Nations on Exhibit: Divergent Nation-Building Trajectories in Tanzania and Kenya

• In Event: Multi-Epistemological Research: An Integrative Approach

Abstract

Historically, Tanzania has been considered one of the more effective nation-builders in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly when compared to Kenya. This paper is part of a multimethod dissertation project that takes both a positivist approach to explaining nationalist outcomes in Tanzania and Kenya, and an interpretivist approach to constructing the national narrative through the study of the content of state-run museum exhibits. Taking Anderson’s (1983) analysis of censuses, maps, and museums as a starting point, the first portion of this paper addresses the content of official national narratives by exploring the identity work going on in museums through the stories told in their exhibits. Over the course of ten months of dissertation fieldwork in Tanzania and in Kenya, I visited two dozen museums, monuments, and historic sites primarily run by government agencies. My argument is that the Tanzanian narrative is coherent, consistent, and direct in its deployment of the myths, symbols, and characters that populate its official imagining of the nation. In Kenya, by contrast, the narrative is more scattered and inconclusive when it comes to the question of who a Kenyan is. The second half of this paper gives an abbreviated account of the comparative historical analysis conducted in the dissertation project to explain why these varied narratives emerged. My argument is that violence preceding the moment of independence in both countries set the stage for the nation-building choices that elites would have to make as they took control of the state apparatus. Following independence, each government put policies in place that would affect how citizens understood their relationship with the state, and how they felt they could most effectively make claims on its resources. Diverging policy trajectories informed the narratives produced, and the ability of the state to effectively build a nation from the top down.

Author

• Mary Victoria Gorham