Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T21:41:24.742Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Civility of Incivility: Grassroots Political Activism, Female Farmers, and the Cameroon State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Susan Diduk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This essay examines the cultural symbolism underpinning “Takembeng,” a contemporary, rural-based social movement of female farmers in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. It argues that the power and success of women's activism, in the context of national opposition party politics and the “new struggles” for democracy, are embedded in an institutional history and culturally legitimate etiquette of moral censure. It also suggests that the highly disruptive but mystically charged nature of these mobilizations makes them effective because they open spaces for popular dissent on the national stage. Understanding the “civility” associated with the apparent incivility of activists is indispensable to understanding the dynamism of grassroots political activism.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Cette dissertation examine le symbolisme culturel servant de fondation au Takembeng, un mouvement de société contemporain, principalement rural dans lequel sont engagées des femmes du monde paysan de la province du nord-ouest du Cameroun. On y discute le fait que le pouvoir et le succès de l'activisme féminin, dans le contexte de la politique du parti d'opposition national et les « nouveaux obstacles » auxquels est confrontée la démocratie, font partie intégrante de l'histoire constitutionnelle et de l'étiquette de censure morale légitimée par la culture. L'article suggère aussi que la nature extrêmement dérangeante, mais lourde en mysticisme de ces mouvements les rend efficace car ils permettent d'ouvrir la porte pour la dissension populaire à l'échelle nationale. Il est indispensable de comprendre le « civisme » associé à l'incivisme apparent des activistes si l'on veut comprendre la dynamique de l'activisme politique populaire.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , September 2004 , pp. 27 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agarwal, B. 1994. A Field of One's Own. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Alvarez, Sonia. 1997. “Reweaving the Fabric of Collective Action: Social Movements and Challenges to ‘Actually Existing Democracy’ in Brazil.” In Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest, edited by Fox, Richard and Starn, Orin, 83–117. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Amadiume, I. 1997. Reinventing Africa. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Apter, A. 1999. “Africa, Empire, and Anthropology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 577–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ardener, Shirley. 1975. Perceiving Women. London: Malaby Press.Google Scholar
Azarya, V. 1988. “Reordering State–Society Relations.” In The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa, edited by Rothchild, Donald and Chazan, Naomi. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Azarya, V. 1994. “Civil Society and Disengagement in Africa.” In Civil Society and the State in Africa, edited by Harbeson, John, Rothchild, Donald, and Chazan, Naomi, 83–100. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Bayart, Jean-Francois. 1993. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bratton, M., and van de Walle, N. 1992. “Toward Governance in Africa: Popular Demands and State Responses.” In Governance and Politics in Africa, edited by Hyden, Goran and Bratton, Michael. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Chilver, E. M. 1990. “Women Cultivators, Cows and Cash-Crops: Phyllis Kaberry's Women of the Grassfields Revisited.”Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 1999. Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. 1997. African Women. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, L. 1992. The Democratic Revolution: Struggles for Freedom and Pluralism in the Developing World. New York: Freedom House.Google Scholar
Diduk, Susan. 1989. “Women's Agricultural Production and Political Action in the Cameroon Grassfields.” Africa 59 (3): 38–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diduk, Susan. 1997a. “Moral Guardians and Women's Protests in the Grassfields of Cameroon.” Paper presented at the Thirteenth Satterthwaite Colloquium on African Ritual and Religion, Satterthwaite, U.K. Google Scholar
Diduk, Susan. 1997b. “Civil Society and Institutionalized Resistance in the Cameroon Grassfields.” Paper presented at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, University of Oxford, 11 25.Google Scholar
Diduk, Susan. 2000. “Twinship and Juvenile Power: The Ordinariness of the Extraordinary.” Ethnology 40 (1): 29–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diduk, Susan. 2001. “Women and Religious Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa.” In Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religions, edited by Glazier, S., 375–81. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Diduk, S., and Maynard, K. 2000. “A Woman's Pillow and the Political Economy of Kedjom Family Life in Cameroon.” In Family, Religion, and Social Change in Diverse Societies, edited by Houseknecht, S. and Pankhurst, J. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fatton, R. 1995. “Africa in the Age of Democratization: The Civic Limitations of Civil Society.” African Studies Review 38 (2): 67–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, R., and Starn, O., eds. 1997. Between Resistance and Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Goheen, M. 1996. Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. “Sexual Difference and the Problem of Essentialism.” In The Essential Difference, edited by Schor, Naomi and Weed, Elizabeth, 82–97. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Harbeson, John, et al. 1994. Civil Society and the State in Africa. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Haugerud, A. 1997. The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holmquist, F., and Oendo, A. 2001. “Kenya: Democracy, Decline, and Despair.” Current History 100 (646): 201–6.Google Scholar
Ifeka-Moller, C. 1975. “Female Militancy and Colonial Revolt: The Women's War of 1929, Eastern Nigeria.” In Perceiving Women, edited by Ardener, Shirley, 127–57. London: Malaby Press.Google Scholar
Isaacman, A. 1990. “Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa.” African Studies Review 33 (2): 1–120.Google Scholar
Jua, Roselyn. 1993. “Women's Role in Democratic Change in Cameroon.” In Anglophone Cameroon Writing, edited by Lyonga, Nalova, Breitinger, Eckhard, and Butake, Bole, 180–83. Bayreuth: University of Bayreuth Press.Google Scholar
Kaberry, P. 1952. Women of the Grassfields: A Study of the Economic Position of Women in Bamenda, British Cameroons. London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office.Google Scholar
Kanogo, T. 1987. “Kikuyu Women and the Politics of Protest: Mau Mau.” In Images of Women in Peace and War, edited by MacDonald, S., Holden, P., and Ardener, S. London: MacMillan Education.Google Scholar
Karmiloff, I. 1990. “Cameroon.” In Manufacturing Africa, edited by Riddell, R. C. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Lan, D. 1995. Guns and Rain. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lemarcand, R. 1992. “Uncivil States and Civil Societies: How Illusion Became Reality.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 30 (2): 177–91.Google Scholar
Maathai, Wangari. 1995. “Women, Information and the Future: The Women of Kenya and the Green Belt Movement.” In A Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide, edited by Brill, Alida, 241–50. New York: The Feminist Press.Google Scholar
MacDonald, S. 1987. “Drawing the Lines—Gender, Peace and War: An Introduction.” In Images of Women in Peace and War, edited by MacDonald, S., Holden, P., and Ardener, S. London: MacMillan Education.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mba, N. 1982. Nigerian Women Mobilized. University of California, Berkeley: Institute of International Studies.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. 1992. “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony.” Africa 62 (1): 3–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikell, G. ed., 1997. African Feminism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Monga, C. 1996. The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Ndegwa, S. 1996. The Two Faces of Civil Society. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press.Google Scholar
Nkwi, P. 1976. Traditional Government and Social Change. Fribourg: Fribourg University Press.Google Scholar
Nzegwu, N. 1995. “Recovering Igbo Traditions: A Case for Indigenous Women's Organizations in Development.” In Women, Culture, and Development, edited by Nussbaum, Martha and Glover, Jonathan, 444–66. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ottiger, N. 1996. Oekonomie der Geschlecter: Kooperation and Konflikte bei den Mmen im Kameruner Grasland. Zurich: Argonaut-Verlag.Google Scholar
Rothchild, D., and Lawson, L. 1994. “The Interactions between State and Civil Society in Africa.” In Civil Society and the State in Africa, edited by Harbeson, John, Rothchild, Donald, and Chazan, Naomi. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Ritzenthaler, R. 1960. “Anlu: A Woman's Uprising in the British Cameroons.” African Studies 19 (3): 151–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanday, P. 1981. Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. 1985. Weapons of the Weak. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shanklin, E. 1990. “ANLU Remembered: The Kom Women's Rebellion of 1958–61.” Dialectical Anthropology 15: 159–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somerville, K. 1994. “Africa: Is There a Silver Lining?” The World Today, 215–19.Google Scholar
Takougang, J., and Krieger, M. 1998. African State and Society in the 1990s: Cameroon's Political Crossroads. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Tripp, A. 1992. “Local Organizations, Participation and the State in Urban Tanzania.” In Governance and Politics in Africa, edited by Hyden, Goran and Bratton, Michael. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Tripp, A. 1994. “Rethinking Civil Society: Gender Implications in Contemporary Tanzania.” In Civil Society and the State in Africa, edited by Harbeson, John, Rothchild, Donald, and Chazan, Naomi, 149–68. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Tripp, A. 2000. Women and Politics in Uganda. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Tripp, A. 2001. “The New Political Activism in Africa.” Journal of Democracy 12 (3): 141–55.Google Scholar
Van Allen, J. 1972. “‘Sitting on a Man’: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 7 (2): 165–81.Google Scholar
Westermann, V. 1992. Women's Disturbances: Der Anlu-Aufstand bei den Kom (Kamerun) 1958–1960. Hamburg: Lit Verlag.Google Scholar
Widner, J. 1993. “The Discovery of ‘Polities’: Smallholder Reactions to the Cocoa Crisis of 1988–90 in Côte d'Ivoire.” In Hemmed In: Responses to Africa's Economic Decline, edited by Ravenhill, John and Callaghy, Thomas, 279–331. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Widner, J. 1994. “The Rise of Civic Associations among Farmers in Côte d'Ivoire” In Civil Society and the State in Africa, edited by Harbeson, John, Rothchild, Donald, and Chazan, Naomi, 191–211. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Wipper, A. 1985. “Riot and Rebellion among African Women: Three Examples of Women's Political Clout.” Michigan State University, Working Paper #108.Google Scholar
Wiseman, J. 1996. The New Struggle for Democracy in Africa. Aldershot: Avebury.Google Scholar
Worby, E. 1998. “Tyranny, Parody, and Ethnic Polarity: Ritual Engagements with the State in Northwestern Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (3): 561–78.Google Scholar
World Economic Survey: A Reader. 1990–1991. New York: Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations.Google Scholar