Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development: The Gezira Scheme and "Modern" Sudan

While Evans-Pritchard was conducting his now-famous studies of the Azande and the Nuer in southern Sudan, changes were taking place in the great plains between the two Niles south of Khartoum that would forever alter the course of Sudanese history. In partnership with multinational capital, the British were turning millions of acres inhabited by farmers and pastoralists into a vast irrigation project dedicated to the production of cotton. The Gezira Scheme, which ultimately became the largest centrally-managed irrigation project in the world, started operations in 1925 and continues to operate today under the management of the Sudanese government. Although countless studies have focused on the economic organization and policies of the Gezira Scheme, this article yields a new understanding of the Gezira Scheme, and perhaps of development projects in general, by shifting attention to the symbolic dimensions of such monumental projects. If, following Mitchell (1988), one views the mission of colonialism as that of literally and figuratively creating a world order and ordering the world, the Gezira Scheme is a stunning exemplar. Its miles and miles of irrigation canals and uniform fields stretched out in a huge grid dominate space, its rigid schedules for agricultural operations command time, and above all, its hierarchy of inspectors and bureaucrats supervising, documenting, and disciplining strive to control the people of the Gezira. In Foucault's terms, the Gezira Scheme must be understood as a "disciplinary institution" (1979:139). For this and its implications to become clear, however, requires us to decenter the ostensible economic purpose