The agrarian question in Tanzania: using new evidence to reconcile an old debate

Abstract

Rural poverty continues to be one of the most trenchant development problems in Tanzania, and yet no comprehensive solution has been found. In this paper, it is argued that without a fundamental understanding of the agrarian question, any attempt to derive meaningful conclusions on rural development is doomed to be incomprehensible and incomplete. The paper traces back the roots of this important scholarly exchange of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as well as summarising the resulting debate mainly between the neo-populist school and Marxian political economy. It then goes on to outline how this original understanding of the agrarian question extended to and influenced the contemporary rural development discourse, which however widely misrepresented the original contributions and created an illustrious array of antagonistic and inconclusive approaches that culminated in the recent World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for development. This theoretical...