From Handmaiden of Colonialism to Esteemed Discipline

Nchoji Nkwi

Description

This book documents key features in the life of the father of anthropology in Cameroon, Professor Paul Nchoji Nkwi. The conversations within these pages chronicle, in his own words, how he came to anthropology and how the discipline shaped and still shapes his trajectory. One work does not suffice to elucidate all that Nkwi has contributed to the discipline of Anthropology in Cameroon and beyond; nevertheless, this book is a starting point. As the founding president of the Pan-African Association of Anthropologists (PAAA), Nkwi has been a trail blazer, sowing the seeds, nurturing the shoots, and grooming budding African anthropologists in their investigation of that great anthropological question: what it means to be human. In discussing the transformation of anthropology from the handmaiden of colonialism to the advocate of identity, voice, and a means for Africa to engage with and interact within contemporary society, Nkwi reveals insights regarding, among others, the birth and growth of the discipline in Cameroon, the founding of the PAAA, and the applicability of the subject to the changing and challenging landscape that characterizes today's globalized world. Likewise, blending theory and practice, he weaves a formidable tale of anthropological thought from an Africanist perspective through his notion of an African Pragmatic Socialism as a way of delving into, making sense of, and addressing the reality of the 21st century on the African continent and possibly beyond.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Physical
• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 11 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956551347
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

not suffice to elucidate all that Nkwi has contributed to the discipline

political and socio-cultural interests, especially in areas of conflict.

From Handmaiden of Colonialism to Esteemed Disciplitne From Handmaiden of Colonialism to Esteemed Discipline Professor Paul Nchoji Nkwi on the Reinvention of Anthropology in Africa

Paul Nchoji Nkwi in Conversation with Ivoline Kefen Budji

Paul Nchoji Nkwi

From Handmaiden of Colonialism to Esteemed Discipline: Professor Paul Nchoji Nkwi on the Reinvention of Anthropology in Africa Paul Nchoji Nkwi in Conversation with Ivoline Kefen Budji L a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-551-92-9

ISBN-13: 978-9956-551-92-7 ©Ivoline Kefen Budji & Paul Nchoji Nkwi2021 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

Table of Contents Introduction…….……………...….…….…...….1 Ivoline Kefen Budji 1.The Journey Towards Anthropology………….…..………...……...17 2.Growth of Anthropology as a Discipline in Cameroon…………………………..........….37 3. The Pan-African Association of Anthropologists (PAAA) and Collaboration with Others………………..…………….….…….57 4. Anthropology, Tradition, and Contemporary Sociopolitical Realities…………………………….….……81 5. Applied Anthropology –the Future of Anthropology in Africa………..……………………...…….95 Concluding Remarks…………...………....….103 Ivoline Kefen Budji Afterword…………………………..………….105 Paul Nchoji Nkwi

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References…….………………………………107 Paul Nchoji Nkwi: CV & Publications……………..….………….……...113

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Introduction Ivoline Kefen Budji When I sat down to write an introduction to this work, there was a lot arising from the conversation chronicled within the following pages that I could write about, so much so that it was hard to decide what to focus on and what to leave out. What I knew for certain however was that it would be about the remarkable anthropologist I have been fortunate enough to meet in my lifetime, who has played an indispensable role in the establishment, acceptance, and growth of anthropology as a worthy discipline not just in Cameroon but Africa as a whole: Professor Paul NCHOJI NKWI. Born during the colonial era in Cameroon, Prof, as he is fondly referred to by his peers, colleagues, and students, shares his personal story, which is also the story of colonization (especially within British Cameroons referred to as West or Southern Cameroons), independence, and contemporary nation-building. It is in addition a tale of the establishment of anthropology as well as African anthropologists as respectable, credible, and indispensably useful, in postcolonial Africa. An anthropology of Africa automatically traces its roots to a colonial and imperialist anthropology and is consequently hardly ever approached from a position of neutrality (Apter 1999). In fact, effects of colonialism are still very much alive and ongoing in contemporary African societies. While it is not my

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aim to belabour the point already made in many writings about the link between African anthropology and colonialism, permit me to utilize colonialism as a starting point to this introduction and to set the scene for the conversation that follows. Why? Because Prof’s early life occurred during this period, which further affected the initial stages of his anthropological career, and because ‘the colonial period is more than just an interesting topic for historical research. Ideas that were forged in that context have remained deeply embedded in our analytical frameworks’ (Irvine and Gal 2000:72). In addition, while Cameroon was colonized first by the Germans, and then during the First World War, jointly and later separately by the British and the French, thus giving rise to British Cameroons, i.e. present-day anglophone or West/Southern Cameroons, and French Cameroons, i.e. present-day francophone Cameroon (Anchimbe 2018; Ndi 2016), I will focus on British Cameroons chiefly because this was the colonial system under which Prof was born and spent the earlier part of his life, and which contributed to shaping his trajectory and career. Simply put, earliest anthropologists in sub- Saharan Africa either carried out research within the tenets and protection of colonialism or worked for the colonial government. The presence during this period of anthropologists belonging to colonizer nations doing work in the colonies aggravated the discipline’s label as the ‘handmaiden of colonialism’ (cf. Nkwi and Messina 2015:20; Nkwi 2015a; Barnard 2001;Olukoshi and Nyamnjoh 2011). In fact, the link between the two, i.e. anthropology and colonialism, 2

especially in the British empire, was so great that when colonialism ended, state funding for anthropology and employment of anthropologists in Britain dwindled (Jegede 2015). What these early anthropologists, who mostly belonged to the racialized evolutionary school of thought, wrote about Africa, especially black Africa, apart from informing and often enhancing colonial domination and ideology, also played a major role in propagating the colonially constructed image of Africa (a view still held today by a large part of the world, some anthropologists included), as an inferior and different ‘Other’ to be ‘developed’ through the western world’s ‘civilizing mission in Africa’ (Apter 1999: 587; Kallaway 2012; Nyamnjoh 2012). Anthropologists were needed to provide knowledge of the colonized people’s customary laws, structures, and systems so that colonial policies like the British Indirect Rule could be more efficiently implemented (cf. Basu 2016). Even with the emergence of functionalism during the interwar years among anthropologists in British Africa, notions instilled by an evolutionary theoretical perspective were still hard to combat, especially as these ideologies not only changed the structure of African societies, but went further to reconstruct Africa’s precolonial history (Apter 1999). However, and much less mentioned in writings, some anthropologists during this era sometimes shared an ambiguous relationship with the colonial administration. There have been instances of resistance to colonial misappropriation and misuse of information provided as well as blatant refusal to 3

participate in generating information for colonial domination (cf. Apter 1999). A case in point according to Basu (2016) is the controversial Northcote Whitridge Thomas, who wasthe first anthropologist appointed and sent to work in West Africa between 1909 and 1915 by the British Colonial Office. According to the author, while Northcote supported that anthropology should be indispensable to colonial administration, when asked to research and provide anthropological information about the supposedly cannibalistic Human Leopard Society in Sierra Leone, he declined, as he knew well that the consequence of releasing the cult members’ names would be their certain demise. Following the interconnectedness between anthropology and colonialism, it is no wonder then that after independence, many emerging African nations loathed anthropology and anthropologists (cf. Nkwi and Messina 2015), seeing not just the Western anthropologists who were prominent during the colonial era, but also emerging African anthropologists who had been trained by and in these Western colonizer nations, as untrustworthy and a threat to independent nationhood. It would take a lot of hard work and stamina to change this perception of the discipline within the minds of these new African nation builders. Even at present, many governments and organizations working in different areas of the continent fail to see the essentiality of anthropology in policymaking and nation-building (Ndong, Nde, and Nguo 2015; Nkwi 2015b). Thus, due to the colonial history of anthropology in Africa, early African anthropologists faced the 4

challenges pathfinders often do, but also some unique to colonized peoples. Having been trained abroad, they had become knowledgeable in anthropological paradigms of the interwar years, e.g., Malinowski’s functionalism, Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, Radcliffe’ Brown’s structural functionalism, Boas’s historical particularism and cultural relativism, as well as psychocultural theoretical trajectories of Boas’s associates like Benedict, Mead, and Sapir, and many other trends (cf. Mcgee and Warms 2017; Nkwi 2015a; Ortner 1984). Many of these budding anthropologists in anglophone colonies (English-speaking or British colonies) were often further divided into either British social anthropologists, American cultural anthropologists, or European ethnologists, depending on the universities and institutions of colonial studies they had been trained in (cf. Barnard 2001; Kallaway 2012; Nkwi and Messina 2015). Upon their return home in the 1960s and 1970s, a period which coincided with the independence of most African colonies, with the reputation anthropology had gained as a colonial tool, these early African anthropologists had to deal with hostility towards the discipline, as well as the reality of not only different, but often contrasting knowledges, belief systems, outlook, and processes of meaning- making than the ones they had been trained in. Thus, many emigrated or returned to Western universities, and the few who stayed back often identified with the more acceptable and popular social sciences at the time in Africa, thus labelling themselves sociologists, modernists, and/or neo-Marxists (Nkwi 2015a; Nkwi 5