Sheds new light on the connections between culture and politics in early postcolonial East Africa

Cultured States is a vivid account of the intersections of postcolonial state power, the cultural politics of youth and gender, and global visions of modern style in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Andrew Ivaska describes a cosmopolitan East African capital rocked by debates over youth culture, national cultural policy, the rumored sexual escapades of the postcolonial elite, the content of university education, leftist activism, and the reform of colonial-era marriage laws. If young Tanzanians saw themselves as full-fledged participants in modern global culture, their understandings of the modern conflicted with that of a state launching “decency campaigns” banning cultural forms such as soul music, miniskirts, wigs, and bell-bottoms. Promoted by the political elite as a radical break from the colonial order, these campaigns nonetheless contained strong echoes of colonial assumptions about culture, tradition, and African engagements with the modern city. Exploring the ambivalence over the modern at the heart of these contests, Ivaska uses them as lenses through which to analyze struggles around gender relations and sexual politics, youth and masculinity, and the competition for material resources in a Dar es Salaam in rapid flux. Cultured States is a major contribution to understandings of urban cultural politics; national political culture; social struggles around gender, generation, and wealth; and the transnational dimensions of postcolonial histories too often conceived within national frames.

"“Andrew Ivaska has written a highly effective monograph that explores how state ideology, popular cultural practices, historical era, and emergent social structure intersected in postcolonial Tanzania.... Cultured States is a very good monograph full of valuable insights for scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates with an interest in cultural history, politics, anthropology, African studies, globalization, popular culture, and postcolonial studies.”" - International Journal of African Historical Studies

"“Andrew Ivaska’s book may stand as a pioneering work in the historiography of postcolonial Africa. In its finely textured depictions of the distinctive cultural imaginaries fueling official and unofficial visions of nation building and citizenship in postindependence Tanzania, the book offers compelling material for broader studies in comparative nationalisms worldwide. The same can be said of its potential contributions to comparative studies of the cosmopolitan sensibilities and social movements of the global 1960s.”" - American Historical Review

"“Andrew Ivaska’s fascinating book explores the raucous and hotly contested cultural politics of 1960s Dar es Salaam, showing how debates over national culture were simultaneously critical public discussions about changing gender roles, intergenerational tensions and growing material inequalities – all of which were visible in the public spaces of Tanzania’s rapidly expanding capital city…. Cultured States will surely attract a wide readership in African studies, but it merits an audience beyond this as well, in areas including urban studies, the global history of the 1960s and postcolonial studies.”" - Social History

"“Cultured States is a welcome contribution to the growing field of histories that explore cultural politics in the decades immediately following decolonization… This book should be extremely effective in graduate and upper-level undergraduate classrooms. It is well-organized, explores theoretically complex issues in clear language, and is very entertaining. Ivaska carefully places the study within the larger body of literature on youth culture and gender debates in the global 1960s. He succeeds in showing the richness and complexity in Tanzanian conflicts over socialism, culture, and young people.”" - Canadian Journal of History

"“On the whole, Andrew Ivaska’s Cultured States is a well-written book that documents a fascinating historical period and offers significant theoretical insights.”" - American Ethnologist