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Lifeworld and System: Of Water Systems and Grain Mill Development in Rural Tanzania*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Tony Waters
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Extract

I simply take it for granted that other men also exist in this my world, and indeed not only in a bodily manner like and among other objects, but rather as endowed with a consciousness that is essentially the same as mine…[and that] in the natural attitude of everyday life the following is taken for granted without question: (a) the corporeal existence of other men; (b) that these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially similar to my own; (c) that the things in the outer world included in my environs and that of my fellow-men are the same for us and have fundamentally the same meaning; (d) that I can enter into interrelations and reciprocal actions with my fellow-men; (e) that I can make myself understood to them (which follows from the preceding assumptions); (f) that a stratified social and cultural world is historically pregiven as a frame of reference for me and my fellow-men, indeed in a manner as taken for granted as the ‘natural world’ (g) that therefore the situation in which I find myself at any moment is only to a small extent purely created by me (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, 4-5).

Rural development projects involve the application of bureaucratic systems of consciousness to traditional areas where there have never been such normative systems applied before. This means that the values, norms, and ideals of bureaucratic institutions are implicit to how traditionally oriented rural villages are approached by outside development agencies and also how relationships develop between them.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , September 1992 , pp. 35 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1992

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Footnotes

*

This paper has evolved out of many conversations with a number of people who lived in Kasulu area from 1984 to 1987. Conversations with Fr. Hank VanderParver W. F. of Kakonko, and Karin Mahn of Kasulu were especially influential. Mzee T. B. Siweya and Mzee N. P. Mchonchele also contributed to the ideas described here. John R. Hall at UC Davis pointed me in the theoretical direction that this paper has taken. Much to his (Weberian) dismay, he pointed out that the absence of a Durkheimian social fact is what makes this paradox interesting. Professor Hall also assisted me by discussing Habermas' ideas with me at length. Two anonymous referees who read an earlier version of this paper also pointed me in directions that I had not thought of previously. All of these people as well as my wife Dagmar have my thanks and appreciation for what they have directly and indirectly contributed to my thinking, though I am solely responsible for the contents of this paper.

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