'Discipline without oppression': Sequence, timing and marginality in southern Rhodesia's post-war development regime

Journal of African History

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 101-125

  Worby, Eric ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION; DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY; POST-WAR; RURAL DEVELOPMENT;

ZIMBABWE;

EID: 0034016639     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853799007525     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. I would like to thank Monica Van Beusekom, Dorothy Hodgson and Sara Berry for their critical suggestions, support and patience as this paper took shape and shifted emphasis over time. Bill Nasson and the anonymous reviewers for this journal provided very helpful advice as well. I am indebted to the Center for Applied Social Sciences, the Zimbabwe National Archives in Harare, Agritex and the Gokwe District Administration for institutional support in 1988-9, and to the countless farmers and government officers in Sanyati and Gokwe who gave so much of their time and wisdom to the larger project of which this paper is one small outcome. Grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and McGill University supported my work in 1988-9, and a grant from Yale University allowed me to return in 1997. The contribution of Gul Rukh Selim, who continues to help me think through the material that we gathered jointly during our several periods of fieldwork in Zimbabwe, has been both cumulative and indispensable.
2. Government of Southern Rhodesia, Report on Native Production and Trade (Salisbury, 1945), 9.
3. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
4. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
5. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
6. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
7. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
8. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
9. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
10. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
11. David Ludden defines a 'development regime' as 'an institutionalized configuration of power within a state system ideologically committed to progress that draws its material sustenance from the conduct of development. In such regimes, the language of science represents development as a process occurring in the object world, outside the state and its constellation of experts and expertise.' D. Ludden, 'India's development regime' in N. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 252. The concept of 'development regime' usefully extends earlier efforts to think of development as a 'discursive practice' along the lines indicated by Foucault for his analysis of power in modern states. See, inter alia, E. Worby, 'The politics of dispossession: livestock development policy and the transformation of property relations in Botswana' (MA thesis, McGill University, 1984); A. Escobar, 'Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10 (1984-5), 377-400 and Encountering Development : The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995); J. Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990); S. L. Pigg, 'Constructing social categories through place: social representations and development in Nepal', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), 491-513; and most recently, R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat (eds.), Discourses of Development : Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford and New York, 1997). For a critical perspective, see P. Little and M. Painter, 'Discourse, politics and the development process: reflections on Escobar's "Anthropology and the Development Encounter."' American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 602-9; and K. Sivaramakrishnan and A. Agrawal, 'Regional modernities in stories and practices of development', Working Paper No. 1, Yale Center for International and Area Studies (New Haven, 1998).
12. In Southern Rhodesia, many of the key components that were to make up the post-war development regime were shaped by E. D. Alvord, the son of an American missionary who, in 1926, was appointed agriculturalist for the Instruction of Natives. In 1930, Alvord described how by establishing a corps of trained native agricultural demonstrators he intended 'to reach the masses of their own race directly with the message of better agriculture, to instill proper ideals of citizenship and bring about better home conditions among the Reserve populations'. E. Alvord, Native Administration Department Annual, 8 (1930). In fact, these proto-developmental ideas were well- represented among southern African missionaries from as early as the 1820s. See the exemplary treatment by J. L. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution. Volume Two : The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, 1997), which provides ample evidence that many of the threads of modern developmentalism, particularly those promoting an embodied aesthetic regime, lead out of nineteenth- century Nonconformist missionary discourse and practice in southern Africa.
13. In Southern Rhodesia, many of the key components that were to make up the post- war development regime were shaped by E. D. Alvord, the son of an American missionary who, in 1926, was appointed agriculturalist for the Instruction of Natives. In 1930, Alvord described how by establishing a corps of trained native agricultural demonstrators he intended 'to reach the masses of their own race directly with the message of better agriculture, to instill proper ideals of citizenship and bring about better home conditions among the Reserve populations'. E. Alvord, Native Administration Department Annual, 8 (1930). In fact, these proto-developmental ideas were well-represented among southern African missionaries from as early as the 1820s. See the exemplary treatment by J. L. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution. Volume Two : The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, 1997), which provides ample evidence that many of the threads of modern developmentalism, particularly those promoting an embodied aesthetic regime, lead out of nineteenth-century Nonconformist missionary discourse and practice in southern Africa.
14. I say 'agrarian' in preference to 'agricultural' techniques because for both the policy-makers and technical officers of the colonial government, such techniques were in-separable from a more complex regime of self-monitored bodily conduct that extended from the cultivated field itself, to the management of its boundaries, and finally to the domestic space from which the field was ideally segregated.
15. I carried out historical and ethnographic research jointly with Gul Rukh Selim in Gokwe for fifteen months in 1988-9, and again in July-August of 1997. The present paper constitutes part of a larger body of work on agrarian commoditization, identity and modernity in Gokwe. See E. Worby, 'Remaking labour, reshaping identity: cotton, commoditization and the culture of modernity in north-western Zimbabwe' (Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, 1992); 'Maps, names and ethnic games: the epistemology and iconography of colonial power in north-western Zimbabwe', Journal of Southern African Studies, 20 (1994), 371-92; 'What does agrarian wage-labour signify? Cotton, commoditisation and social form in Gokwe, Zimbabwe', Journal of Peasant Studies, 23 (1995), 1-29; 'Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity: ritual engagements with the state in north- western Zimbabwe' Journal of Southern African Studies, 24 (1998), 337-54.
16. I carried out historical and ethnographic research jointly with Gul Rukh Selim in Gokwe for fifteen months in 1988-9, and again in July-August of 1997. The present paper constitutes part of a larger body of work on agrarian commoditization, identity and modernity in Gokwe. See E. Worby, 'Remaking labour, reshaping identity: cotton, commoditization and the culture of modernity in north-western Zimbabwe' (Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, 1992); 'Maps, names and ethnic games: the epistemology and iconography of colonial power in north-western Zimbabwe', Journal of Southern African Studies, 20 (1994), 371-92; 'What does agrarian wage-labour signify? Cotton, commoditisation and social form in Gokwe, Zimbabwe', Journal of Peasant Studies, 23 (1995), 1-29; 'Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity: ritual engagements with the state in north- western Zimbabwe' Journal of Southern African Studies, 24 (1998), 337-54.
17. I carried out historical and ethnographic research jointly with Gul Rukh Selim in Gokwe for fifteen months in 1988-9, and again in July-August of 1997. The present paper constitutes part of a larger body of work on agrarian commoditization, identity and modernity in Gokwe. See E. Worby, 'Remaking labour, reshaping identity: cotton, commoditization and the culture of modernity in north-western Zimbabwe' (Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, 1992); 'Maps, names and ethnic games: the epistemology and iconography of colonial power in north-western Zimbabwe', Journal of Southern African Studies, 20 (1994), 371-92; 'What does agrarian wage-labour signify? Cotton, commoditisation and social form in Gokwe, Zimbabwe', Journal of Peasant Studies, 23 (1995), 1-29; 'Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity: ritual engagements with the state in north- western Zimbabwe' Journal of Southern African Studies, 24 (1998), 337-54.
18. I carried out historical and ethnographic research jointly with Gul Rukh Selim in Gokwe for fifteen months in 1988-9, and again in July-August of 1997. The present paper constitutes part of a larger body of work on agrarian commoditization, identity and modernity in Gokwe. See E. Worby, 'Remaking labour, reshaping identity: cotton, commoditization and the culture of modernity in north-western Zimbabwe' (Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, 1992); 'Maps, names and ethnic games: the epistemology and iconography of colonial power in north-western Zimbabwe', Journal of Southern African Studies, 20 (1994), 371-92; 'What does agrarian wage-labour signify? Cotton, commoditisation and social form in Gokwe, Zimbabwe', Journal of Peasant Studies, 23 (1995), 1-29; 'Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity: ritual engagements with the state in north-western Zimbabwe' Journal of Southern African Studies, 24 (1998), 337-54.
19. See E. Worby, 'Inscribing the State at the "edge of beyond": danger and development in north-western Zimbabwe', Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 21 (1998), 55-70.
20. For a somewhat different, but extremely useful, analysis of the ascendancy of technical planning in this period, see M. Drinkwater, 'Technical development and peasant impoverishment: land use policy in Zimbabwe's Midlands Province', Journal of Southern African Studies, 15 (1989), 287-305.
21. E.g. T. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985).
22. Ibid. Ch. 2.
23. D. J. Murray, The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, 1970), 35. For a comparative view of these trends across British colonial Africa, see S. Berry, No Condition is Permanent : The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison, 1993), 46-53.
24. D. J. Murray, The Governmental System in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, 1970), 35. For a comparative view of these trends across British colonial Africa, see S. Berry, No Condition is Permanent : The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison, 1993), 46-53.
25. E. D. Alvord, Agricultural Demonstration work on Native Reserves, Occasional Paper, No. 3, Department of Native Development, Southern Rhodesia, Table 1. Zimbabwe National Archives, Harare (ZNA), GEN-P/ALV.
26. Government of Southern Rhodesia, Report of Native Production and Trade Commission, 9.
27. J. F. Holleman, Chief, Counsellor, and Commissioner : Some Problems of Government in Southern Rhodesia (Assen, 1969), 46.
28. Report of Native Production and Trade Commission, 10.
29. The obsession with native discipline in development discourse had by this time a genealogy dating back at least as far as 1924, when the Wooley Commission declared that there was 'too much shepherding and too little discipline' when it came to dealing with natives. Quoted in Drinkwater, 'Technical development', 295. The theme was alive and well in 1971, when the Chief Planning Officer in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, newly charged with administering African agricultural extension and development, wrote 'a measure of discipline is needed in those aspects of land use which are vital to continued settlement'. T. A. Murton, 'Land-use planning in tribal areas in Rhodesia', Rhodesia Agricultural Journal, 61 (1971), 6 (emphasis in original).
30. The obsession with native discipline in development discourse had by this time a genealogy dating back at least as far as 1924, when the Wooley Commission declared that there was 'too much shepherding and too little discipline' when it came to dealing with natives. Quoted in Drinkwater, 'Technical development', 295. The theme was alive and well in 1971, when the Chief Planning Officer in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, newly charged with administering African agricultural extension and development, wrote 'a measure of discipline is needed in those aspects of land use which are vital to continued settlement'. T. A. Murton, 'Land-use planning in tribal areas in Rhodesia', Rhodesia Agricultural Journal, 61 (1971), 6 (emphasis in original).
31. See D. K. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Southern Rhodesia: 1890-1939 (Durham, 1987), Ch. 7; J. Pape, 'Black and white: the "perils of sex" in Southern Rhodesia', Journal of Southern African Studies, 16 (1990), 699-720; E. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1992), 169-79.
32. See D. K. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Southern Rhodesia: 1890-1939 (Durham, 1987), Ch. 7; J. Pape, 'Black and white: the "perils of sex" in Southern Rhodesia', Journal of Southern African Studies, 16 (1990), 699-720; E. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1992), 169-79.
33. See D. K. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Southern Rhodesia: 1890-1939 (Durham, 1987), Ch. 7; J. Pape, 'Black and white: the "perils of sex" in Southern Rhodesia', Journal of Southern African Studies, 16 (1990), 699-720; E. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1992), 169-79.
34. Report of Native Production and Trade Commission, p. 7.
35. We can trace the origins of this field of discourse to western Europe in the eighteenth century, when medicine assumed a pivotal function in the novel concern to 'police' the social body. The purview of such policing, as Foucault explains, was delineated in Delamere's classic treatise on the subject and encompassed 'three main sets of aims: economic regulation (the circulation of commodities, manufacturing processes, the obligations of tradespeople both to one another and to their clientele), measures of public order (surveillance of dangerous individuals, expulsion of vagabonds and, if necessary, beggars and the pursuit of criminals) and general rules of hygiene (checks on the quality of foodstuffs sold, the water supply and the cleanliness of streets)'. See M. Foucault, 'The politics of health in the eighteenth century', in C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge : Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York, 1981), 170-1. These concerns are almost exactly congruent with the terms of reference of the 1944 Commission.
36. M. Gelfand, 'Medical problems in the native of Southern Rhodesia', Native Administration Department Annual, 21 (1944), 3.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. As Timothy Burke so ingeniously shows, the contested promotion of western concepts of bodily and domestic hygiene in Southern Rhodesia was a leitmotif of colonial discourse on racial difference from early in the century and not solely because of competing theories of the relationship between health, culture, and contagion. Hygienic reform, deeply intertwined with ideas about appropriate forms of female domesticity, was variously a project of missionaries, educators and European women's organizations, not to mention the Native Department itself. See Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe, (Durham and London, 1996), 35-62.
40. Order in the landscape was in the first instance to be generated through a process of data collection by field officers in the Department of Native Agriculture: 'Teams will carry out stock counts, obtain population figures, measure up the land under cultivation and collect accurate information on soil types, grazing land, waste land and woodland. They will then go on to land classification, demarcating and mapping arable land, grazing land, forest land and waste land.' Government of Southern Rhodesia, What the Native Land Husbandry Act Means to the African (Salisbury, 1955), 22.
41. Mai Watson, interviewed for the author by Muzeya Chidimu, Tazivana Village, Gokwe Communal Land, August 1997.
42. See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 60, 70-1.
43. What the Native Land Husbandry Act Means, 1.
44. Ibid. 14.
45. This process was prefigured in an older part of the Empire - India - where ' criminal tribes' and 'castes' were subjected to complex practices of classification, internment and reform in late nineteenth-century India. See the illuminating discussion by R. Tolen, 'Colonizing and transforming the criminal tribesman: the Salvation Army in British India', American Ethnologist, 18 (1991), 106-25.
46. Ibid.
47. I refer to Jeremy Bentham's late eighteenth-century idea of the panopticon - an architectural and institutional device for the centralized, efficient surveillance, monitoring and self-disciplining of prisoners, patients, students, workers and the like. See the discussion by Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979), 195-228. See also T. Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley, 1991), 24.
48. I refer to Jeremy Bentham's late eighteenth-century idea of the panopticon - an architectural and institutional device for the centralized, efficient surveillance, monitoring and self-disciplining of prisoners, patients, students, workers and the like. See the discussion by Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979), 195-228. See also T. Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley, 1991), 24.
49. What the Native Land Husbandry Act Means, 14.
50. Cf. Ferguson's illuminating discussion of the moral geography that has variously animated the imagination of scholars, novelists and inhabitants of rural and urban Zambia: J. Ferguson, 'Mobile workers, modernist narratives: a critique of the historiography of transition on the Zambian Copperbelt', Journal of Southern African Studies, 16 (1990), 385-412 and 603-21; and 'The country and the city on the copper belt', in A. Gupta and J. Ferguson (eds.), Culture, Power, and Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham, 1997).
51. Cf. Ferguson's illuminating discussion of the moral geography that has variously animated the imagination of scholars, novelists and inhabitants of rural and urban Zambia: J. Ferguson, 'Mobile workers, modernist narratives: a critique of the historiography of transition on the Zambian Copperbelt', Journal of Southern African Studies, 16 (1990), 385-412 and 603-21; and 'The country and the city on the copper belt', in A. Gupta and J. Ferguson (eds.), Culture, Power, and Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham, 1997).
52. See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 126-7.
53. ZNA, S 160/LS/100/3G/50 'Minutes of meeting to plan movement of natives: Midlands Province', 9 Nov. 1950.
54. T. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 103.
55. J. C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998).
56. By 1956, the 875 families settled in the Sanyati reserve had exceeded the estimated 'carrying capacity' by over 30 per cent. (Government of Southern Rhodesia, Annual Report of the Director of Native Agriculture [R. M. Davies] for the Year 1956., Chart VIII.).
57. S160/DG/104/1A/50, (Land Allocation: Gokwe 1950-51), 'Schedule: Proposal Re: Resettlement of Natives on Rhodesdale.'
58. Interviews conducted by the author jointly with GuI Rukh Selim in Sanyati communal land, July, 1988.
59. ZNA, S160/DG/104/50, LDO Que Que to Director, Native Agriculture, 4 Mar. 1951.
60. ZNA, S160/DG/104/1A/50, LDO Que Que to Disorder, Native Agriculture, 4 Nov. 1950.
61. Ibid. The officers were, no doubt, acutely sensitive to the unpopularity of forced conservation measures and its possible political entailments. Both passive and active opposition to conservation works (e.g. contour ridging, drain strips, gulley dams and grazing rotations) had by this time become starkly apparent to Native Department personnel in land-scarce eastern reserves such as Weya and Tanda. See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 152-3, whose evidence strongly suggests a direct link between such resistance and the emergence of support for nationalist politics in these areas, where conservation demands, after years of centralization and land alienation, were perceived to be nothing other than the extraction of forced labor. For a comparative southern African overview, see W. Beinart, 'Introduction: the politics of colonial conservation', Journal of Southern African Studies, 15 (1989), 143-62.
62. Ibid. The officers were, no doubt, acutely sensitive to the unpopularity of forced conservation measures and its possible political entailments. Both passive and active opposition to conservation works (e.g. contour ridging, drain strips, gulley dams and grazing rotations) had by this time become starkly apparent to Native Department personnel in land-scarce eastern reserves such as Weya and Tanda. See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 152-3, whose evidence strongly suggests a direct link between such resistance and the emergence of support for nationalist politics in these areas, where conservation demands, after years of centralization and land alienation, were perceived to be nothing other than the extraction of forced labor. For a comparative southern African overview, see W. Beinart, 'Introduction: the politics of colonial conservation', Journal of Southern African Studies, 15 (1989), 143-62.
63. Ibid. The officers were, no doubt, acutely sensitive to the unpopularity of forced conservation measures and its possible political entailments. Both passive and active opposition to conservation works (e.g. contour ridging, drain strips, gulley dams and grazing rotations) had by this time become starkly apparent to Native Department personnel in land-scarce eastern reserves such as Weya and Tanda. See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 152-3, whose evidence strongly suggests a direct link between such resistance and the emergence of support for nationalist politics in these areas, where conservation demands, after years of centralization and land alienation, were perceived to be nothing other than the extraction of forced labor. For a comparative southern African overview, see W. Beinart, 'Introduction: the politics of colonial conservation', Journal of Southern African Studies, 15 (1989), 143-62.
64. Interview with the mother of Musavaya, Katsuro village, Sanyati Communal Land, 18 July 1988. Our host during fieldwork in Goredema, M. Mbano, who attended the Sanyati Baptist mission school from 1963 to 1966, often recalled the demanding inspections of the students' dress and even of their fingernails that were part of the daily school regimen at that time.
65. M. Bratton, Beyond Community Development: The Political Economy of Rural Administration in Zimbabwe (London, 1978), 39.
66. Ibid.
67. The need felt by missionaries and agriculturalists (Alvord embodied both identities) to contain discrete spheres of activity within bounded spaces mirrored the perceived need to keep the body itself - its odors, its secretions, its nakedness - marked off from the external environment. Both were means by which civilization (as opposed to the wild, savage and natural world) was reproduced and embodied as an iconic sign of itself (cf. Jean Comaroff, 'The Empire's old clothes: fashioning the colonial subject', in D. Howes (ed.), Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global markets, Local Realities (New York and London, 1996). These concerns were apparent in the writings of early ethnographers of the 'Shangwe' peoples indigenous to Gokwe (see Worby, 'Maps, names, and ethnic games', 382).
68. The need felt by missionaries and agriculturalists (Alvord embodied both identities) to contain discrete spheres of activity within bounded spaces mirrored the perceived need to keep the body itself - its odors, its secretions, its nakedness - marked off from the external environment. Both were means by which civilization (as opposed to the wild, savage and natural world) was reproduced and embodied as an iconic sign of itself (cf. Jean Comaroff, 'The Empire's old clothes: fashioning the colonial subject', in D. Howes (ed.), Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global markets, Local Realities (New York and London, 1996). These concerns were apparent in the writings of early ethnographers of the 'Shangwe' peoples indigenous to Gokwe (see Worby, 'Maps, names, and ethnic games', 382).
69. See R. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Berkeley, 1977), 220-1. As JoAnn MacGregor forcefully argues, the rural development and conservation measures implemented between 1926 (when Alvord was appointed Agriculturalist for the Instruction of Natives) and 1941 (when the more draconian Natural Resources Act was passed) represent neither a set of technically driven solutions to a perceived resource management crisis, nor an uncomplicated attempt to subjugate rural Africans politically. She reveals a complex interaction in Shurugwi between divided government officials, the local headmen called upon to implement policy, chiefs who wished to sustain unfettered authority over the land and the internally diversified local communities that were affected. It was only during the war that the urgent demand for conservation was used, retrospectively, to justify the policy of centralization, and to demand compulsory compliance. (J. MacGregor, 'Conservation, control, and ecological change: the politics and ecology of colonial conservation in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe', Environment and History, 1 (1995), 257-80.
70. See R. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Berkeley, 1977), 220-1. As JoAnn MacGregor forcefully argues, the rural development and conservation measures implemented between 1926 (when Alvord was appointed Agriculturalist for the Instruction of Natives) and 1941 (when the more draconian Natural Resources Act was passed) represent neither a set of technically driven solutions to a perceived resource management crisis, nor an uncomplicated attempt to subjugate rural Africans politically. She reveals a complex interaction in Shurugwi between divided government officials, the local headmen called upon to implement policy, chiefs who wished to sustain unfettered authority over the land and the internally diversified local communities that were affected. It was only during the war that the urgent demand for conservation was used, retrospectively, to justify the policy of centralization, and to demand compulsory compliance. (J. MacGregor, 'Conservation, control, and ecological change: the politics and ecology of colonial conservation in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe', Environment and History, 1 (1995), 257-80.
71. I. Phimister, A Social and Economic History of Zimbabwe, 1890-1948 (London and New York 1987), 235-6.
72. R. W. M. Johnson gives the following definitions: 'Cooperator, any farmer who uses manure or fertilizer, carried out some rotation, and plants his crops in rows (other than braodcast over crops); Plotholder, a farmer who is under tuition by a demonstrator in order to become a Master Farmer, and whose cropping program is recorded; Master Farmer, a plotholder who has reached certain minimum standards of crop and animal husbandry laid down by the Agriculture Department'. (R. W. M. Johnson, 'African agricultural development in Southern Rhodesia, 1945-1960', Food Research Institute Studies, 4 (1964), 165-223.) It was these last who were eligible to lease, and eventually own outright, an African Purchase Area farm such as those demarcated in Chenjiri immediately to the north of Sanyati (settled beginning in 1959) and in Copper Queen across the Munyati river (settled beginning in 1962).
73. Interview with Joseph Murambga, Chibayamarangwe Village, Goredema, 7 Feb. 1989. Murambga eventually earned his Master Farmer's certificate in 1956.
74. B. Davis and W. Döpcke, 'Survival and accumulation in Gutu: class formation and the rise of the state in colonial Zimbabwe, 1900-1939', Journal of Southern African Studies, 14 (1987), 75-80.
75. As I have argued elsewhere, they all came 'bearing the same discourse of progress and development, the same conceit of living in advance of those they had come to live among': Worby, 'Maps, names and ethnic games', 390.
76. Independent Christian churches, such as the Apostolics of Johanne Murange, are an important countervailing presence to the modernist orthodoxy with implications that would require separate treatment. See Worby, 'Remarking labour, reshaping identity', 86-92.
77. Interview with headmaster Musarurwa, Mudondo Primary School, 28 Mar. 1988. Musaruwa's wife maintained a homestead and farm in Nembudzia ward, where they had settled among other immigrants from Masvingo Province.
78. See, for example, A. Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty : Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938-1961 (Hanover, NH, 1996).
79. See Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, 151-6.
80. Government of Rhodesia, The Development of the Economic Resources of Southern Rhodesia with Particular Reference to the Role of African Agriculture. Report of the Advisory Committee. (The Phillips Commission) Salisbury, 1962), 205. Emphasis in original.
81. Bratton, Beyond Community Development, 18-19. Bratton suggests that community development was devised by American sociologists, tested as early as 1952 in India, and transplanted to several other colonies in British Africa before being adopted in Southern Rhodesia, with support in 1962 from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID abandoned the community development model shortly thereafter, he argues, not least because it 'proved . . . through collaboration with established local leaders of colonial heritage, to inhibit the growth of participatory initiative from below'. The Rhodesian Front government was apparently so blind to this tendency that it pushed the devolution of nominal authority to government-designated tribal leaders to the point where those leaders had lost virtually all of their local credibility and support.
82. Reid illustrates a more general point made by Drinkwater concerning the need to distinguish between central government technocrats and locally posted agricultural officers in Southern Rhodesia: 'Within state institutions, both in the present and in the colonial period, the primary opposition to the authoritarian and technocratic attitude of the centre has come from those who work at the local level'. Drinkwater, 'Technical Development', 289.
83. D. B. Bates, 'Successful agricultural extension in a Rhodesian tribal trust land ', (BE [Adult Education] thesis, University of Rhodesia, 1977), 44.
84. M. G. Reid, 'An agricultural programme at Gokwe', Rhodesian Agricultural Journal, 68 (1971), 4.
85. Ibid. 7.
86. Ibid. 8.
87. See Worby, 'Maps, names, and ethnic games', 389-90.
88. For a fuller discussion of the field day as a performative ritual of modernity, see Worby, 'Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity'.
89. Interview with Extension Supervisor Mawere, 29 May 1988, Tare township, Nemangwe Ward, Gokwe.
90. Conservation with extension worker Senah, Makaranga Village, Makore Ward, Gokwe, 7 Apr. 1988. It was not only the opportunity to engage in 'progressive' agriculture that was being withheld from women. For example, the woman charged with health and hygiene extension in Goredema ward chastised local men at a Goredema ward council meeting for not allowing their wives to attend training classes in which they might learn to improve their domestic skills as well. (Mai Tevera, speaking at the War Development committee meeting, Goredema township, 12 Oct. 1988.)
91. Interview with extension supervisor Mawere, Tare Township, Nemangwe Ward, Gokwe, 31 May 1988.
92. Interview with J. Murambga, Chibayamarangwe Village, Goredema, 7 Feb. 1989.
93. As James Ferguson so persuasively argues for Lesotho in his Anti-Politics Machine.
94. As Drinkwater cogently argues for the central and southern Midlands, it was the capacity to disjoin technical from political and economic considerations that made these policies persist in appearing rational to the Native Commissioners: M. Drinkwater, 'Technical development', 298. For a parallel argument, see E. Worby, 'Livestock policy and development ideology in Botswana', in D. Attwood, T. Bruneau and J. Galaty (eds.), Power and Poverty : Development and Development Projects in the Third World (Boulder and London, 1988).
95. As Drinkwater cogently argues for the central and southern Midlands, it was the capacity to disjoin technical from political and economic considerations that made these policies persist in appearing rational to the Native Commissioners: M. Drinkwater, 'Technical development', 298. For a parallel argument, see E. Worby, 'Livestock policy and development ideology in Botswana', in D. Attwood, T. Bruneau and J. Galaty (eds.), Power and Poverty : Development and Development Projects in the Third World (Boulder and London, 1988).
96. It is striking that in interviews given in the late 1980s, extension officers in each of several Gokwe wards were eager to recount the story of the initial recalcitrance, and ultimate conversion, of the local chief or headman to the enticements of cotton growing.
97. See Worby, 'Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity'. The regime of 'development' that emerged in post-war Southern Rhodesia was organized around a naturalized racial axis that differentiated among African and European populations, both culturally and politically. A series of legislative acts and administrative innovations were devoted to the reform of four principal domains of African rural life: the disciplining of hygienic practice, the stabilization of the monogamous family, the regularization of land tenure and the rationalization of agrarian techniques. These sites of intervention were considered integral to the task of reconciling conservation imperatives with political exigencies, particularly the demand that Africans be removed from European-designated farmland while sustaining the promise to increase black prosperity. The unity of these objectives in policy discourse quickly dissolved, however, when local administrators and agricultural extension officers were faced with the task of implementing the means to attain them. An analysis of two adjacent African reserves in the north-west -Sanyati and Gokwe - illustrates the importance of the timing and sequence according to which regions were drawn into the prescriptive apparatus of the development regime. These malarial, tsetse-infested lowlands, remote from the major axes of urban and industrial development, were located in a region distinguished by the historical absence of competing claims by European settlers to land. Sanyati began to receive immigrants forcibly resettled from white farms in the central midlands and south-eastern reserves in the 1950s, at a time when the coercive, hyper-rational model of development was reaching its apogee behind the passage of the Native Land Husbandry Act. A decade later, Gokwe received waves of the same immigrant population under conditions of greater administrative freedom. Targeting immigrants who had already internalized the 'discipline' of development and styled themselves as 'modern', Gokwe's extension staff was able to institute a voluntary, cotton-based regime, one widely regarded as a model of African rural 'advancement'.