e91). Furthermore, from the marginal position in
The real and urgent threat to the independence of almost all the the world system from where their subaltern geopolitics were
non-aligned states, thus, comes not from the military, but from scripted, it was all too clear to Third World leaders how power
the economic power of the big states. It is poverty which con- worked in this global system. While Tanzanias path to indepen-
stitutes our greatest danger (Nyerere, 1970 cited in Nyerere, dence was characterised by non-violence, Nyerere did not eschew
2011: 5). violence (as his commitment to offering shelter to anti-colonial
movements from southern Africa who used violent tactics
Nyereres ambition was to overcome this poverty by developing
demonstrated). He was all too aware of the violence in the world
national economies in such a way which does not run the risk of
order into which Tanganyika and then Tanzania had come into
being sucked into the orbit of one or other of the big powers
being:
(Nyerere, 1970 cited in Nyerere, 2011: 6). The establishment of the
Non-Aligned Movement, and Nyereres philosophy of Pan- . peace by itself is not enough for the human spirit if it means
Africanism was based upon a clear challenge to classical military just an absence of violent conict [.] peace and human justice
power geopolitical principles. In a speech in 1970, Nyerere scripted are interlinked, and should be interlinked . Those of us who are
non-aligned south-south geopolitics as an alternative to the clear free to develop ourselves and our nation have no right to demand
and opposing power blocs of the Cold War. Referring to the rst that the oppressed, the victims of discrimination, the starving
non-aligned meeting of 1961, Nyerere claimed that: and the persecuted, should acquiesce in their present condition.
If we do make such a demand we are ourselves becoming their
. just by the fact of meeting e asserting the independence of
persecutors and their oppressors. The peace which exists
either bloc, the member states of that conference were taking an
while such human conditions prevail is neither secure nor
important political action: they were announcing that a refusal
justiable (Nyerere, 1968 cited in Nyerere, 1974a: 1e2).
to become an ally of either side was not a temporary aberration
of a few states! It was an important new international devel- This was not then simply a vision of non-alignment as neutrality,
opment, which the big powers could not ignore. [.] The con- instead, he argued that it is, or certainly ought to be, a policy of
ference members did not claim to have great armed forces, and involvement in world affairs. Nyerere realised that African leaders
their meeting did not mark any change in the military balance had to seek this out wherever possible, and to be proactive in order
of power. But, the conference declared the existence of boundaries to hold off the manipulation of their weakness by external forces:
to the exercise of that military power. Its members made clear
African unity is essential to the continent as a whole and to
that they were not going to be willing participants in the Cold
every part of it. Politically we have inherited boundaries which
War struggle. The dangerous game of threat and counter-threat
are either unclear or such ethnological and geographical
which was being played between the big powers and their
nonsense that they are a fruitful source of disagreements. And
allies or satellites no longer involved every nation of the world
such disagreements, if allowed to develop, would lead to a waste
(Nyerere, 1970 cited in Nyerere, 2011: 2; emphasis mine).
of scarce resources in the building up of national armies
Illustrating well Ayoobs (2010) reections on the differences (Nyerere, 1963 cited in Nyerere, 1967c: 212).
between dominant and subaltern states, Nyereres subaltern
The way to achieve this, he argued, was to use African nation-
geopolitics regarded the international as unaccountable e but not
alisms as a building block to a united Africa. The international was a
unaccountable to all, just to the states of Africa and the South. His
space of neo-colonial capitalism where economic and military po-
speeches revealed the nature of western geopolitical power as
wer ruled. Nyerere rejected this logic and sought to change it
being based in military and economic domination e forms of
through the forms of connection that could come from Pan-
violence that he was quick to challenge. He often replied to those
Africanism. As the countries of Africa gradually gained their inde-
who accused him of being undemocratic with his one party state
pendence from Europe, Nyerere recognised the danger of the
that their obsession was with other states democracy while
weakness of each leading to possible interventions by one or the
accepting the international as totally undemocratic:
other of the Cold War superpowers. He wrote of his fears of The
In the world at large, however, there is neither international second scramble for the continent, where the superpowers
democracy nor any clear centre of authority at which the poor would use their inuence to incite conict between the newly-
can direct their protests. For example, when the world price of independent states, arguing that the weaker amongst us are
copper falls by 50 per cent in one week, the national income of regarded as no more than pawns in the Cold War conicts (1963
Zambia drops like a stone; its workers will protest (perhaps cited in Nyerere, 1967b: 205). And yet, Nyerere recognised the
violently). But they direct their anger at the government of power of nationalism as a means of uniting the disparate tribes and
Zambia, which has no power at all in this matter. What else can ethnic groups in each newly-independent African state, to assist in
the workers do? They cannot affect the decisions of this vague moving beyond conict for power and resources towards unity.
24 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29

When addressing the role of the Tanzanian state and its citizens, The boundaries which divide African states are so nonsensical
Nyereres vision included a nationalism that would unite Tanga- that without our sense of unity they would be a cause of friction.
nyikan, and later Tanzanian, people despite tribal, religious, lin- But we have no alternative but start from the position which we
guistic or ethnic differences. In Tanzania, it was more than one inherited after the colonial partition of Africa. There is no one
hundred tribal units which lost their freedom; it was one nation country which does not include areas which would come under
that regained it. (Nyerere, 1969: 44) It was not a bourgeois Euro- another political unit if any principles of political geography
pean form of nationalism, but instead an outwardly looking one. were considered, and numerous tribes live in at least two
countries or have their origins in some other area of Africa. Yet
Having come into contact with a civilization which has over-
for us to start making claims on each others territory would be
emphasized the freedom of the individual, we are in fact faced
to play into the hands of those who wish to keep Africa weak so
with one of the big problems of Africa in the modern world. Our
as to improve their own relative strength in the future, and it
problem is just this: how to get the benets of European society
might well lead us to the tragic absurdity of spending money on
e benets that have been brought about by an organization
armaments while our people die for want of medical attention
based upon the individual e and yet retain Africans own
or starve for want of knowledge (Nyerere, 1963 cited in Nyerere,
structure of society in which the individual is a member of a
1967a: 189).
kind of fellowship (Nyerere, 1960).
The ultimate goal, he insisted, had to be nothing short of a
Thus, Nyereres was an alternative modernity (see Moore &
United States of Africa. He developed these ideas further in his
Sanders, 2001), drawing both on concepts from traditional Afri-
article on The policies and purposes of Pan-Africanism, published
can society e most notably ideas of interdependence and class-
in 1963:
lessness in his idea of ujamaa e and those from modern western
thought. Although his vision was for a united Africa, it was the There is only one way in which Africa can stay outside irrelevant
concept of nationalism that he drew on to develop the building world conicts and in which she can hope to deal with
blocs of identity e rst Tanzanian and then Eastern African. He oppressing economic and social problems which now beset her
recognised the challenges of post-colonial nation-building in terms people. The present boundaries must lose their signicance and
of overcoming the divisions of tribe, religion and ethnicity that had become merely a demarcation of administrative areas within a
been ignored in the colonial process of territorial division. So, while larger unit. This is an urgent and difcult matter; it becomes
we can see the relevance of Benedict Andersons (1983) ideas of more difcult every day as the existing nation states ght trib-
imagined communities being drawn upon in the construction of alism by building nationalism. But there is, for the time being,
the Tanzanian state, this was an outward-looking community- the saving grace of an emotional unity, born during the inde-
building, and not one based on dening Tanzanian-ness from what pendence struggle, and the universal recognition of the need for
was outside and different. Nyerere actively promoted Swahili as the its development in political and economic terms (Nyerere, 1963
national (and regional) language, a widely understood and cited in Nyerere, 1967c: 212e213).
increasingly popular language which was neither identied with
any one tribal group nor with the colonial power [which] was a
Doing subaltern geopolitics
great asset to the nationalists (Mytton, 1983: 114). As Chaterjee
(1986) has argued for post-colonial India, Tanzanian nationalism
Nyereres views on the responsibility to others were put into
embodied this contradiction producing a discourse in which, even
practice in geopolitical discourse and actions at a variety of scales,
as it challenged the colonial claim to political domination [.] also
reinforcing the Tanzanian leaders scripting of the scalar connec-
accepted the very intellectual premises of modernity on which
tions between individual and national responsibility and the wider
colonial domination was based. The internal spaces of ujamaa
political and ethical connections within with Tanzania was entan-
were to be mobilised through the public modern spaces of
gled. At the continental scale was Tanzanias responsibility to other
governance and national expression.
Africans. Nyerere famously offered to hold off Tanganyikan inde-
Although he promoted nationalism in Africa as a rst stage
pendence until uhuru (freedom) was achieved by Kenya and
(unlike Ghanas independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who
Uganda, for he felt that freedom for his country would be mean-
wanted to go straight to Pan-Africanism from colonialism), nation-
ingless while other East Africans were still colonised. Nyerere was
building was ultimately aimed at transcending the tribal and ethnic
also quick to back those ghting apartheid and white minority rule
differences that Nyerere anticipated would tear apart independent
in southern Africa. After Rhodesias Unilateral Declaration of In-
Africa. For Nyerere, African nationalism, if played out in a conven-
dependence in November 1965, the Organisation of African Unity
tional way, would fall into the hands of neo-colonial powers. Thus
recommended that if Britain refused to crush Ian Smiths illegal
he insisted that African nationalism must be different:
regime, diplomatic ties should be severed. As perhaps the single
As I have said once before, the role of African nationalism is most important front line state in the battle against racism and
different e or should be different e from the nationalism of the apartheid in southern Africa, Tanzania was quick to take this action
past. We must use the African national states as an instrument despite this meaning the loss of $22m in an interest-free loan that
for the reunication of Africa. African nationalism is meaning- had been negotiated with Britain but not yet signed: Nyerere
less, is anachronistic, and is dangerous, if it is not at the same admitted that the freeze on the loan threw Tanzanias First Five Year
time Pan-African (Nyerere, 1963 cited in Nyerere, 1967a: 194). Plan off balance, but then argued that some principles were more
important than short-run economic gains (Karioki, 1979: 193). In
Nyerere argued for the necessity that the present boundaries addition, one of the key events which created the desperate con-
must lose their signicance and become merely a demarcation ditions of the Tanzanian economy in the early 1980s, forcing the
of administrative areas within a larger unit (Nyerere, 1963 country to go to the IMF and accept the conditions of structural
cited in Nyerere, 1967c: 212), but recognised that this was adjustment, was Nyereres commitment to ghting Idi Amin in
becoming more difcult by the day as African states used the Uganda.
trappings of nationalism in their attempts to overcome tribal At the same time, Nyereres attention to the nature of nation-
rivalries. alism ensured his model of geopolitics was rmly linked to the
 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29 25

bodies and identities of Tanzanian citizens. His understanding of Cold War geopolitics, of colonialism, of race and of political ideol-
the embodied consequences of colonialism (and the importance of ogy. This paper is not seeking to evaluate Nyereres policies; that
a strong rejection of this system) echoed the ideas of Frantz Fanon has been done elsewhere (e.g. Legum & Mmari, 1995; McDonald &
(1986) and was apparent in his reection upon early African Sahle, 2003). However, it is important not to romanticise Nyereres
independence: role. He and the ruling TANU (later CCM4) party wanted to create
socialism in a hurry (Prashad, 2007) e they didnt have time to go
When Kwame Nkrumah was released from prison this produced
through the stages described and debated by Marxists e as illus-
a transformation. I was in Britain and oh you could see it in the
trated in the title of one of Nyereres books, We must run while they
Ghanaians! They became different human beings, different from
walk. There were authoritarian acts: the insistence of the necessity
all the rest of us (in Bunting, 1999: np).
of a single party state (although seats were always contested),
Nyereres subaltern geopolitics was one that, while recognising agricultural collectivisation leading to the forced relocation of a
the ontological realities of the scales of certain political structures e signicant percentage of the rural population in the late 1970s
the boundaries of new states in Africa, the effects of the interna- (Briggs, 1979), and other suggestions of strong arm tactics to ensure
tional economy e did not see these boundaries as natural nor the leaderships vision was promoted. Nyerere was desperately
inevitably containing. For him, security came not from bounding trying to create African socialists from a population of uneducated
danger but by looking outward at shared conditions, shared pre- peasants to take forward his vision of Africa and its place in the
carity to this system. It highlights a clearly moral geopolitics (a modern world order, and he believed that through education and
strategy of power Larsen (2011) argues is often used by small the state run media his ideas would eventually take hold in the
states), within which Nyerere was all too aware of the limitations of popular imagination; but at the start it was an inherently top-down
state power available to him. Thus, his performance of sovereignty affair.
was one that constantly invoked moral power (instead of economic Despite this, Tanzania and Nyereres vision for it placed the
or military power) to claim global inuence. This performance of country at the heart of a newly-emerging post-colonial interna-
sovereignty is one that is much more about normative ideals of the tionalism. This is, of course, because the creation of post-colonial
state than a description of the state itself: relative and negotiated e Tanzania was not only achieved through formal government pol-
a strategy and a process e rather than something that is fundamental icy. Tanzania emerged as a presence in the world order that had
and absolute (Steinberg & Chapman, 2009: 284). particular meaning: Tanzania became a Front Line State in the ght
Nyereres geopolitical vision for Pan-Africanism thus anticipated against Apartheid and white minority rule in southern Africa; it
Judith Butlers insistence that we reimagine the possibility of became a leading proponent of Pan-Africanism and the non-
community on the basis of vulnerability and loss (2004: 20). aligned movement; it became a a place of return for African-
Rather than a western universalist, or masculinist, form of Americans; and, particularly at the University of Dar es Salaam, a
cosmopolitanism which accepts normative framings of liberal point of intellectual debate for radical academics and students.
democratic deliberation, and choice-making, self-reective sub- Tanzania e as a state in the world system and as a geopolitical
jects, Butler sees subjects as endlessly (re)constituted through presence e was established through all of these entangled scales
dialectical processes of recognition, within multiple networks of and processes.
power (Mitchell, 2007: 6). Nyereres postcolonialism visualised
and internalised this relationality across the imagined and material Geopolitical sites
borders of the nation state. Nyerere recognised the disruptive to-
pographies (Katz, 2001) in the construction of Tanzanian political The Arusha Declaration, Tanzanias status as a front line State in
community, stretched across state boundaries, but grounded in the the liberation of Southern Africa and Nyereres attempt to steer a
recognition of their place in the remaking of identities and the new course of politics and geopolitics through its negotiation of a
possibilities of connection. Through this act of recognition, the self national, continental and global path was a heady mix. Although as
does not precede the Other but they are brought into being the 1970s unfolded, cracks in the dream began to show, this vision
simultaneously, comprehending vulnerability and unequal power continued to draw people from around the world into the 1980s.
relations. Throughout, then, and unlike negritude or the interna- Tanzania became a magnet then for anti-colonial activists and
tional solidarities of the Black Panthers (for example, see Tyner, thinkers from all over the world (Bunting, 1999: np). Some were
2006), Nyereres was a Pan-Africanism that was not dened by ANC members eeing persecution in southern Africa, some com-
race; it was one that recognised nationalism as a process of rades came from Eastern Europe and Maos China, and others came
rejecting divisive tribal and ethic divisions which was not in any from the west, seeking an alternative to what they saw at home.
way incompatible with an African identity; it was an outward Importantly, this was not seen as a move relating to development or
looking set of connections. He frequently insisted upon the inclu- to provide a helping hand in the Third World or in a developing
siveness of citizenship in rst Tanganyika and then Tanzania: This country; rather, many of the intellectuals who were drawn to
is a matter of simple honesty and of trying to live up to the repu- Tanzania came because they saw this as offering the future. There
tation we have earned as being a country which is concerned with was a belief that a tectonic shift in political and ideological lead-
principles. This action is not taken for the sake of people with ership was not only possible but immanent, and Tanzania was at
brown or white skin, but for Tanganyika he argued in January the heart of this. Thus, there were a number of sites where sub-
1964 (Nyerere, 1967c: 259). altern geopolitics were performed beyond e and sometimes in
There is no question that Nyerere played a signicant role in tension with e the site of Nyereres state geopolitics. Such sites
scripting the geopolitics of Tanzanias and Africas role within the included the training camps for southern African resistance
emerging post-colonial world order. As a gure most often asso- movements, communities of African-Americans and cosmopolitan
ciated with a deeply moral perspective e even by many of his po- groups of academics, most notably at the University of Dar es
litical opponents e Nyereres narration of the geopolitical system Salaam.
also included a call to subjectivity on the part of those hearing or The University of Dar es Salaam, located at Mlimani, a hill around
reading his speeches and writings. As well as scripting an alterna- 10 km from the centre of Tanzanias largest city, was one site of
tive to the geopolitical order of the Cold War binary, Nyerere pro- intense (geo)political debate in the early post-colonial years.
jected a subaltern subjectivity which challenged the binaries of Through research and teaching, staff and students on The Hill
26 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29

explored and debated the geopolitical visions of new African states, critical geopolitics. There was great political and intellectual foment
and particularly that of their own leader, Nyerere. But it was also a in many African nations at this point and for many such societies,
beacon for radical thinkers and activists from around the world. In a rather than representing marginal locations in the remaking of the
recent interview with Giovanni Arrighi (2009: np) about his time in second half of the 20th century, they actually promised the location
Dar es Salaam, the interviewer, David Harvey, starts off by saying of the real drivers of change. However, for a variety of reasons,
that it sounded like a paradise of intellectual interactions, leading including the failure in practice of many of the post-colonial
Arrighi to respond: leaders visions of new societies, and the impacts of structural
adjustment policies in the 1980s, this challenge has fallen from
It was a very exciting time, both intellectually and politically.
accounts of geopolitics.5 And yet, there is much still to be learnt
When I got to Dar es Salaam in 1966, Tanzania had only been
from the geopolitics of subaltern cosmopolitanisms, of which, as
independent for a few years. Nyerere was advocating what he
Gilmore (2008: 34) has argued, Pan-Africanism is a long-standing,
considered to be a form of African socialism. He managed to stay
and by no means outmoded example.
equidistant from both sides during the Sino-Soviet split, and
Recently there has been greater attention in the arts and social
maintained very good relations with the Scandinavians. Dar es
sciences on the signicance of marginal literatures. In terms of
Salaam became the outpost of all the exiled national liberation
Africa, as Mbembe (2001: np) has argued, the continent has been
movements of southern Africadfrom the Portuguese colonies,
systematically omitted from social theory so that one consequence
Rhodesia and South Africa. I spent three years at the University
of this blindness is that Africas politics and economics have been
there, and met all kinds of people: activists from the Black Po-
condemned to appear in social theory only as the sign of a lack,
wer movement in the US, as well as scholars and intellectuals
while the discourse of political science and development eco-
like Immanuel Wallerstein, David Apter, Walter Rodney, Roger
nomics has become that of a quest for the cause of that lack. Thus,
Murray, Sol Picciotto, Catherine Hoskins, Jim Mellon, who later
as Pletsch (1981) so compellingly articulated, in the academic di-
was one of the founders of the Weathermen, Luisa Passerini,
vision of labour Africa has tended to be the site of development-
who was doing research on Frelimo, and many others; including,
based research, with much less focus from other parts of the
of course, John Saul.
discipline, and especially from political geography.
Tanzanian theorists and the collection of academics that were At the same time, postcolonialism has been critiqued for its
drawn to the University of Dar es Salaam from around the globe, armchair theorising and the fact that, for postcolonialism to
debated the ways in which this new world order could be made. become established, third world academics have had to take up
Inuential gure Walter Rodney made it clear that this was some- residence in the rst world. Yet, in the years following indepen-
thing to come from the grass roots of African society, that every dence, Pan-Africanism and other subaltern geopolitics forged
African has a responsibility to understand the system and work for around non-alignment created grounded, embedded alternative
its overthrow (Rodney, 1972/2012: 28). It was an intellectual reworkings of western political thought and practice. Ahluwalia
environment that proved unusually stimulating to those involved. (2005) has insisted that post-structuralism has its roots in North
Commentators have argued that Rodneys was an awesome vision, Africa, pointing to the fact that key post-structural thinkers such as
especially since Walter dared to say and believe that such a stu- Louis Althusser and Jacques Derrida were born in Algeria and
pendous transformation must be initiated by Africans and other spent formative years there and Michel Foucault spent an
dwellers in the nether regions of exploitation and domination important sojourn in Tunisia (Shilliam, 2009: np). Ahluwalia traces
(Harding, Hill, & Strickland, 2012: xvii). As Issa Shivji, a student of the inuences of this grounding on the emergence of post-
Walter Rodney and now one of Tanzanias most prominent critical structuralism and a similar thing could be done for the inuence
scholars, explained, we thought globally. We thought in terms of of the post-colonial Tanzanian context on the thinking of such in-
epochs, not in terms of a tomorrow, not in terms of years, not in tellectuals as Walter Rodney, Paul Saul, Giovanni Arrighi and Ter-
terms of decades, but in terms of epochs (Shivji, 1992 cited in Shivji, ence Ranger.6 Such genealogies challenge the Eurocentric accounts
1993: 204). we have of the emergence of different forms of modern political
The knowledge created at The Hill responded to Nyereres thought. As Shilliam (2009: np) continues:
geopolitical challenge. Just as Nyereres subaltern geopolitics was
.Eurocentrism is most evident in the unspoken assumption
challenging international boundaries, intellectual debate at the
that we do not need to attempt to travel to the intellectual
University was challenging conventional disciplinary boundaries.
terrain of the non-West and interrogate its archive of thought in
Emphasis was put on interdisciplinary studies, insisting that
order to problematize the modern experience. It is not just that
whether studying law, social science or science subjects, members
the non-Western thinker must be added into the existing
of the university should have a wide and critical education. Shivji
archive of the Western Academy, but rather, than an engage-
explains:
ment with the non-Western thinker might be necessary in order
The great strength of that period, it seems to me, was the critical to reveal the boundedness of this Academy and thus open the
attitude. Nothing was taken for granted. Everything was sub- way for more salient explorations of the making of the modern
jected to criticism and evaluation. The intellectual at that time world order.
saw himself/herself as a social critic, not as a careerist, or simply
In countries like Tanzania, and especially in sites of active po-
an armchair contemplator or thinker. The spirit of the time, if I
litical theorising such as was found at the University of Dar es
may summarise it in a phrase, was doubt everything e not as a
Salaam in the 1970s, the margins were seen e however briey e as
cynic, but as a critic [.] not simply as a contemplative philos-
offering the future centre; people were drawn to Africa from
opher but as an historical actor (Shivji, 1992 cited in Shivji, 1993:
around Africa and from both Western and Eastern superpowers.
211).
Thus, post-colonial Tanzania presented, for a time, a material
provincializing of Europe as Chakrabarty (2000) has put it, as in-
Conclusions tellectuals and political and resistant gures from north and south
moved to participate in and learn from Nyereres Tanzania. So it was
This paper has sought to reconsider the political interventions of not a simple case of westernised knowledge coming to Tanzania
Tanzania, as a new post-colonial state in the 1960s and 1970s, as and colonising debates; Nyerere reworked western political
 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29 27

concepts, especially nationalism, in an attempt to forge a modern Tanzania, and how we might draw on these experiences to seek to
African future, and many of the western academics and the debates recreate conditions of such optimism and hope. Prashad has argued
they took back home were profoundly Tanzanian-ized. for the importance of such visions and is pessimistic (perhaps
These are not stories of internationalism from below or overly so) about a future without them:
outside, but are geographies that have been recast from the mar-
gins, from and by people who have been differently entangled with The demise of the Third World has been catastrophic. People
networks of domination and resistance, who can neither be seen as across the three continents continue to dream of something
below or outside, but nor could they be seen as powerful, central or better, and many of them are organised into social movements
dominant. They do, however, challenge prevailing views that sug- or political parties. Their aspirations have a local voice. Beyond
gest the subaltern is always trapped in place, and is particular and that, their hopes and dreams are unintelligible (Prashad, 2007:
other to western travelling theories, and so present an important xviii).
counter to accounts of internationalism, geopolitics and cosmo-
Such third worldism as explored by Prashad, outlined in the
politanism which place the subaltern, and political action writings of Julius Nyerere and attempted through his policies, and
emanating from them, as place bound (see also Featherstone,
lived by those living and working in places like the University of Dar
2012). Tanzanias extra-territorial connections, of course, did not es Salaam presents a kind of postcolonial subjectivity within which
begin with European colonialism. As the Arabic, Hindi and Bantu
subjects are reconstituted through recognition of shared vulnera-
contributions to Swahili attest, what is now Tanzania has long been bility, and a shared desire to challenge this situation and indeed to
connected to currents of trade and politics that have linked the
change it, rather than being an identity premised on the exclusion
cultures of East Africas Swahili coast to the Gulf States and to of otherness.
India for centuries, in addition to the colonial connections to Ger-
In his discussion of the geopolitics of Nkrumahs Ghana, White
many and Britain (Sheriff, 2010). (2003: 110) argues that the narrative of a binary opposition be-
And thus, what we can learn from Tanzania should not only be of tween Cold War modernity and indigenous African society is a
relevance to those with African interests. In his call for a small false one; rather Ghana was laid at the intersection of multiple
state geopolitics, Larsen (2011) insists on the need to understand roads of modernity. Nkrumahs outlook was modern, but his
the multiplicity of geopolitical visions because of the always- situation nonetheless left him with many ways forward, placing
already entangled nature of different state geopolitics. Drawing him at a site of creative adaptation which Goankar describes as
on the recent Mohammed cartoon scandal Larsen (2011: 245) the site where a people make themselves modern, as opposed to
insists that Denmark does matter and that this was highlighted by being made modern by alien and imperial forces (cited in White,
this event as Denmark shifted from the habitual self-image of 2003: 110). The Non-Aligned Movements alternative geopolitical
being a paragon of virtue in world politics, a small state but a moral vision for development was one such modernity, consciously
great power [to a situation in which] Danes too were now faced rejecting the totality of either the Soviet or US projections of
with the question: Why do they hate us?. modern futures. And it was a moral geopolitics based around
Just as small statehood then is not simply a particular location, connection rather than a sovereign performance of exclusion.
nor should subaltern be xed in particular places. Instead, the Tanzanian geopolitics have been (and, in some ways, continue to
subaltern can be understood as located both outside (exterior to) be (see Sharp, 2011c)) constructed dialectically in terms of the
and at the margins of (but still inside) a social and spatial formation, countrys role in promoting diverse futures: an African identity,
and, congruently, as both separate from, and as an effect of, power
Cold War non-alignment, a Pan-African vision, and a place of
(Clayton, 2011: 247). Larsen suggests that the power that can be radical, alternative thought for people from around the world.
drawn upon by marginal states is a moral authority, a power that
Most important is the recognition of shared vulnerability, and a
has certainly dened post-colonial Tanzanias role e particularly shared desire to challenge this situation and indeed to change it,
under Nyerere. However, Mbembe (2003: 33) explains how the
rather than being an identity premised on the exclusion of
changes imposed by structural adjustment proceeded incremen- otherness. Nyerere recognised this global interdependence clearly.
tally to undermine the authority of visionary Third World leaders
In his address to the United Nations following Tanganyikas inde-
such as Nyerere, destroying the economic underpinnings of po- pendence from Britain, he said:
litical authority and order in the 1970s, followed by the loss of value
in local currencies in the 1980s. The penetration of individual I do congratulate the British for taking yet a further step towards
economies by external agencies through the provision of aid, the their own achievement of complete independence and freedom
desire to attract international investment and the power of because I believe that no country is completely free if it keeps
western-dominated international organisations further erodes other people in a state of unfreedom (Nyerere, 1961 cited in
state sovereignty in the South and reinforces the very limited na- Nyerere, 1967e: 145).
ture of sovereignty available (see Sharp, in press). Agnew (2005)
has suggested that this is not a characteristic only of states in the Acknowledgements
south, suggesting that many states have much less control over
their destinies than conventional models of the state would imply. I would like to thank Veit Bachmann and his colleagues in the
This suggests that perhaps this is exactly the time where a more Institut fr Humangeographie at the Goethe Universitt in Frank-
ambitious geopolitical imagination is required. Whether consid- furt for the invitation to present this paper at the IGU Political
ering the challenges of economies, technologies and biological Geography Commission Spatialising the (geo)political conference in
threats that do not recognise state borders, or the geopolitics of August 2012, and to the discussants and other participants for their
climate change in the Anthropocene, it would seem that moving engagement with the paper. The paper has also greatly benetted
from an idea of a geopolitics forged around the individual interests from various discussions with members of the Human Geography
of states to a more inclusive vision, is essential (Dalby, 2012). This Research Group at Glasgow, especially John Briggs, Dave Feather-
means that revisiting attempts to imagine collective geopolitical stone, Ronan Paddison and Ian Shaw, and from generous comments
futures such as those offered by Pan-Africanism is invaluable. from John Agnew, Simon Dalby, Sara Koopman, Doreen Massey,
This raises the question of what might be learnt from the con- Alec Murphy and Julian Stenmanns. Thanks to Phil Steinberg, James
ditions that facilitated these critical interventions in post-colonial Sidaway and the editors of Political Geography. The paper comes
28 J.P. Sharp / Political Geography 37 (2013) 20e29

from research undertaken as part of an ESRC Mid Career Fellowship hooks, b (1990). Marginality as a site of resistance. In R. Ferguson, et al. (Eds.), Out
there: Marginalization and contemporary cultures (pp. 341e343). Cambridge,
(RES-070-27-0039).
Mass.: MIT Press.
Jazeel, T. (2011). Spatializing difference beyond cosmopolitanism: rethinking
Endnotes planetary futures. Theory, Culture and Society, 28(5), 75e97.
Karioki, J. (1979). Tanzanias human revolution. Penn State University: University Park.
1 Katz, C. (2001). Vagabond capitalism and the necessity of social reproduction. An-
Initially introduced as an irreducibly critical concept, critical geopolitics was
tipode, 33(4), 709e728.
intended as a critique of knowledge rather than a form of knowledge itself (Dalby,
Kearns, G. (2008). Progressive geopolitics. Geography Compass, 2(5), 1599e1620.
pers corr., 2012). The ubiquity e and perhaps sometimes unthinking or uncritical
Kearns, G. (2009). Geopolitics and empire: The legacy of Halford Mackinder. Oxford:
use e of the term more recently has rendered it, in many cases, more of a subeld of
Oxford University Press.
political geography.
2 Koopman, S. (2011). Alter-geopolitics: other securities are happening. Geoforum,
I continue to use the term Third World despite the conclusion of the Cold War
42(3), 274e284.
geopolitics that created the term, in recognition of the political reappropriation of
Larsen, H. (2011). Small-state geopolitics. In Moisio, S., Stokke, K., Sther, E., Larsen,
the concept by political gures such as Nyerere.
3 H., Ek, R., & Hansen, A. Interventions in Nordic political geographies. Political
So called because of their preference for luxurious Mercedes Benz cars.
4 Geography, 30, 241e249.
TANU: Tanganyikan African National Union party. After the union with Zanzibar, it
Legum, C., & Mmari, G. (1995). Mwalimu: The inuence of Nyerere. Africa World
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Mamdani, M. (2011). The importance of research in a university. Pambazuka News.
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5 http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72782. Accessed 15.07.12.
Mamdani (2011) has also pointed to the changing nature of academic practice in
Mbembe, J. (2001). On the postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press (ebook).
many African countries as a result of structural adjustment policies as contributing
Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11e40.
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McDonald, D., & Sahle, E. (2003). The legacies of Julius Nyerere: Inuences on
East Africa.
6 development discourse and practice in Africa. Africa Research and Publications.
In both cases, the list of characters is overwhelmingly male making a feminist
Mignolo, W. (2002). The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference. The
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Mitchell, K. (2007). Geographies of identity: the intimate cosmopolitan. Progress in
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