As you open Cultured States, a picture of protestors marching through the streets of Dar es Salaam with an illustrated sign calling for a ban on “the mini” will catch your attention. As Andrew Ivaska skillfully demonstrates, the march in support of a ban on miniskirts reflected much more than conflict over the length of skirts. He connects the ban to struggles through the 1960s over contested definitions of Tanzanian culture and modernity, as well as simmering urban tensions over gender, generation, and wealth.
Similar to leaders in other postcolonial African nations, members of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) undertook the creation of a national identity and culture in the 1960s. According to Ivaska, they initially espoused a “two-sided” Tanzanian culture that was supposed to be both modern and traditional. The Western-educated TANU elite sanitized elements of supposedly authentic Tanzanian culture to create a “nation as a collection of distinct tribes” (48). In his first chapter, Ivaska explores Operation Dress-Up of 1967 to show how nationalists tried to eliminate what they considered to be shameful elements of tribal culture. The state project punished and humiliated Masai who refused to conform to what TANU leaders defined as modern standards of dress. Despite TANU assertions that they were breaking with the colonial past, Ivaska hints that the postcolonial government’s actions were reminiscent of colonial attempts to manipulate African identities. More directly, he highlights how, akin to the colonial state, TANU remained anxious about African rural-to-urban migration and urban youth who did not conform to its expectations.
Ivaska relies primarily on newspaper editorials to show how a great debate about the meaning of “modernity” raged in Dar es Salaam through the long decade. After 1967, TANU rhetoric associated certain cultural practices with decadent urbanization, which was at odds with its definition of modernity focused on rural development. The state tried to ban certain symbols of decadence, including miniskirts and soul music. Ivaska examines how young men and women challenged the state by invoking their right to participate in a trans-national modernity. At times he refers to this modernity as “global,” although a more deliberate discussion of the adjective might have made the argument more convincing. Quite persuasively, however, Ivaska argues that the residents of Dar es Salaam were not proposing “alternative modernities,” as theorized by Arjun Appadurai. Instead, Ivaska invokes James Ferguson, claiming that urbanites and the government debated the contours of a singular definition of a transnational modernity.
Significantly, Ivaska demonstrates how women had some success in using appeals to modernity to challenge TANU constructions of Tanzanian culture. He discusses hard-won battles in the press, streets, and courts, where young urban women rejected bans, contested limits to their mobility, and mocked proposed changes to marriage laws. Ultimately, women’s efforts redefined some aspects of the state’s cultural campaigns. At least in its rhetoric, TANU stepped back from its earlier characterization of “city girls” as borderline prostitutes and started to recognize their contributions, more clearly linking them to the socialist goals of independence, development, and self-reliance.
The outcomes of some of the other struggles were more ambiguous. Ivaska describes TANU’s uneasy relationship with African American activists and so-called radicals at University College in Dar es Salaam. TANU leaders publically embraced some expatriates and activists, but they dismantled organizations and used the press to undermine the influence of people who seemed to pose a threat. Ivaska also details how urban men engaged in struggles over class and generation. Political cartoons and public graffiti show how working-class bachelors and male university students resented the TANU elite’s ostentatious accumulation of wealth. The resentment of male students over the supposed elite monopoly on access to young women compounded the students’ reaction to TANU attempts to introduce an obligatory National Service requirement. Likewise, many of the debates about the United Law of Marriage dealt with the unequal distribution of wealth, exposing general dissatisfaction with the dominance of the TANU elite and the perceived preference of urban women for these “sugar daddies.” The new legislation, finally passed in 1971, apparently did not do much to change the situation of the urban youth.
Ivaska definitely shows how the state tried to intervene in people’s everyday lives. As state agents tried to crack down on alleged enemies of the socialist state, state actions and TANU rhetoric elicited a powerful popular response. The book’s strength lies in its analysis of the period from 1967 and 1972. Ivaska’s discussion of earlier decency campaigns aimed at the Masai and seemingly others does not clearly identify what or who was included in these initial formulations of Tanzanian culture. Additionally, I could not help wondering how changes later in the 1970s, including the more definitive break with capitalist Kenya and the increasingly unstable Tanzanian economy, affected struggles over class, generation, and state socialist policies. Overall, Cultured States is captivating and will surely prompt more scholarly discussion of competing notions of modernity and national culture.
