2015/03/01 by Priya Lal · 17 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #African history and culture studies #International Development and Aid #Socialism #Capitalism #Politics #Sovereignty #Colonialism #Ideology #Tanzania #Left-wing politics #Political economy #Political science #Sociology #Law #Ethnology #Communism
paper · doi:10.1353/hum.2015.0011
published in Humanity 6(1), 17-31 (University of Pennsylvania Press)
openalex publication_date 2015/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This essay contextualizes the emergence of the NIEO—as an ideological formation and political project—from the particular vantage point of early postcolonial Tanzania. The political imagination of Tanzanian leaders was never imprisoned within binaries opposing formal colonialism to independent nationhood, capitalism to socialism, or individual rights to collective rights. Moving among, between, and within these discursive and material poles, Julius Nyerere and other leftist African leaders forged a variety of political languages, agendas, and policies throughout the 1960s and 70s in response to a shared set of obstacles to the interlinked goals of economic sovereignty and development.