Contested ‘development’: Schooling, language, and identity in the lives of four generations of Tanzanian Maasai women

• In Event: Women's issues & rural education

Proposal

Schooling is oriented around whatever ideologies of ‘development’ are promulgated by the politically powerful. In Tanzania, the dominant ideologies guiding the institutions of schooling have varied widely, from colonialism, through Ujamaa (‘familyhood’ or Tanzanian socialism), to the current neoliberal era. In each of these eras, schooling has been used to further the agendas of the ruling elite, with significant implications for the linguistic, cultural, and ideological underpinnings of schooling, and, indeed, of society. While schooling is usually accompanied by expectations for higher standards of living and enhanced life opportunities, historically, in Tanzania and elsewhere, schooling has had a tendency to distance learners from their own languages, cultures, and knowledge systems, many of which are highly attuned to issues of sustainability.

This paper examines the legacy of schooling in Tanzania, through the experiences and perspectives of four generations of Maasai women in Arusha Region. Through these women’s narratives, this paper explores questions of what kinds of ‘development’ schooling has helped to foster, and what kinds of ‘development’ schooling has perhaps interrupted. It asks: Whose imaginations of development are served by formal schooling? What have been the communal benefits and costs of schooling, particularly for women? Specifically, this paper interrogates the following questions:
1. In what ways have women’s experiences of schooling over four generations impacted their multilingual repertoires, relationships with tradition, economic opportunities, gender roles, and identities? In what ways have these changes impacted their social, cultural, and economic capital?
2. How do these women’s experiences of schooling, their language practices, and their identities interact with the broader history and ideological context of Tanzania, and its changing socio-political economic realities?

Theoretical Framework:
This study employs Bourdieu’s (1991) theories of capital, language, and symbolic power to analyse ways in which women’s experiences of schooling have impacted their social, cultural, and economic capital. This study also draws on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment in seeking to understand the intersection of identity, ideology, and capital in constructing conditions under which women invest in schooling, for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren.

Methodology and Data Sources:
This research utilizes life histories methodology (Antikainen et al., 1996; Atkinson, 1998; Goodley et al., 2004) to explore women’s narratives about their experiences of schooling. The study involves life history interviews with four generations of Maasai women from two different families, with a total of 8 participants. While not all of these women have themselves attended school (although most have at least a few years of schooling), all of their lives have been profoundly shaped by the institution of schooling, with its demands, values, and immeasurable realm of influence. Data sources include transcripts from these interviews, as well as ethnographic observations of these women in their homes. This study also involves a review of literature on history of schooling in Tanzania, and interviews with leading Tanzanian scholars of education and gender, in order to situate the women’s experiences within the broader historical backdrop of education, gender, and development in Tanzania.

Findings:
This study found that schooling has played a significant role in women’s language practices, with schooling contributing substantially to Swahili proficiency. Women with more years of schooling tend to use more Swahili than Maa (Maasai language) with their children, pointing directly to schooling as the cause for this language shift. As a result, their children and/or grandchildren have limited Maa proficiency, in contrast to women with little or no schooling, whose children are strong Maa-Swahili bilinguals. This study also found that women attributed schooling with a central role in shifting gender roles, including women’s increasing proximity to men, women’s assertiveness, and a decrease in polygamy, although certainly there are multiple and complex factors contributing to these shifts. Women also pointed to schooling as having a marked contribution to the erosion of certain cultural practices, such as traditional forms of ear piercing, rituals surrounding honouring ancestors, and rites of passage. Complex forms of education co-exist for these women alongside formal schooling, in sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory ways. Some women bemoaned that their daughters/granddaughters lack certain kinds of education specifically because formal schooling has interfered. Women’s relationships with schooling are characterized by a complex interplay between hope and betrayal, as they simultaneously express intense hope that their children will have better lives through schooling, and a sense of despair that the system excludes their children from opportunities for which they have been prepared.

These women’s experiences of and attitudes towards schooling reflect significant ideological and linguistic differences depending on the era of their schooling. Those schooled during the Ujamaa years described the local applicability of their schooling, and ways in which they could embody identities of authority, differently from those schooled in a neoliberal climate. Those schooled under neoliberalism demonstrated more of a ‘learn to leave’ orientation, a narrower concept of ‘education’, and a greater valuation of (though not necessarily ability in) English.

Collectively, and in sometimes contentious dialogue with each other, these women’s narratives unsettle dominant notions of ‘development’, problematize mainstream projects of nation building and neoliberal modernization, and offer imaginations for alternative futures.

Significance:
This paper centres voices of rural Maasai women – a demographic infrequently listened to in dialogues surrounding education – in asking foundational questions regarding the purpose of schooling, and in problematizing mainstream conceptions of ‘development’ and ‘progress’. Unlike many studies which assess the impact of schooling over relatively narrow timeframes, this study examines the legacy of schooling in women’s trajectories over four generations, with narratives spanning nearly a century. Its contributions to understanding ways in which women invest (or not) in schooling opportunities for themselves, their children, and grandchildren, has implications for how we conceive of and design relevant education for communities which have historically been alienated from formal schooling. In these ways, this study is able to offer fresh insight into foundational questions of the nature and purpose of schooling, and contributes to a radical re-imagining of the role education in society.

Author

• Monica Shank Lauwo, University of British Columbia