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Examines how the Baka, who live in Eastern Cameroon, assert forms of belonging in order to participate in development interventions. Investigates how community life is shaped and reshaped through these interventions.

The Cameroon Grassfields, home to three ethnic groups – Grassfields societies, Mbororo, and Hausa – provide a valuable case study for the anthropological examination of identity politics and interethnic relations. In the midst of the political liberalization of Cameroon in the late 1990s and 2000s, local responses to political and legal changes took the form of a series of performative and discursive expressions of ethnicity. Confrontational encounters stimulated by economic and political rivalry, as well as socially integrative processes, transformed collective self-understanding in Cameroon in conjunction with recent global discourses on human, minority, and indigenous rights. The book provides a vital contribution to the study of ethnicity, conflict, and social change in the anthropology of Africa.

Forests of Belongingexamines the history and ongoing transformation of ethnic and social relationships among four distinct communities--Bangando, Baka, Bakwéle, and Mbomam--in the Lobéké forest region of southeastern Cameroon. By slotting forest communities into ecological categories such as \"hunters\" and \"gatherers,\" previous analyses of social relationships in tropical forests have resulted in binary frameworks that render real-life relationships invisible and that have perpetuated correspondingly misleading labels, such as \"pygmy.\" Through rich descriptive detail resulting from field work among the Bangando, Stephanie Rupp illustrates the complexity of social ties among groups and individuals, and their connections with the natural world. She demonstrates that social and ethno-ecological relations in equatorial African forests are nuanced, contested, and shifting, and that the intricacy of these links must be considered in the design and implementation of aid policies and strategies for conservation and development.

This groundbreaking history traces the development of Germany's black community, from its origins in colonial Africa to its decimation by the Nazis during World War II. Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenhaft follow the careers of Africans arriving from the colonies, examining why and where they settled, their working lives and their political activities, and giving unprecedented attention to gender, sexuality and the challenges of 'mixed marriage'. Addressing the networks through which individuals constituted community, Aitken and Rosenhaft explore the ways in which these relationships spread beyond ties of kinship and birthplace to constitute communities as 'black'. The study also follows a number of its protagonists to France and back to Africa, providing new insights into the roots of Francophone black consciousness and postcolonial memory. Including an in-depth account of the impact of Nazism and its aftermath, this book offers a fresh critical perspective on narratives of 'race' in German history.

In Conquest and Construction Mark Dike DeLancey investigates the palace architecture of northern Cameroon, a region whose largely sedentary, agricultural, non-Muslim population was conquered in the early nineteenth century by primarily semi-nomadic, pastoralist, Muslim, Fulɓe forces.

This ten-year review of Cameroon's economic, social and political events covers a delicate period in the recent history of this Central African country, rich in natural and human resources. It begins with a difficult year: 2008 was marked by serious socio-political unrest linked to the wish of President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, to change the constitution, by removing the limitation on the number of presidential terms. Once the constitution was amended, the president was re-elected in 2011 for seven years. But in a predictable way and while the economy was stagnating, the political situation slowly deteriorated in the following years, leading in 2017 to the beginning of a civil war in one part of the country. This decade allows us to see a locked political system, inherited from colonization, but which seems more and more at the end of the race.Cette revue de dix ans de l'actualité économique, sociale et politique du Cameroun couvre une période délicate de l'histoire récente de ce pays d'Afrique centrale, riche en ressources naturelles et humaines. Elle commence par une année difficile : 2008 a été marquée par des troubles sociopolitiques graves liés à la volonté du président Paul Biya, au pouvoir depuis 1982, de changer la constitution, afin de supprimer la limitation du nombre de mandats présidentiels. Une fois la constitution modifiée, le président a pu être réélu en 2011 pour sept ans. Mais de manière prévisible et alors que l'économie stagnait, la situation politique s'est lentement dégradée au cours des années suivantes, jusqu'à déboucher en 2017 sur un début de guerre civile dans une partie du pays. A travers ces dix ans se dessine ainsi un système politique verrouillé, hérité de la colonisation, mais qui semble de plus en plus en fin de course.

As the international community calls for more responsible environmental, social, and governance performance, the politics of commodities becomes more fraught. Commodity Politics cuts through responsibility rhetoric and presents research from Cameroon to provide a better understanding of the political complexity surrounding commodity production and trade today.

Throughout Africa one craft among many stands out: that of the blacksmith. In many African cultures, smiths occupy a significant position, not just as artisans engaging in a difficult craft but also as special people. Often they perform other crafts, as well, and make up a somewhat separate group inside society.The Forge and the Funeraldescribes the position of the smith in the culture of the Kapsiki/Higi of northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria. Situated in the Mandara Mountains and straddling the border of these two countries, Kapsiki culture forms a specific and highly relevant example of the phenomenon of the smith in Africa. As an endogamous group of about 5 percent of the population, Kapsiki smiths perform an impressive array of crafts and specializations, combining magico-religious functions with metalwork, in particular as funeral directors, as well as with music and healing.The Forge and the Funeralgives an intimate description and analysis of this group, based upon the author's four decades-long involvement with the Kapsiki/Higi. Description and analysis are set within the more general scholarly debates about the dynamics of professional closure-including the notions of caste and guild-and also consider the deep history of iron and brass in Africa.

The End of French Rule in Cameroon is a study of the decolonization movement in Cameroon. It analyzes the reforms introduced by France in Cameroon after World War II, the circumstances surrounding the unsuccessful attempt of the UPC to seize independence by force, and the subsequent eradication of this party by an alliance of Franco-Cameroonian forces. The book shows the length that the French were prepared to go in order to leave Cameroon in the hands of a government that would be sympathetic to their interests. The research is based upon documents found in Cameroon, France, and the United States. It will expand the existing limited literature in English on the historiography of Cameroon and will also be useful for instructors teaching courses related to modern and contemporary Africa in general and decolonization in (French) black Africa in particular, as well as all interested in these subjects.