The spectacle of modernity: blood, microscopes and mirrors in Colonial Tanganyika

Fisher, E. and Arce, A. (2000) The spectacle of modernity: blood, microscopes and mirrors in Colonial Tanganyika. In: Arce, A. and Long, N. (eds.) Anthropology, development and modernities: exploring discourse, counter-tendencies and violence. Routledge, London, pp. 73-98. ISBN 9780415205009

Abstract/Summary

The chapter focuses on attempts to change and improve the subjects of the colonial regime in what was the British Protectorate of Tanganyika, contemporary Tanzania. The colonial project in Africa was surrounded by technology, ideology, and representations of modernity based on the application of instrumental rationality. Through the example of colonial practices to control sleeping sickness, it examines how local forms of knowledge and livelihoods were negated and counter-tendencies people generated, offering explanations for the predicament of the human condition consequent upon the colonial experience.