The future sits in places: Electricity, value, and infrastructural triage in Tanzania

Abstract

This article explores the shifting landscapes of light, labor, and value produced by the politics of electrification in Tanzania. Through engaging the anthropologies of infrastructure and electricity, it asks, how do people understand the relationship between electricity and value in the landscapes that sustain them? A brief outline of the history of electrification in Tanzania highlights its role in the production of place, and analysis of fieldwork with residents, leaders, and energy advocates between 2017 and 2020 reveals contemporary understandings of the relationship between electricity, value, and place. The article then chronicles recent government efforts to dramatically expand access to electricity, outlines the processes of selective grid expansion, and describes how people experience and understand its effects. I construct a theory of infrastructural triage to conceptualize the process of assigning degrees of urgency, priority, and value for developing infrastructure in particular spaces and for particular people and highlight its role in newly configuring the landscapes and timescapes in which people live and experience their everyday lives. In the process of enhancing the productivity and labor of some people but not others, electricity facilitates, obstructs, and marks flows of value across landscapes.

Landscapes of value

“…Across cases, competing valuation dynamics appear as inescapably embedded within particular places and reflective of preceding histories; we see this not only as a coherent theme but also as a meaningful contribution for understanding how value and values come to move through the world. Indeed, if “the future sits in places,” as Phillips (2022) proposes, we argue that so, too, does value.…”

“…Writing of Tanzania, Phillips (2022) shows us how rural landscapes can exclude certain people from the means of livelihood, not through the construction of fences or property laws, but through the construction of power lines. Three‐quarters of Tanzania's rural population lived without electricity connectivity in 2020.…”

“…But as they stretch across rural landscapes, power lines pass by other villages; access is a political question. Within electrification's new and inequitable geographies, “new peripheries also emerge, cast in darker shadows than before” (Phillips 2022, 236). Unlike when electricity was simply, mostly, absent, its uneven presence creates new forms of landscape‐based exclusions.…”

“…Phillips's theory of “infrastructural triage” throws into sharp relief the political processes determining whose infrastructural needs are most deserving of timely servicing and the resultant landscape configurations these decisions create. The temporal nature of these exclusions is particularly striking, as villagers recognize the possible futures that open or close with the presence of electrification: “infrastructure begets infrastructure” (Phillips, 2022, 236). The uneven geographies of electrification reflect political valuation judgments.…”

“…To this strong foundation, we add the landscape analytic to argue for the importance of situating these competing dynamics within their geographic and temporal contexts. The articles included in this issue span from southern Appalachia three thousand years ago (Hollenbach and Carmody 2022) to contemporary rural Tanzania (Phillips 2022) to the near‐future California coast (Anderson 2022). Across cases, competing valuation dynamics appear as inescapably embedded within particular places and reflective of preceding histories; we see this not only as a coherent theme but also as a meaningful contribution for understanding how value and values come to move through the world.…”