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Paper short abstract:

West Tanzanian discourses on growth both celebrate the increasing productivity of agricultural intensification , and express fears about the unnatural growth it engenders. This paper analyses the ambivalent reflections on growth, and brings them in dialogue with Degrowth proposals.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers an analysis of the ambivalent discourse on growth that occupies Tanzanian everyday life and public debate. Interlocutors blame the intensification of agriculture for forcing livestock, crops and soils to grow in excessive and unnatural ways. Plants, animals and the humans who consume them are said to grow ‘before their time’, resulting in bodies that are ‘older than their age’. At the same time, striving for the growth of fields and families is at the core of people’s understanding of the good life. Tanzanian conceptions of wellbeing thus follow the pro-growth sentiment described by many Africanist ethnographies (see Geissler & Prince 2010). Politicians find resonance with popular imaginaries of prosperity when calling upon the people to reproduce for the economic growth of the nation. Agrochemicals are simultaneously feared for how they drain soils and humans of vitality, and lauded for the strongly desired productivity they bring. These discourses on growth reflect the complexities of a country where obesity is rising while stunting – the most arresting image of impaired growth – is still present. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with farmers and healers in West Tanzania, I describe how discourses on growth are rooted in intimate understandings of the metabolic lifecycle and rhythms of organisms. I analyze the lived experiences and critical reflections that converge in these growth discourses, and bring them in dialogue with Degrowth proposals.