Dividing the Labor of Development: Education and Participation in Rural Tanzania

Since the 1940s, the concept of community participation has framed, mobilized, and legitimated national development agendas in the Singida Region of rural central Tanzania. Based on 19 months of ethnographic and archival research, this study examines the forms of community participation elicited through state and international development initiatives aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Building on theorizations of “trusteeship” as an organizing principle of development, this article highlights the way in which educational credentials configure the distribution of roles, responsibilities, and rewards of participatory development initiatives. I argue that, despite the equalizing claims of participation, the trusteeship phenomenon legitimates a radically asymmetrical distribution of labor and authority. Through schooling's symbolic and cultural work, the educated become the mind and voice of development, while the lesser educated become its hands.