Masks and Staffs: Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields

Michaela Pelican

Published by Berghahn Books 2015

Masks and Staffs

Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields

Michaela Pelican

Volume 11 in the series Integration and Conflict Studies

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782387299

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Michaela Pelican is Junior Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne. She is also the director of the University of Cologne Forum "Ethnicity as a Political Resource: Perspectives from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe" and a member of the Cologne Global South Studies Center. She is the editor of a special issue, "Global African Entrepreneurs" (Urban Anthropology 2014, 43), and the author of several articles on indigenous rights movements in Africa.

Reviews

“Pelican’s book is a fascinating descent into the dazzling complexities that ethnicity can take on even within a small area, and provides original and helpful tools for making sense of these complexities… [Her] observations make this book an inspiring example of how detailed ethnography can engender theoretical insights of a wider purport.” • Africa Review

“…necessary and significant, [this study is] a much-welcomed monograph that builds on and advances the corpus of knowledge about the evolution and dynamics of interethnic relations in the Cameroon Grasslands.” • American Anthropologist

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Figures and Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Notes on Transliteration Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	xii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Setting the Scene: Cultural Difference and Political Rivalry in Times of Transition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2 The Power of the Fon Nchaney Political History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	48
3 From Pastoral Society to Indigenous People: Mbororo Identity Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
4 A Shift to Economic Competition? Farmer–Herder Conflict and Cattle Theft in the Misaje Area Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
5 On Being Hausa: Consolidation of the Hausa Ethnic Category in the Grassfields Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
6 Grassfielder by Birth, Muslim by Choice: Religious and Ethnic Conversion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
7 The Murder of Mr X: Legal Pluralism and Conflict Management in the Early 2000s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 260
Keywords: Anthropology (General)

eBook

Published: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 9781782387299