Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the socio-political trajectories of a cashew factory in southern Tanzania since the late 1970s. It proposes ethnographic engagement with personal archives and material remains in order to understand the past through present lived experiences and beyond dominant state narratives.

Paper long abstract:

In response to the methodological challenge of writing histories of the everyday, this paper proposes ethnographic engagement with personal archives and material remains. The latter stems from the need of going beyond textual or oral accounts towards an engagement with lived experiences in order to understand the past through its traces in the present and take into account “the physical and metaphysical worlds in which the subjects and objects of our inquiries thrive(d)” (Ochonu 2015: 289).

The relevance for this methodological approach arises through the case of multiple narratives surrounding a cashew factory in Lindi Region, southern Tanzania. It was built as part of a development scheme in the late 1970s largely financed by the World Bank. Over the past 45 years, the factory has undergone various changes in ownership and stands today as material testimony to complex socio-political intertwinements, encapsulating conflicting memories of prosperity and disappointment. In particular, the local shareholders who acquired the factory in 2004 shortly after the country’s adoption of privatization policies harbour feelings of resentment, claiming that they were “robbed” of their factory in 2018 when it was abruptly closed down by the government. Using privately assembled documentations, not unlike Barber’s (2006) ‘tin-trunk archives’, the representatives of the group of shareholders keep meticulous records of everything related to the factory and their efforts to reclaim it. Acting both as advocates and self-proclaimed ‘memory caretakers’, their personal archives offer a multitude of historical accounts that have so far been overshadowed by dominating state narratives.