The Professional Geographer

ISSN: 0033-0124 (Print) 1467-9272 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpg20

A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies:

Interviews, Mental Maps, and Photo Voices on the
Urban Farms of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Leslie McLees
To cite this article: Leslie McLees (2013) A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies: Interviews,
Mental Maps, and Photo Voices on the Urban Farms of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, The
Professional Geographer, 65:2, 283-295, DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2012.679449
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2012.679449

Published online: 21 May 2012.

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies: Interviews,

Mental Maps, and Photo Voices on the Urban Farms

of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

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Leslie McLees
University of Oregon
To examine a postcolonial approach to urban experience is to inquire about how cities and people operate
beyond the structures and analytical frameworks that have emerged from Western urban theory. Much of the
emerging research in the field is looking for ways to valorize the myriad efforts that residents put forth to live
and thrive in the city. Many methodological approaches, however, are still directed by the researcher, who
determines the data-collection activities and the guidelines by which they are carried out. Using a case study
of urban farmers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this article is an effort to articulate a postcolonial methodology
where the research and data collection methods were designed to give voice to the people marginalized by
narrow definitions of the city, who are often seen as victims rather than as active agents constructing their own
lives. This approach reveals the very real and tangible experiences and relationships that constitute daily life
for the urban farmers of Dar es Salaam. Key Words: mental mapping, photo voice, postcolonial methods,
Tanzania, urban farming.

Examinar un enfoque poscolonial a la experiencia urbana es inquirir sobre como

operan las ciudades y la gente

mas alla de las estructuras y marcos analticos que han surgido de la teora urbana occidental. La mayor parte
de la investigacion
emergente en este campo esta buscando vas para la mirada de esfuerzos que los residentes
acometen para vivir y salir adelante en la ciudad. Sin embargo, muchos de los enfoques metodologicos
todava

estan dirigidos por el investigador, quien determina las actividades de recoleccion

de datos y las guas sobre
como
debe desarrollarse ese trabajo. Usando un estudio de caso de agricultores urbanos de Dar es Salaam,

Tanzania, este articulo es un esfuerzo para articular una metodologa poscolonial donde los metodos de
investigacion
con la intencion
y recoleccion
de datos fueron disenados

de dar voz a la gente marginada por

la estrechez de las definiciones de ciudad, quienes a menudo se ven mas como vctimas que agentes activos
que construyen sus propias vidas. Este enfoque revela las muy reales y tangibles experiencias y relaciones que
constituyen la vida cotidiana de los agricultores urbanos de Dar es Salaam. Palabras clave: mapeo mental,
voz foto, metodos
poscoloniales, Tanzania, agricultura urbana.

ities of the Global South are often framed

in calamitous terms: chaotic, crowded,
sprawling, and representative of a growing ur-

ban crisis (Agnotti 2006; Robinson 2006; Roy

2011). Large portions of these cities are certainly poor, but people readily function outside

am extremely grateful to my research assistant Ummy Munisi and the farmers of Dar es Salaam who shared their experiences with me. I would
also like to thank Easther Chigamura and Lindsay Naylor at the University of Oregon and two anonymous reviewers for their most insightful and
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
C Copyright 2013 by Association of American Geographers.
The Professional Geographer, 65(2) 2013, pages 283295 
Initial submission, June 2011; revised submissions, August and November 2011; final acceptance, December 2011.
Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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284 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

and beyond the political and economic structures imposed by governments and multilateral
international donor agencies. The dystopian
images result from developmentalist or
economistic approaches to cities, which focus
on urban informality as a sign of failed economic and urban development (Davis 2006).
As Robinson (2002) stated, Understandings
of city-ness of come to rest on the (usually unstated) experiences of a relatively small group
of (mostly Western) cities, and cities outside
of the West are assessed in terms of this pregiven standard of (world) city-ness, or urban
economic dynamism (53132). Postcolonial
methodological approaches are needed to
illuminate how these daily realities create and
influence a different kind of city, even if it is one
that does not necessarily fit within the framework of the city as understood through Western urban theory (Robinson 2002). A postcolonial approach in urban studies allows us to
question what we see when we look at cities:
. . . [I]t seems crucial to find a way to valorize
the many efforts that residents make to use the
city as an arena in which to say something about
what it means to be alive and to practice whatever forms of aliveness they might eke out from
the city. If we pay attention only to misery
and not to the often complex forms of deliberation, calculation, and engagement through
which residents try to do more than simply
register the factualness of a bare existence, do
we not inevitably make these conditions worse?
(Simone 2010, 333)

Rather than seeing cities for how they fail, in

terms of infrastructure and economy, we need
to approach them for the multiple relations
and practices that constitute how they work.
Postcolonial urban scholars are theorizing
cities to reflect the conditions of cities in
different regional contexts, often focusing on
the ephemeral, the informal, and hybridity as
ways to interrogate urban space and practice
(Roy 2006, 2011; Immerwahr 2007; McFarlane
2010; Simone 2010). To understand these
processes, scholars utilize methodologies that
foreground the construction of knowledge
(McEwan 2009) and focus on the various
connections and negotiations that are a part
of everyday life. These approaches provide insight into the very real processes and practices
that influence peoples lives. The methods

discussed here are drawn from participatory

approaches but adapted to a postcolonial
approach to data collection. They are designed
to give voice to people marginalized by narrow
definitions of the city that exclude the ways
that people actually live in cities. This approach
sees people not as victims of urbanization but
examines how they construct their own lives.
This article provides a case study that builds
on two decades of work in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania, examining the demographics, economics, practices, and environmental impacts
of urban agriculture (Sawio 1994; Jacobi
1997, 1998; Mlozi 1997; Dongus et al. 2009;
Kihampa and Mwegoha 2010). This work has
influenced the attitudes of public officials and
their policies governing the practice (Slater
2001). Rather than focusing on agriculture,
however, this project seeks to examine the role
of informality and daily practice in constituting
an urban life that does not necessarily conform
to standard narratives of the city. I employ
the term informality here beyond its economic
importance and instead use it to refer to
the heterogeneity of social relations (Simone
2004). Informality operates in the daily life of
everyone, from the elite to the poor, revealing
the dynamic negotiations in cities between
the legal and illegal, the legitimate and illegitimate (Roy 2011). As such, the ephemeral
connections and social relationships within
and across social and economic classes provide
the foundation for urban life. The focus of
this article is on the methodology employed
to explore these relationships and practices on
the urban open-space farms of Dar es Salaam.
The methods described here facilitate an understanding of urban farming as a vibrant practice that relies on relationships both within and
beyond the farm that are constantly being renegotiated. In the following section, I provide a
brief background of urban open-space cultivation in Dar es Salaam to contextualize the
field study. A discussion of each of the methods, which include semistructured interviews,
mental mapping, and photo voice, follows, and
I examine how each contributes to a postcolonial methodological approach to urban studies.
I conclude by discussing how these methods
build on each other to provide insight into the
urban experience for farmers in the city of Dar
es Salaam.

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Background to the Project

Ninety percent of the leafy-green vegetables
consumed in Dar es Salaam, a city with a
population of about 4 million people (UNHABITAT 2010), are grown in the city
(Mougeot 2005). In contrast to urban home
gardeningusually done on small plots near
the homeopen-space farms occur on vacant
land in the urban built-up environment where
farmers cultivate several plots of vegetables to
sell at the market (Dongus et al. 2009). Several farmers work in an open space, have multiple plots each, and grow different crops at
various stages to provide continual income.
The open-space farms generally have some
form of group formation to provide social support and communicate issues between farmers and often to negotiate with landowners to
secure access to land (McLees 2011). Studies
throughout sub-Saharan Africa have repeatedly demonstrated that most farmers in the
city are not recent migrants relying on rural
skills but are well-established urban residents
from across economic class lines (Rakodi 1988;
Sawio 1994; Foeken 2006). In Dar es Salaam,
aerial photos revealed that approximately 650
hectares of the city were used for vegetable
production in 1999 on open land ranging
from a few square meters to several hectares
(Dongus 2001). In 2000 the Ministry of Lands
and Human Settlement Development formally
incorporated urban agriculture into zoning
guidelines, making Tanzania one of only a
few countries in Africa to legalize the practice
(Hoogland 2003; Mlozi 2003). Despite this, the
city of Dar es Salaam contains no areas zoned
for agriculture, and the practice remains effectively illegal, yet highly visible, in the city.

Methodological Approaches
Data were collected from nine open-space
farms in the city, selected from a total of eleven
farming groups we were introduced to through
agriculture extension agents. The groups were
chosen to represent diverse locations in the city
and based on the willingness of the farmers
to work with us. Each farming group had a
leader, though some groups were more cohesive than others, a dynamic we had to constantly
navigate. My research assistant and I worked
closely with the leaders, ensuring that we interviewed a range of people that represented the

group as a whole with respect to age, gender,

and experience. Not every farmer in any given
group agreed to speak to us, either because they
had work to do or because they distrusted the
motives of an outsider. We were regular visitors to these farms, which reduced the distraction of our presence, and eventually we
were able to build a familiar rapport and trust
with many farmers. For this project, we conducted eighty-two semistructured interviews,
and of these twenty-five farmers drew mental
maps and twenty participated in a photo-voice
project. These methods are each discussed next.
Semistructured Interviews
To examine how farming influences daily
life in cities, I utilized in-depth interviews
that were responsive to the interviewees
lead, facilitated dynamic interactions, and
established relationships based on mutual
trust (Rubin and Rubin 2005). This approach
emphasizes spending time getting to know
the participants, observing their daily practices, and using this to inform interviews
(Whatmore 2003). Interviews were embedded
in ethnographic observations; the research
assistant and I spent time on farms and were
able to convey our awareness of the farmers
experiences in ways that let them see that
we understood them despite our obvious
differences (Bondi 2003). More informal
interactions also allowed for looking awry, a
concept that refers to asking questions or
observing participants when they were less
guarded while working or relaxing with others
(Proudfoot 2010). This technique draws from
psychoanalytic theory and examines how identity and meaning are expressed not just through
words but with other forms of nonverbal expression (Thomas 2007). Embodied emotion
is difficult to articulate, and hence interviewers
needed to listen for the unconscious during
conversations and other interactions and
observations (Thomas 2007, 540). This refers
to the process of observing peoples responses
to situations and practices, such as frustration
with work, joy at discussing children, or
pensiveness when thinking about the problems
farmers face in the city. It is important to
recognize that watching work, techniques, and
interactions with both the people and the environment provide ways to observe the embodied
act of farming and insight into how people
experience their roles on the farm (Bingley

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286 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

2003). This required close attention to farmers
activities during multiple site visits and having
discussions with my research assistant about
the context of farmers words and actions.
Interviews were conducted on the farms,
in Swahili, with both me and my research
assistant, and generally in a shaded area where
farmers often rested during the day. The
interviews provided background demographic
and economic information, but they were also
designed to get people to construct a story of
their lives and how it related to the city and
farming, rather than to answer questions. We
focused on ideological discussions about urban
development, what a city should look like, and
who it is for. Deflecting the discussion onto
broader issues allowed farmers to express the
importance of farming not only economically
but in the creation of social networks; stability;
a sense of enjoyment, pride or frustration; and
the urban experience itself. Often in interviews,
other farmers, customers, or friends would
join the conversation for a few minutes. We
encouraged these interactions to keep the
farmers comfortable but also to observe the
different ways farmers interacted with people
and spoke about issues in different contexts.
Interviews revealed a range of interactions
and relationships that constitute everyday life
on farms that were represented in the variety of
people who moved through these spaces every
day: government officials, landowners, police,
customers, seed-sellers, tea vendors, and other
people who walk around providing everything
from shaves to phone cards. There is also informal regulation on who can use the space for
what purposes. When asked about areas where
farmers gathered during the hottest parts of the
day to relax, we often heard a variation of the
phrase not just anyone can sit there, despite
the many different people moving through the
farm each day. Also important were the formal
and informal groups; while formal groups had
meetings to discuss issues, women would have
informal groups to collect money to help each
other, and the men might gather in one corner to drink beer at the end of the day. Cliques
of farmers gathered to relax or help each other
on their plots, and in several cases, farmers had
relatives working on the same farm who helped
each other out. These various associations, and
how they had changed over time, were explored
in interviews, giving us a slice of the nuance of
the social dynamics on farms.

It can often be difficult, however, for

people to express intangible, ephemeral, or
unconscious practices and meaning in a formal
interview setting (Dirksmeier and Helbrecht
2008), especially in an interview partially
conducted through a translator. Farmers rarely
expressed the more ephemeral motivations
for, and influences on, daily farming life in
interviews. This was expected, as farmers were
used to talking about economics and the problems they face as farmers, not the intricacies
of group dynamics and associations with space.
Further, because of my interest in farming,
it was difficult to push people to discuss how
their lives are influenced beyond the farm. I
needed different methods to gain these insights
into practices, performance, and everyday-ness
beyond a formal interview. I wanted the
farmers to have the opportunity to frame their
daily practices in a way they would have more
control over, where they could guide the story,
and hopefully reveal more about how they
negotiate space and associations in the city and
on the farms. The following two methods were
designed for just this purpose.
Mental Maps of Farms
Mental mapping of spaces and relationships is
a technique that provides perspectives on spatial understanding (Brennan-Horley and Gibson 2009). This technique is often associated
with participatory research, but it was used here
to provide another way for farmers to construct relational spaces and illustrate less measurable forms of experience that farmers have
on farms (Green, Shuttleworth, and Lavery
2005; Pavlovskaya 2009). This privileges spatial practices that are often hidden by land-use
research and top-down planning policies, such
as social connections or informal economic
activities (Elwood 2006; Brennan-Horley and
Gibson 2009). Mental maps also add to the
richness of interview data by allowing respondents to visually express different ways of
describing the places in which they engage
(Darbyshire, MacDougall, and Schiller 2005).
Although this is a method drawn from participatory approaches used in communities to map
resources or spaces, we adapted this technique
to a postcolonial framework and asked individuals to draw maps of their farms with the intention of understanding farms as spaces and how
they function in daily life.

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 287

Figure 1 A mental map of a farm with very strong community cohesion, drawn by a male member of
a group with strong social cohesion.

After twenty-five interviews on three farms,

I invited farmers to individually draw maps,
asking them to focus on important pathways,
practices, and activities. This usually took thirty
to forty-five minutes, a significant time commitment, although some farmers asked to take
the paper home and complete the map there,
which allowed more time for reflection. These
three farms were chosen because after interviews and observations, they represented a wide
range in levels of group cohesion and the ways
that people seemed to move through the farms
every day. Farmers were concerned at first that
I was asking them to draw an exact, scaled map
of the area, especially as many are not used to
thinking about their farms or the city from an
allocentric (top-down) perspective. We had to
quickly develop a way of explaining the process
that alleviated their fears about drawing an
exact representation, namely, by not using
the Swahili word for map and describing the
process as drawing. Farmers were asked to
work by themselves to create the map, but
invariably others would offer suggestions, and
as the purpose was to examine the construction
of spaces and experiences, we considered these
beneficial interactions. They seemed to pro-

vide confidence in the project and stimulated

the participants to think of other details.
These maps were created after interviews
that asked people to describe their lives as urban farmers, which undoubtedly influenced the
types of maps they constructed. Their knowledge of dynamics on the farms is constrained,
however, by their own personal experiences.
No two maps were the same, but there were
significant similarities within, and differences
between, farms. The farming group that consistently self-reported as very cohesive and supportive produced maps that were fairly similar,
especially in the structures deemed important
to the group members, such as the pump house
and water tank that served as a meeting and socializing place (Figure 1). All of the maps from
this farm were oriented the same way, looking
out to the main busy road at the top of the page,
with the pump house as a central feature. No
plots are marked for individuals as they were at
other farms; rather, they just show that there
are plots. When we asked the farmer who drew
Figure 1 why he drew his map this way, he responded: This is our farm. If one of us fails,
then we all fail. This farm is for all of us. This
mental map gives an illustration of farms that

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288 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

Figure 2 A mental map of an urban open-space farm with very little cohesion. These maps often show
important nodes in daily life, rather than important shared spaces. This map shows the home (nyumba),
the path to the farm (njia kuja shamba), cars on the busy Kawawa Road, the well for irrigation (kisima
cha maji ya kumwagilia), the shop where they buy soda (duka), the farm (shamba), and the coconut tree
where the farmer and her plot neighbor rest (mnazi).

belong to the group as a whole, emphasizing

the conviviality of the groups and the farmers
sense of a shared future.
Conversely, on a farm where there is less
group cohesion, farmers only showed where

their plots were and any spots where they

rested or chatted with plot neighbors or where
they found water, rather than the entire farming area (Figure 2). This farm has an official
group of about fifty farmers and a leader who

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 289

communicated with the local ward (a political area) leader, but he was not communicative with many members of the group. Meetings were rare and the women were often left
out. People usually knew their plot neighbors,
often resting together while waiting for customers, but the farmers lived in adjacent informal settlements and would instead go home
to take care of duties there, rather than relax
and socialize on the farms. The maps from this
farm show the limited importance of sociability with other farmers, but they do show the
nodes of their daily networks. All maps have a
tree of some kind where farmers rest, and they
show the pathway by which farmers obtain water for their plots. Some of the maps show the
nearby stand where they buy their daily soda
during breaks from work. A major road nearby
is drawn in relation to farmers paths to and
from work, at least by the farmers who have
plots near it. When we discussed the differences
between maps with the farmers, one farmer responded by shrugging and saying, We all do
different things from each other. Our drawings will show that. With the lack of a shared
or communal gathering space and group cohesiveness, there was little need for a shared place
toward which these farmers could orient their
daily lives.
There was a marked contrast between the
styles of maps drawn on the two farms, despite
the similar instructions we gave to all farmers.
Discussing the maps with them provided an
opportunity to explore group cohesion, especially the subtle ways people (both farmers and
nonfarmers) are included and excluded from
collective life on the farms. Although the subject of group dynamics had been explored in the
interviews, these maps illustrated the real ways
that these associations influenced how people
moved through farms and who and what they
interacted with. The maps provided one way to
talk about components of group life by giving
people a visual aid to refer to in our discussions
and prompting them to explain their own part
in constructing them.
Photo Voice and Focus Groups
Photo voice is a social science method drawn
from the arts that emphasizes social justice
and change by providing disempowered people, such as the homeless, children, HIV/AIDS

patients, and women, with an avenue to illustrate and exhibit their daily realities to a
wider audience (Darbyshire, MacDougall, and
Schiller 2005; Mitchell 2005; Fournier et al.
2007; Miller 2009). This method is important
because it can be used to literally show the
places where the eyes of artists and social scientists cannot go (Keenan 2007; Packard 2008).
The power of this method in the social sciences is that it allows participants to generate
different ideas than from verbal or written interviews alone by appealing to the most powerful sense for many people: the sense of sight
(Darbyshire, MacDougall, and Schiller 2005).
People frame places to record their own perspectives and experiences and further generate
knowledge of their own lives beyond what the
researcher has identified as important (McIntyre 2003; Nowell et al. 2008; Gotschi, Delve,
and Freyer 2009). Although photo voice has
been primarily employed as a participatory research method, this study used it to allow farmers to literally frame what they wanted to show
me about daily life. The ways visual images are
experienced is culturally and historically specific, and implementation of this method in a
postcolonial framework needs to facilitate ways
for individual photographers to interpret images on their own terms. This shifts the utilization of photographs in research beyond a
colonial approach where the researcher takes
pictures, literally constructing the scene and
interpreting it, and instead puts the responsibility of framing places and practices in the
hands of the people who have those experiences
(Poole 1997). Farmers had control over the
camera and they took pictures of each other
or of significant places (or both), and they used
those pictures to challenge what they know to
be dominant perceptions, by both outsiders and
urban elites, of themselves and their farms as
dirty, poor, backward, and unintelligent.
Four open-space farms were chosen based
on their willingness to participate in the study,
their social and economic diversity, and their
representation of four farms from different areas of the city. We had spent a great deal of time
on these farms, and working through the group
leaders we asked five people from each farm to
participate in the project. The farmers were
each provided with a twenty-seven-exposure
disposable Fuji camera. We asked them to document their lives as urban farmers and asked

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290 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

Figure 3 This photo by a male is from a market where some of the farmers were selling their vegetables.
The caption reads, Farmers are not treasured like other businessmen. We also need to be treasured
like other businessmen. (Color figure available online.)

them to take about twenty pictures associated

with urban farming, including their lives outside the farm. The emphasis on taking pictures
of their lives as farmers was not to minimize
their other roles in the city. Our presence was
often disruptive to daily activity, and we asked
this because we wanted to see what was happening on the farms when we were not there.
Farmers defined their existence as urban farmers more broadly, taking us off the farm to markets and into homes, revealing other roles they
occupy in tandem with being a farmer. We encouraged them to take about seven pictures that
did not relate to farming, which was partially
a gift to ensure that they would have printed
pictures that were meaningful but also to gain
insight into other roles important in their lives.
Cameras were collected after a week and developed at local facilities.
When we brought back the prints, we gave
the farmers twenty minutes to look through
their pictures. Farmers were excited to look at
the photos, and the conversations that ensued
were rich with description and exclamations;

these first impressions were some of the most

important in the project. Farmers laughed at
pictures where they carried heavy loads, sighed
at pictures where they were redigging a well,
or expressed how proud they were of a mature, green plot. Their expressions provided
opportunities to look awry and see how these
spaces and practices contributed to their embodied daily urban experience. Farmers also
took pictures of families and homes, partly
as incentive to get pictures of them but also
because they described their roles as mothers
and fathers, vendors and customers, homemakers and home builders, which were intricately
connected to their roles as farmers. Undoubtedly my role as a researcher of urban farms
influenced their interpretation of these photos
for me, but their expressions and articulations
to each other certainly indicated that these roles
are important, often more so, than their role as
an urban farmer.
Studies utilizing photo voice rely on obtaining insight into the meaning that the photographer ascribes to the pictures, often by having

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 291

Figure 4 This picture was taken by a farmer who took a picture of his family inside the house that
his income from farming allowed him to build. The money I make from the farm allowed me to build
a house for my wife and children. We can buy nice things and have shelter over our head because of
farming. (Color figure available online.)

focus groups (Young and Barrett 2001; McIntyre 2003; Fournier et al. 2007; Castleden,
Garvin, and Huu-ay-aht First Nation 2008) or
interviews utilizing the photos in open-ended
interviews (Blackbeard and Lindegger 2007).
I wanted farmers to instead take time individually to reflect on the pictures. We taped the
pictures in steno books and gave participants a
week to write captions for the pictures. To find
out who was literate, we offered to write captions individually for each farmer, but nineteen
farmers said they could write. The one illiterate
farmer had a friend offer to help, but to ensure

that the captions reflected his perspectives, we

asked him about some of the captions before
the subsequent focus group discussion. The
high rate of literacy is a product of free primary
education in Tanzania and meant that individual reflection was possible. In places with lower
literacy rates, interviews based on the pictures
would be needed to gain individual reflection.
Other studies in sub-Saharan Africa have utilized focus group sessions in rural communities
or in childrens groups to have captions orally
presented (Young and Barrett 2001; Gotschi,
Delve, and Freyer 2009). When we asked the

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292 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

Figure 5 This is a customer helping to water the plot of the farmer who is taking her picture. The
caption reads, This is a customer who is also my friend helping me water the plot. This shows how
important our customers are in daily life on the farm. (Color figure available online.)

farmers whether they preferred one-on-one

interviews or whether they wanted to take
them home, they almost universally preferred
to take the pictures home. We preferred this,
too, as it gave the farmers more time for
individual reflection. This is a primary difference between photo voice as a participatory
method and one that can be used to generate
data that reflects an individual construction of
knowledge, experience, and place.
The pictures by themselves provided individual frames of daily life that I could not other-

wise observe, often because our very presence

at the farms disrupted daily activities. Although
the technology mediated their framing of daily
life, in informal discussions with some farmers
after the project they talked about how they
took ownership of the project, often organizing themselves into pairs or groups to take pictures of each other doing activities and even
ignoring the guidelines of how many pictures
to take from different aspects of their lives. My
relationship with many of the farmers made
them more comfortable to take a broader range

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A Postcolonial Approach to Urban Studies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 293

of pictures than they originally felt I wanted.
They showed me the positives and negatives
of farming and defined the ways the practice
influences their lives beyond the farm.
The photos provided a more nuanced examination of how farming influences the urban experience for farmers. Figure 3 shows the
farmers at the market, but the caption written
reveals how farmers feel marginalized in the
city. The farmers know that people look down
on them as poor or backward despite their importance in providing the city with food. Figure 4 shows the house that one of the farmers
had built with earnings from farming in the
city, which took him about one year to complete. When discussing the photo later in focus
groups, he claimed that his physical strength as
a farmer allowed him to build the house without any help, a serious point of pride. Figure 5
shows the customer of a farmer helping to water plots. The farmer became friends with this
woman because she is a frequent customer. If
she stays a while to socialize, she often helps the
farmer with her work, giving them more time
to talk.
The photos in this project demonstrated the
materiality of how farming influences urban
experiences. Rather than merely being spaces
of labor and extraction, farms have a range
of influences on people that pervade the daily
life of the people who use them, both on and
off the farm. Providing this alternative way
to express their urban experience revealed
just how intricately woven the farmers lives
are with those of their cofarmers and the
surrounding areas and how it influences their
roles in the city. This method provided a
way to literally see beyond colonial images of
poverty and dystopia that characterize informal
work in cities of the Global South and instead
reveals the intricate relationships, social safety
nets, and sources of pride and pleasure in daily
urban life. The importance of photo voice in
a postcolonial approach in urban geography
is that it enables the participants to frame and
articulate their experiences, rather than that
being left to the colonial gaze of the researcher.

Conclusion: Constructing an Urban

Experience
Economistic and developmentalist approaches
to urban life in cities of the Global South

have often meant focusing on the poverty and

marginalization people experience when they
lack access to the formal economy. Informal
activities are often framed as coping with or
resisting the formal economy, but this simplifies the realities of peoples experience within
a narrow developmentalist framework (Robinson 2002). This is not to say that people do
not live hard lives, to reduce the sense of emergency that people feel in cities every day (Simone 2010), or to downplay the real economic
and nutritional importance of a practice such
as urban agriculture. Instead these approaches
allow us to examine what constitutes informality, rather than merely examine it for what it
lacks. Here I have focused on the ways that
methods drawn from participatory approaches,
but adapted to a postcolonial framework, can
capture a distinctly urban experience, to widen
the scope of how cities are analyzed by examining how informality, as a heterogeneous social
experience, operates in cities.
Semistructured interviews are a common
method in qualitative studies and allow participants to provide their own narration and perspective on an issue. It can still be difficult, however, to overcome the difficulty that people can
have in interviews with articulating the nuance
of daily movements, practices, and relationships
that create the foundation of their experience.
If the research project calls for an understanding of how people engage with urban space and
how this influences or is influenced by their
daily activities, then other methods should be
utilized to illuminate peoples experiences in a
way that moves beyond the simplistic designation of informal workers as poor and marginalized. Complementing interviews with methods
such as photo voice and mental mapping
employed through a postcolonial approach
to data collection provides multiple ways for
experience to be expressed and understood.
This methodological approach reveals the
material and very tangible experiences and
relationships that construct daily life for informal workers. Farmers certainly work hard and
face challenges such as poor market conditions
and a lack of land tenure, yet this is not how
farmers define themselves. The methods here
provide farmers ways to construct and frame
their own experiences to reveal their own
sources of power, pride, and capacity in cities.
Although the experience is mediated through

294 Volume 65, Number 2, May 2013

technology and a researcher, this approach
turns on its head methods that perpetuate
the colonial framing and interpretation of
subjects in the Global South. These methods,
drawn from participatory approaches but
employed through a postcolonial perspective,
are appropriate for answering the call for a
broader understanding of the urban experience
across regions to better understand what cities
are and who they can be for. 

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LESLIE MCLEES is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon,
1251 University of Oregon, Condon Hall #107, Eugene, OR 97402. E-mail: lmclees@uoregon.edu. She
is currently finishing her dissertation focusing on urban open-space farming in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
to examine the social and environmental features of
the urbanization of agriculture and how informality
operates in an urban system beyond Western planning theory and frameworks.