This paper combines ethnographic fieldwork and traditional African philosophy to examine the role... more This paper combines ethnographic fieldwork and traditional African philosophy to examine the role of the Obasinjom masquerade’s witch hunting ritual performance in individual and community therapy among Bayang and Ejagham ethnicities of Southwest Cameroon. They are a crossborder Bantoid people living in both Southwest Cameroon and Southeastern Nigeria with common sociocultural and sociopolitical institutions including cult agencies (secret societies). Aside from sharing a common world view characterised by the entanglement between the material and immaterial realms, they further believe in reincarnation and see death as a transition from the material universe into the immaterial world of the ancestors. Accordingly, elders and traditional rulers are believed to be intermediaries between the worlds of the living and those of the dead. Like other African people, they have both a personalistic and naturalistic disease theory system and share a wide variety of ritual medicines for the di...
This article argues that poetic inquiry is a valuable method for unmasking the interior religious... more This article argues that poetic inquiry is a valuable method for unmasking the interior religious experiences of African closeted queer clergy. It demonstrates how poetic inquiry could function as analytic tool for the decolonisation, reclamation, reinsertion and reconstitution of the closeted queer cleric’s belonging in African religio-cultural spaces in which their sexualities are been exorcised and alienated. It also makes visible the ongoing complexities of closeted queer clergy and the processes of interrogating their faith tensions through negotiating and subverting ecclesiastical and cultural alienations. Finally, it shows how closeted queer clergy interpret Christian faith as a tool for lived faith tensions between uncertainty and hope; fear and resistance; alienation and belonging; rejection and acceptance.
Museums in Cameroon are important heritage sites whose impact is enhanced when they are situated ... more Museums in Cameroon are important heritage sites whose impact is enhanced when they are situated in places open to the general public as opposed to palaces. In the Cameroon Grassfields, home of a number of tribal kingdoms and a rich heritage site, museums in traditional palaces are particularly restrictive through their location in the centre of the kingdom’s traditional and sacred activities. First, not every part of the palace is open to the public. Second, the palace is associated with royalty, elites and titleholders. Finally, custody or curatorship of ceremonial and ritual art preserved in the royal treasury or traditional palace museum is in the hands of the regulatory society or kwifor, also known as a secret society across the Grassfields. These restrictions act as a deterrent to a full exploration of the services offered in the palace, including the newly constructed museums, since the majority of the population are neither elites nor titleholders. Hence there is a need to work towards establishing museums in community centres outside the traditional palace premises. This policy brief argues for the construction of museums outside palaces in order to give visitors and the community an opportunity to fully explore museum collections and to facilitate sustainability of the museum for present and future generations. When museums are constructed in community centres, members of the community feel they have a stake in these heritage sites, not only as beneficiaries but also as initiators of the intervention. In this way they are empowered by ownership of their heritage.
Paper presented at the 4th WeberWorld Cafe on Museums, Power and Identity, Berlin Ethnological Mu... more Paper presented at the 4th WeberWorld Cafe on Museums, Power and Identity, Berlin Ethnological Museum, Germany, 11 June
This paper examines the changing nature of statues and monuments in post-apartheid South Africa w... more This paper examines the changing nature of statues and monuments in post-apartheid South Africa with special focus on newly constructed statues and monuments at the Groenkloof Nature Reserve (GNR) in Tshwane. The paper highlights the extraordinary fascination of the African National Congress (ANC) government with statues and monuments in honour of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid icons. It demonstrates that by embarking on the construction of statues and monuments in honour of struggle icons, these icons have become the embodiment of a new iconography for South Africa. More importantly, the paper will demonstrate how the newly constructed statues, though still in line with the pre-1994 iconography, are also disruptive of the country’s cultural landscape, much to the advantage of the government.
In African spirituality, ancestor engagement with the community is always mediated through materi... more In African spirituality, ancestor engagement with the community is always mediated through material objects. This article argues that materiality gives meaning and validity to the ancestral system. Ancestral objects are an embodiment of the ancestors or ancestral meaning-making, which links the visible community to the world of the spirits. However, ancestral objects also draw meaning and validation from those who inherit them, such as kings or titleholders who together with them connect the community to the spiritual source of well-being and vice versa. The article argues that such interplay is based on the material, religious and ritual conception of ancestral objects with their inheritors and the well-being of the community they represent. However, most studies on African religious art objects have focussed essentially on the symbolism behind ancestral objects and their motifs rather than on the interplay between ancestral objects and meaning-making in relation to community’s wel...
SummaryThis study seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for the inc... more SummaryThis study seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for the incidence of infant malnutrition in Cameroon with particular emphasis on northern Cameroon where it is most accentuated. It combines quantitative data drawn from the 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2011 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, as well as a literature review of publications by the WHO and UNICEF. This is further complemented with qualitative data from various regions of Cameroon, partly from a national ethnographic study on the ethno-medical causes of infertility in Cameroon conducted between 1999 and 2000. Whereas socio-cultural factors related to child feeding and maternal health (breast-feeding, food taboos and representations of the colostrum as dangerous for infants) are widespread throughout Cameroon, poverty-related factors (lack of education for mothers, natural disaster, unprecedented influx of refugees, inaccessibility and inequity in the distribution of health care services)...
Aim of study: This paper seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for ... more Aim of study: This paper seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for the incidence of infant malnutrition in Cameroon with particular emphasis on northern Cameroon where it is most accentuated.
Method: The paper combines quantitative data drawn from the 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2011 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, (CDHs) as well as a literature review of publications by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This is further complemented with qualitative data adduced from various regions of Cameroon, partly from a national ethnographic study on the ethnomedical causes of infertility in Cameroon conducted between 1999 and 2000.
Findings: Whereas, socio-cultural factors related to child feeding and maternal health- breastfeeding, food taboos and representations of the colostrum as dangerous for infants is widespread through out Cameroon, poverty related factors - lack of education for mothers; natural disaster, unprecedented influx of refugees, inaccessibility and inequity in the distribution of healthcare services are pervasive in northern Cameroon. This conjunction of factors accounts for the higher incidence of infant malnutrition and mortality in northern Cameroon.
Policy implications: The study suggests among others, the need for women’s empowerment and for healthcare personnel in transcultural situations to understand local cultural beliefs, practices and sentiments before initiating change efforts in infant feeding practices and maternal health.
The practical implication of this paper is to tailor biomedical services to the social and cultural needs of the target population-particularly women since beliefs and practices underpin therapeutic recourse. Whereas, infant diarrhoea might be believed to be the result of sexual contact, in reality, it is caused by unhygienic conditions. Similarly, weaning foods aimed at transmitting ethnic identity might not meet a child’s age-specific food needs and might instead give rise to malnutrition.
This paper combines ethnographic fieldwork and traditional African philosophy to examine the role... more This paper combines ethnographic fieldwork and traditional African philosophy to examine the role of the Obasinjom masquerade’s witch hunting ritual performance in individual and community therapy among Bayang and Ejagham ethnicities of Southwest Cameroon. They are a crossborder Bantoid people living in both Southwest Cameroon and Southeastern Nigeria with common sociocultural and sociopolitical institutions including cult agencies (secret societies). Aside from sharing a common world view characterised by the entanglement between the material and immaterial realms, they further believe in reincarnation and see death as a transition from the material universe into the immaterial world of the ancestors. Accordingly, elders and traditional rulers are believed to be intermediaries between the worlds of the living and those of the dead. Like other African people, they have both a personalistic and naturalistic disease theory system and share a wide variety of ritual medicines for the di...
This article argues that poetic inquiry is a valuable method for unmasking the interior religious... more This article argues that poetic inquiry is a valuable method for unmasking the interior religious experiences of African closeted queer clergy. It demonstrates how poetic inquiry could function as analytic tool for the decolonisation, reclamation, reinsertion and reconstitution of the closeted queer cleric’s belonging in African religio-cultural spaces in which their sexualities are been exorcised and alienated. It also makes visible the ongoing complexities of closeted queer clergy and the processes of interrogating their faith tensions through negotiating and subverting ecclesiastical and cultural alienations. Finally, it shows how closeted queer clergy interpret Christian faith as a tool for lived faith tensions between uncertainty and hope; fear and resistance; alienation and belonging; rejection and acceptance.
Museums in Cameroon are important heritage sites whose impact is enhanced when they are situated ... more Museums in Cameroon are important heritage sites whose impact is enhanced when they are situated in places open to the general public as opposed to palaces. In the Cameroon Grassfields, home of a number of tribal kingdoms and a rich heritage site, museums in traditional palaces are particularly restrictive through their location in the centre of the kingdom’s traditional and sacred activities. First, not every part of the palace is open to the public. Second, the palace is associated with royalty, elites and titleholders. Finally, custody or curatorship of ceremonial and ritual art preserved in the royal treasury or traditional palace museum is in the hands of the regulatory society or kwifor, also known as a secret society across the Grassfields. These restrictions act as a deterrent to a full exploration of the services offered in the palace, including the newly constructed museums, since the majority of the population are neither elites nor titleholders. Hence there is a need to work towards establishing museums in community centres outside the traditional palace premises. This policy brief argues for the construction of museums outside palaces in order to give visitors and the community an opportunity to fully explore museum collections and to facilitate sustainability of the museum for present and future generations. When museums are constructed in community centres, members of the community feel they have a stake in these heritage sites, not only as beneficiaries but also as initiators of the intervention. In this way they are empowered by ownership of their heritage.
Paper presented at the 4th WeberWorld Cafe on Museums, Power and Identity, Berlin Ethnological Mu... more Paper presented at the 4th WeberWorld Cafe on Museums, Power and Identity, Berlin Ethnological Museum, Germany, 11 June
This paper examines the changing nature of statues and monuments in post-apartheid South Africa w... more This paper examines the changing nature of statues and monuments in post-apartheid South Africa with special focus on newly constructed statues and monuments at the Groenkloof Nature Reserve (GNR) in Tshwane. The paper highlights the extraordinary fascination of the African National Congress (ANC) government with statues and monuments in honour of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid icons. It demonstrates that by embarking on the construction of statues and monuments in honour of struggle icons, these icons have become the embodiment of a new iconography for South Africa. More importantly, the paper will demonstrate how the newly constructed statues, though still in line with the pre-1994 iconography, are also disruptive of the country’s cultural landscape, much to the advantage of the government.
In African spirituality, ancestor engagement with the community is always mediated through materi... more In African spirituality, ancestor engagement with the community is always mediated through material objects. This article argues that materiality gives meaning and validity to the ancestral system. Ancestral objects are an embodiment of the ancestors or ancestral meaning-making, which links the visible community to the world of the spirits. However, ancestral objects also draw meaning and validation from those who inherit them, such as kings or titleholders who together with them connect the community to the spiritual source of well-being and vice versa. The article argues that such interplay is based on the material, religious and ritual conception of ancestral objects with their inheritors and the well-being of the community they represent. However, most studies on African religious art objects have focussed essentially on the symbolism behind ancestral objects and their motifs rather than on the interplay between ancestral objects and meaning-making in relation to community’s wel...
SummaryThis study seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for the inc... more SummaryThis study seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for the incidence of infant malnutrition in Cameroon with particular emphasis on northern Cameroon where it is most accentuated. It combines quantitative data drawn from the 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2011 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, as well as a literature review of publications by the WHO and UNICEF. This is further complemented with qualitative data from various regions of Cameroon, partly from a national ethnographic study on the ethno-medical causes of infertility in Cameroon conducted between 1999 and 2000. Whereas socio-cultural factors related to child feeding and maternal health (breast-feeding, food taboos and representations of the colostrum as dangerous for infants) are widespread throughout Cameroon, poverty-related factors (lack of education for mothers, natural disaster, unprecedented influx of refugees, inaccessibility and inequity in the distribution of health care services)...
Aim of study: This paper seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for ... more Aim of study: This paper seeks to explore and explain the socio-cultural factors responsible for the incidence of infant malnutrition in Cameroon with particular emphasis on northern Cameroon where it is most accentuated.
Method: The paper combines quantitative data drawn from the 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2011 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, (CDHs) as well as a literature review of publications by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This is further complemented with qualitative data adduced from various regions of Cameroon, partly from a national ethnographic study on the ethnomedical causes of infertility in Cameroon conducted between 1999 and 2000.
Findings: Whereas, socio-cultural factors related to child feeding and maternal health- breastfeeding, food taboos and representations of the colostrum as dangerous for infants is widespread through out Cameroon, poverty related factors - lack of education for mothers; natural disaster, unprecedented influx of refugees, inaccessibility and inequity in the distribution of healthcare services are pervasive in northern Cameroon. This conjunction of factors accounts for the higher incidence of infant malnutrition and mortality in northern Cameroon.
Policy implications: The study suggests among others, the need for women’s empowerment and for healthcare personnel in transcultural situations to understand local cultural beliefs, practices and sentiments before initiating change efforts in infant feeding practices and maternal health.
The practical implication of this paper is to tailor biomedical services to the social and cultural needs of the target population-particularly women since beliefs and practices underpin therapeutic recourse. Whereas, infant diarrhoea might be believed to be the result of sexual contact, in reality, it is caused by unhygienic conditions. Similarly, weaning foods aimed at transmitting ethnic identity might not meet a child’s age-specific food needs and might instead give rise to malnutrition.
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Method: The paper combines quantitative data drawn from the 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2011 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, (CDHs) as well as a literature review of publications by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This is further complemented with qualitative data adduced from various regions of Cameroon, partly from a national ethnographic study on the ethnomedical causes of infertility in Cameroon conducted between 1999 and 2000.
Findings: Whereas, socio-cultural factors related to child feeding and maternal health- breastfeeding, food taboos and representations of the colostrum as dangerous for infants is widespread through out Cameroon, poverty related factors - lack of education for mothers; natural disaster, unprecedented influx of refugees, inaccessibility and inequity in the distribution of healthcare services are pervasive in northern Cameroon. This conjunction of factors accounts for the higher incidence of infant malnutrition and mortality in northern Cameroon.
Policy implications: The study suggests among others, the need for women’s empowerment and for healthcare personnel in transcultural situations to understand local cultural beliefs, practices and sentiments before initiating change efforts in infant feeding practices and maternal health.
The practical implication of this paper is to tailor biomedical services to the social and cultural needs of the target population-particularly women since beliefs and practices underpin therapeutic recourse. Whereas, infant diarrhoea might be believed to be the result of sexual contact, in reality, it is caused by unhygienic conditions. Similarly, weaning foods aimed at transmitting ethnic identity might not meet a child’s age-specific food needs and might instead give rise to malnutrition.
Key words: infant mortality, malnutrition, women’s health, maternal and child health, food taboos, food insecurity, feeding practices, ethno-physiology, Women’s empowerment, human development.
Method: The paper combines quantitative data drawn from the 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2011 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, (CDHs) as well as a literature review of publications by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). This is further complemented with qualitative data adduced from various regions of Cameroon, partly from a national ethnographic study on the ethnomedical causes of infertility in Cameroon conducted between 1999 and 2000.
Findings: Whereas, socio-cultural factors related to child feeding and maternal health- breastfeeding, food taboos and representations of the colostrum as dangerous for infants is widespread through out Cameroon, poverty related factors - lack of education for mothers; natural disaster, unprecedented influx of refugees, inaccessibility and inequity in the distribution of healthcare services are pervasive in northern Cameroon. This conjunction of factors accounts for the higher incidence of infant malnutrition and mortality in northern Cameroon.
Policy implications: The study suggests among others, the need for women’s empowerment and for healthcare personnel in transcultural situations to understand local cultural beliefs, practices and sentiments before initiating change efforts in infant feeding practices and maternal health.
The practical implication of this paper is to tailor biomedical services to the social and cultural needs of the target population-particularly women since beliefs and practices underpin therapeutic recourse. Whereas, infant diarrhoea might be believed to be the result of sexual contact, in reality, it is caused by unhygienic conditions. Similarly, weaning foods aimed at transmitting ethnic identity might not meet a child’s age-specific food needs and might instead give rise to malnutrition.
Key words: infant mortality, malnutrition, women’s health, maternal and child health, food taboos, food insecurity, feeding practices, ethno-physiology, Women’s empowerment, human development.