Codifying Manamba: History, Knowledge Production and Sisal Plantation Workers in Tanzania

This paper examines the different bodies of knowledge produced about and by sisal plantation workers in Tanzania under colonialism and after independence. I take as my focus the labor category manamba , whose semantic field is rife with absences and contradictions. By examining the different modalities, agents and types of knowledge produced about and by sisal workers, I argue that the contradictions and absences of manamba reflect what David Scott calls "the dense field of operations" on the plantations. The multiple knowledges produced constituted on the one hand the modus operandi of organizing and regulating labor, while on the other they comprised the tactic workers deployed to subvert not only capitalist authority but also patriarchal structures of domination.