2 - Reimagining Third World Landscapes: The Politics of Landscape Narratives in China's Agricultural Cooperative Novels and Tanzania's Ujamaa Literature

From a global historical perspective, the concept of Third World landscapes—shaped by capitalism and colonialism—has been continuously articulated within the framework of the global colonization system. This illustrates one of the most insidious aspects of colonial power: the creation of a seemingly universal knowledge system that reinterprets the world through the lenses of civilization, science, and reason while simultaneously exerting control over it. Such hegemony crafts a narrative of landscape disguised as “science” and “modernity.” This article seeks to reflect on this narrative of knowledge production, which posits that geographic knowledge and spatial order are inevitable results of Western scientific rationality, thereby framing Western-dominated landscape narratives as integral to the myth of modernity’s origins.

The narratives of landscape in Third World socialist literature aim to deconstruct Western-centric geographic concepts, reflecting the efforts of the Third World to assert autonomy in cultural and ideological spheres after achieving national independence. This paper examines China’s Agricultural Cooperative Novel Great Changes Across the Land (1958) and Tanzania’s Ujamaa novel Snake Skin (1979). By situating their landscape narratives within the broader socialist practices of 20th-century China and Tanzania, this study explores how these cultural practices contributed to dismantling the Western-centric discourse production system and establishing a framework for non-Western modernity. Building on Tejaswini Niranjana’s comparative research in the Third World, this paper aims to broaden the understanding of modernity in the Third World while also highlighting the diversity within Third World socialist literature.