Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > ‘National resources’?

Electronic data

  • JEAS_Final2018

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of East African Studies on 06/09/2018, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2018.1518366

    Accepted author manuscript, 745 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

‘National resources’?: The fragmented citizenship of gas extraction in Tanzania

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Eastern African Studies
Issue number4
Volume12
Number of pages20
Pages (from-to)696-715
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date6/09/18
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Recent discoveries of oil and natural gas across East Africa have provoked a wave of political optimism fuelled by imaginaries of future development. Tanzania is a paragon of this trend; its government having asserted its potential to become a globally significant natural gas producer within a decade. Yet, this rhetorical promise has been countered by a series of violent confrontations that have taken place between state forces and residents of southern Tanzania. Although these struggles are about various articulations of resource sovereignty, this paper argues that they should be located less in questions of resource control, than in a historical marginalization of the south, or what has been called a ‘hidden agenda’, that privileges urban centres to the north. Drawing on original qualitative data generated over three years in Mtwara and Lindi regions, it shows how gas discoveries reveal the fault lines in the construction of an inclusive ‘Tanzanian’ citizenship. Protesters counter-narrate their sense of citizenship with insurgent strategies ranging from strike action to calls for secession. In short, natural gas discoveries actually extend the fragmentation of an already ‘differentiated citizenship’. Studies of resource conflict and sovereignty, we conclude, should pay more attention to the contested nature of citizenship.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of East African Studies on 06/09/2018, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2018.1518366