The Pot-King

The Pot-King
Author: Jean-Pierre Warnier
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004152172

The king of Mankon (Cameroon) acts as a container of ancestral substances he distributes to his people. This book shows how the exercise of power in a contemporary African kingdom is based on the implementation of bodily and material technologies.

Cameroon Grassfields Civilization

Cameroon Grassfields Civilization
Author: Jean-Pierre Warnier
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 9956727903

This book brings and blends together a dozen scholarly articles published by the author since the 1970s. It sketches two different yet related stories: first, that of one of the most ancient and prestigious African civilizations, the antiquity and sophistication of which are becoming more and more prominent as field research unfolds their many facets. Second, the story of the researcher himself, who has had to alter and shift his approach to that civilization as he got to meet Grassfielders, colleagues, friends and scholars who changed his views about the Grassfields kingdoms and their people. This book bears witness to those many encounters. Historical and anthropological research is not only a question of relevant theories and methodologies. It is also a human endeavour made of networks and friendships.

Production des Connaissances en Sciences Sociales en Afrique

Production des Connaissances en Sciences Sociales en Afrique
Author: Moulio Moungbakou
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2022-02-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1942876912

This book addresses the epistemological, ethical and methodological challenges faced by African scholars in their research practices. The epistemological domain addresses three interrelated topics: how African university students ethnocentric choice of research topics hampers the production of knowledge; researchers adaptation of their research methods to improve validity; and the challenge of knowledge production on community museums plagued by gross inertia, irregularities, uncooperative gatekeepers and inadequate funding. The methodological domain foregrounds issues around scientific rigour, the criteria for what counts as quality research, and reporting standards. Contributors contend that the use of mixed methods provides the best scope for the effective study and evaluation of social issues. They also detail how better-funded projects tend to improve the respect of ethical standards especially as they pertain to the protection of subjects confidentiality. Self-financed researchers on the other hand tend to be less compliant, a challenge that afflict especially younger and inexperienced researchers. This volume thus contributes not only to a critical understanding of the challenges faced by social scientists in contemporary Africa, but also the prospects and mechanisms on how to improve knowledge production processes.

Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon

Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon
Author: Mark Dike DeLancey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 831
Release: 2019-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1538119684

Cameroon is a land of much promise, but a land of unfulfilled promises. It has the potential to be an economically developed and democratic society but the struggle to live up to its potential has not gone well. Since independence there have been only two presidents of Cameroon; the current one has been in office since 1982. Endowed with a variety of climates and agricultural environments, numerous minerals and substantial forests, and a dynamic population, this is a country that should be a leader of Africa. Instead, we find a country almost paralyzed by corruption and poor management, a country with a low life expectancy and serious health problems, and a country from which the most talented and highly educated members of the population are emigrating in large numbers. To all of this is recently added a serious terrorism problem, Boko Haram, in the north, a separatist movement in the Anglophone west, refugee influxes in the north and east, and bandits from the Central African Republic attacking eastern villages. This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Republic of Cameroon.

Cameroon's Predicaments

Cameroon's Predicaments
Author: Angwafo, Peter Tse
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2014-08-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9956792381

This book deals with a variety of socio-cultural, economic and political problems facing Cameroon and the rest of Africa, with particular reference to unemployment, corruption, poverty, criminality, violence, insecurity, and moral decadence. It presents a critical analysis of government policies from the colonial era to the present time; arguing that most of these policies have been stalled by an uncommitted leadership. The regime in Cameroon has drifted away from basic managerial and democratic principles in in favour of the ethnicisation of politics, sterile consumption, clientelism and patronage. The book contends that corruption has become the main instrument of governance whereby the political and economic elites control the wealth of the nation at the expense of a majority who wallow in abject poverty and misery. Faced with the difficult economic and political situation, most youth and the intelligentsia have adopted 'official and 'unofficial' means to circumvent all immigration rules to travel to affluent Western countries, the consequences notwithstanding. Brain drain is often the outcome. Further, it examines issues of social exclusion, political representation and marginalization with special focus on the predicament of Anglophone Cameroonians as a socio-cultural community. The inclusion of examples and case studies based on empirical and secondary data from Africa is intended to foreground the importance of comparison, and attract the interest of both academic and non-academic readership.

Les Seuils de l’intolérable

Les Seuils de l’intolérable
Author: Emmanuel Doh
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2023-09-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9956553549

Dans Les seuils de l’intolérable, Musang, originaires des Grassfields, tombe amoureux d’Etonde du littoral. Bien qu’ils soient conscients des tensions existantes et de la méfiance injustifiée entre les deux camps, le couple est prêt à se marier lorsqu’à la dernière minute, le père d’Etonde rejette fermement la demande en mariage. Bien que traumatisé, Musang, enfin, considère le rejet comme un signe providentiel et reconsidère ainsi une idée persistante de vocation - le sacerdoce. Pendant ce temps, une Etonde dévastée, maintenant défi e des hommes et lutte pour retrouver son équilibre. Cependant, des années plus tard, à quelques mois à peine de son ordination sacerdotale, Musang, postulant exemplaire, se voit soudain offrir le choix déprimant d’aller en probation ou de quitter le séminaire ; il quitta.

L'Expansion bantoue

L'Expansion bantoue
Author: Larry M. Hyman
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
Total Pages: 906
Release: 1980
Genre: Bantu languages
ISBN: 9782852970694

The Intestines of the State

The Intestines of the State
Author: Nicolas Argenti
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226026132

The young people of the Cameroon Grassfields have been subject to a long history of violence and political marginalization. For centuries the main victims of the slave trade, they became prime targets for forced labor campaigns under a series of colonial rulers. Today’s youth remain at the bottom of the fiercely hierarchical and polarized societies of the Grassfields, and it is their response to centuries of exploitation that Nicolas Argenti takes up in this absorbing and original book. Beginning his study with a political analysis of youth in the Grassfields from the eighteenth century to the present, Argenti pays special attention to the repeated violent revolts staged by young victims of political oppression. He then combines this history with extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Oku chiefdom, discovering that the specter of past violence lives on in the masked dance performances that have earned intense devotion from today’s youth. Argenti contends that by evoking the imagery of past cataclysmic events, these masquerades allow young Oku men and women to address the inequities they face in their relations with elders and state authorities today.