Cultivating Moral Citizenship. An Ethnography of Young People's Associations, Gender and Social Adulthood in the Cameroon Gra

D. Fokwang

Description

In Cultivating Moral Citizenship, ethnographer Jude Fokwang unpacks the meanings, mechanisms and processes through which young people in an inner city of the West African nation of Cameroon respond to local and global challenges as they seek to position themselves as social adults. Faced with the decline of old predictabilities, the diminishing capacity of the postcolonial state to control its destiny and the precarity of waithood, young people instrumentalise the opportunities and resources afforded by associations to build reciprocal relationships that advance their individual and collective pursuits in a community that has increasingly become transnational. In positioning themselves as moral actors, the young people in this ethnography invest in high profile social and communal projects, including the enforcement of moral orthodoxies that enable readers to appreciate the ways in which moral citizenship is engendered, expanded and eroded simultaneously. Jude D. Fokwang is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Regis University. He is also an ethnographic filmmaker and director of the award-winning film, Something New in Old Town (2016). His research and publications have focused on the sociocultural and political subjectivities of young people, women and traditional leaders in Cameroon and South Africa.

Sujets

• Regional Studies
• African Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Spears Media Press
• Date de parution: 14 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781957296036
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cultivating Moral Citizenship
Cultivating Moral Citizenship
An Ethnography of Young People’s Associations, Gender, and Social Adulthood in the Cameroon Grasslands
JUDE D. FOKWANG
S PEARS B OOKS A N I MPRINT OF S PEARS M EDIA P RESS LLC 7830 W. Alameda Ave, Suite 103-247 Denver, CO 80226 United States of America
First Published in the United States of America in 2023 by Spears Books www.spearsmedia.com [e-mail] Information on this title: www.spearsmedia.com/cultivating-moral-citizenship © 2023 Jude Fokwang All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022947558 ISBN: 9781957296029 (Hardback) ISBN: 9781957296012 (Paperback) ISBN: 9781957296036 (eBook)
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Designed and typeset by Spears Media Press LLC Cover designed by Doh Kambem Cover photo by author
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For dad, who inspired and guided me into the world of native ethnography and Mom, for nudging me onto higher heights
Contents
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Predicament of Being Young in Africa
1. Outsider and Native: Fieldwork in Old Town, Bamenda
2. Personhood, Social Adulthood and Society in the Grasslands
3. Cultivating Moral Spaces: Rules, Routines and the Constitution of Everyday Life in Young People’s Associations
4. Sanitary Activism and Urban Renewal in Old Town
5. Cultivating Respect, Gendered Spaces and Moral Transformation in Old Town
6. Alternate Pathways to Social Adulthood and the Economy of Faux Dossiers
Conclusion: Personhood, Moral Action, and Social Adulthood in the Cameroon Grasslands
References
Index
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 Administrative Map of Cameroon.
Figure 2.2 City of Bamenda.
Figure 2.3 SCNC Campaign poster on an electric pole
Figure 3.1 A plaque, awarded to the Chosen Sisters of Old Town
Figure 3.2 A cross section of the Chosen Sisters of Old Town
Figure 3.3 Members of the United Sisters
Figure 3.4 Members of the Ntambag Brothers
Figure 3.5 Members of the Chosen Sisters attend a death celebration
Figure 4.1 Garbage bins donated by the NBA
Figure 4.2 Members of the NBA clean up the neighbourhood
Figure 4.3 Temporary bucket taps on display
Figure 4.4 The brothers install temporary bucket taps
Figure 4.5 The NBA educate community members
Figure 5.1 Pupils of the Government Primary School, Old Town
Figure 5.2 Pupils of the GPS pose with their prizes
Figure 5.3 Members of the United Sisters pose with gifts
Figure 5.4 The United Sisters in their uniform
Figure 5.5 Flyers circulated during a United Sisters meeting
Figure 5.6 NBA members play soccer in the morning
Figure 5.7 A cross section of seminar participants in Old Town
Figure 6.1 Chart showing country of choice
Figure 6.2 Diversity Visa Lottery Winners of Cameroonian Nationality
Figure 6.3 An ad for the American DV lottery
Preface
This book is the culmination of precisely two decades of ethnographic research on young people in Africa. During my graduate studies at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, I was fortunate enough to win a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) fellowship in 2001 titled “African Youth in the Global Age” which provided funding, mentorship and opportunities to workshop with other young scholars interested in studying the socioeconomic and political conditions of young Africans at the turn of the new millennium. Little did I know I would spend the rest of that decade researching African youth subjectivities in all its dimensions – whose end products would be disseminated in film and text. In Cultivating Moral Citizenship , I pull together my findings of the past decades to offer readers a theoretically-informed account of one of my case studies – the remarkable story of young people in a run-down community in Bamenda, Anglophone Cameroon’s most populous city.
Although drawn principally from my dissertation work, writing this ethnography has taken much longer than I ever would have imagined. It began in 2009 while teaching at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Back then, I was an elated laureate of the African Humanities Program, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. Regrettably, the fellowship was prematurely rescinded following my resignation from the University of Cape Town due to harrowing personal challenges. I then returned to Toronto, Canada where I spent the next three years teaching at various universities with extremely limited time to write. When I joined Regis University in 2013, I anticipated I would eventually find the time to continue work on the monograph, but it was not until I took my sabbatical in the spring of 2020 (which coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic) that I made considerable progress. I was convinced the entire manuscript would be ready for the press by the end of my sabbatical in the summer of 2020 but the vicissitudes of the pandemic and the return to virtual teaching with all its challenges threw my plans into disarray. It would take another two years of writing and fine-tuning before I felt confident to submit it for publication, this – six years after the release of a documentary film that captured aspects of this monograph in audio-visual format. That said, I would recommend that the ethnography be read first before watching the documentary film. It is my conviction that the text offers broader context and richer details than could be accomplished in forty-seven minutes of film.
Between the release of the documentary film and the completion of this monograph, I published two articles based on data obtained from my field work, one of which constituted a chapter in my dissertation work. “Fabrics of Identity: Uniforms, Gender and Associations in the Cameroon Grassfields” appeared in the journal, Africa in 2015. In that paper, I drew on data from all three associations covered in this study to argue that the uniform, conceived as a special type of social skin , has been incorporated by individuals and groups into a complex chain of processes and meanings in the Cameroon Grassfields; I describe this practice as the uniformization of sociocultural life, demonstrating that uniforms, unlike ordinary clothing, are salient precisely because of their unique role as markers of collective identity but also because they embody and simultaneously express the paradox of similarity and difference. In 2016, “Politics at the margins: alternative sites of political involvement among young people in Cameroon” appeared in the Canadian Journal of African Studies . In that paper, I analysed young people’s political discourses and experiences, highlighting their disillusionment with the postcolonial state. None of these papers are included in this monograph.
However, what I offer in this ethnography is the product of many years of fieldwork in the community of Old Town, which began in 2005 and has continued to this day. As a registered and active member and patron of the Ntambag Brothers and Chosen Sisters respectively, I have never quite left the “field” even when my daily physical engagements in Old Town ended in 2006 with a few weeks’ immersion in 2009. The Ntambag Brothers for example have been running a WhatsApp group for over five years, of which I have been a member, which has afforded me first-hand and front-row access to developments in the community. Hence, the ethnography provides insights into the lives of its members since 2005, many of whom have experienced tremendous changes in their personal and professional lives – which interestingly, mirrors mine – having started off as a graduate student and now, a tenured professor. The monograph is thus a privileged account from a native ethnographer for whom the field is neither remote, nor the subjects the other .
The ethnography argues that young people’s associations may be understood as vital sites for the formulation of specific subjectivities that in turn are expressed through a variety of practices. Initially positioned as “youth” – a subjectivity I conceptualise as structural dependency , these young men and women seek social adult status as an aspect of a highly valued personhood in the Cameroon Grasslands. By cultivating virtuous character, embracing an ethos that emphasises the common good and embarking upon charitable causes, these young people become moral citizens – through practices that validate and affirm their claims to social adulthood – this, in concert with precolonial conceptions that value interdependency, conviviality and the acquisition of vital substances from elders and notables. The major themes addressed in the ethnography include personhood, gender, subjectivity, social adulthood and moral citizenship. Its central actors are young people - men and women between the ages of 20 and 50, united by their shared quest to build moral and meaningful lives. Through their everyday practices, I show how these young people in a marginal place have responded to globalising forces and the demise of a nation-state that always felt remote to them.
The ethnography is aimed at introductory or methods courses in anthropology, sociology, and the social sciences generally, aimed at illustrati