Hybridity, Heritage and the Governance of Security: Community Policing in Tanzania

Cross, Charlotte (2023). Hybridity, Heritage and the Governance of Security: Community Policing in Tanzania. In: Cross, Charlotte and Giblin, John D. eds. Critical Approaches to Heritage for Development. Rethinking Development. Oxon, UK and New York, USA: Routledge, pp. 235–249.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003107361-18

Abstract

This chapter explores attempts to instrumentalise heritage in addressing contemporary security challenges through analysis of ‘hybrid governance’ approaches within international development. Interest in hybridity has emerged from critiques of state-centric assumptions in development programming and increased understanding of the diversity of institutions that exercise public authority and are involved in the provision of public goods and services, including security and policing. This might include a range of ‘traditional’ authorities, or other institutions that embed practices, values and meanings derived from or legitimated in relation to the past. It is suggested that hybrid models, which combine such institutions with some attributes of ‘modern’ statehood can engender more effective and locally acceptable forms of development. However, attempts to instrumentalise hybridity pay insufficient attention to how appeals to both the past and the future are implicated in power relations and their contestation and, thus, how hybrid arrangements evolve over time and between places. Rather than assuming that the existence of ‘local’ security provision arrangements implies they are legitimate and effective, this chapter argues that these questions should be interrogated from the perspective of those who rely on such services for their safety.

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