Desiring the state: Social welfare and kinship in post-socialist Tanzania

Every day, from Monday to Friday, women, men, and children sit on the uncomfortable benches outside the Tanzanian social welfare office and wait patiently for hours to meet with a welfare officer. There are mothers claiming alimony payments, fathers seeking visiting rights, quarrelling spouses, minors with legal problems, and families disputing inheritances. Most are ineligible for benefits, so this article asks why they nonetheless accept state practices of subordination like waiting. Based on case studies from 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Department of Health in a northern district of Tanzania, I argue that queuing outside the welfare office signifies a ‘desire for the state’ as proposed by Street. To understand this desire, I explore the relationship between welfare clients and the state using the lens of post-socialism, specifically Verdery’s concept of ‘socialist paternalism’. This article explores kinship, the state, and the negotiation of responsibility in relation to the paternalistic images of the state reproduced by the ruling party, and argues that welfare clients appropriate these in search of care, advice, and guidance to address family and kin-related crises.