Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T16:11:03.178Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remembering ‘The Troubles’: Reproductive Insecurity and the Management of Memory in Cameroon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg ,
Flavien T. Ndonko  and
Song Yang
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The ‘time of troubles’, a period of a radical nationalist movement (the UPC) and state reprisals sometimes called the Bamileke Rebellion, rocked Cameroon during the years surrounding its Independence in 1960. At the time, Bamileke women related their political and economic tribulations to numerous reproductive difficulties. They continue to do so today, linking perceived threats to their ethnic distinctiveness and survival to a sense of reproductive vulnerability. In this paper we explore the management of collective memories of the troubles as part of the social and cultural context of reproduction in a high-fertility society. Building upon extensive fieldwork among the Bamileke since the 1980s, we use data from participant observation, intensive interviews, and a two-round social network survey in six Bamileke women's associations in Yaoundé. Envisioned as a complement to a meaning-centred ethnographic approach, we are interested in several interrelated aspects of how urban Bamileke women manage their repertoire of memory. First, we explore how the ‘time of troubles’ and its memories are referenced in women's images of reproductive threat in three periods of Cameroonian history (the troubles themselves, the aftermath of a regime change, and the ‘crisis’ at the turn to the new millennium). Second, we seek to understand the social structuring of memory in network terms. Who are the carriers of memories of ‘the troubles’? And through which social ties are these memories transmitted and negotiated? Finally, drawing upon Mannheim's insights regarding generations and collective memory, we analyse cohort effects on the content of memories.

Résumé

La «période de troubles» marquée par un mouvement nationaliste radical (l'UPC) et des représailles de l'État, parfois appelée rébellion Bamiléké, a secoué le Cameroun dans les années qui ont précédé et suivi son indépendance en 1960. À l'époque, les femmes bamiléké liaient leurs tribulations politiques et économiques aux nombreuses difficultés de reproduction. Elles continuent de le faire aujourd'hui, en établissant un lien entre les menaces perçues pour leur spécificité ethnique et leur survie, et un sentiment de vulnérabilité reproductive. Cet article examine la gestion des mémoires collectives des troubles dans le contexte social et culturel de la reproduction dans une société dont le taux de fécondité est élevé. S'appuyant sur les abondants travaux menés chez les Bamiléké depuis les années 1980, l'article se sert de données d'observation, d'entretiens approfondis et d'une étude de réseau social en deux phases portant sur six associations de femmes bamiléké à Yaoundé. Envisagé comme un complément d'approche ethnographique centrée sur le sens, l'article s'intéresse aux aspects interdépendants de la question de savoir comment les femmes urbaines bamiléké gèrent leur répertoire de mémoire. Il commence par étudier le mode de référencement de la «période de troubles» et de ses souvenirs dans l'image qu'ont les femmes de la menace pour la reproduction au cours de trois périodes de l'histoire camerounaise (les troubles eux-mêmes, les retombées du changement de régime et la «crise» à l'aube de ce nouveau millénaire). Il cherche ensuite à comprendre la structuration sociale de la mémoire en termes de réseau. Qui sont les porteurs de mémoires des «troubles»? Quels sont les liens sociaux à travers lesquels ces mémoires sont transmises et négociées? Enfin, s'inspirant des idées de Mannheim sur les générations et la mémoire collective, l'article analyse les effets de cohorte sur le contenu des mémoires.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 75 , Issue 1: Collective Memory, Reproduction and Generation in Africa , February 2005 , pp. 10 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2005

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

Akam, Evina. 1990. Infécondité et sous-fécondité. Evaluation et recherche des facteurs. Le Cas du Cameroun. Yaoundé: IFORD (Institut de formation et de recherche démographiques).Google Scholar
Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek, (eds). 1996. Tense Past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ardener, Shirley and Sandra Burman, (eds). 1995. Money-Go-Rounds: the importance of rotating savings and credit associations for women. Oxford and Washington DC: Berg.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Karen. 2000. ‘Ambiguity and remembrance: individual and collective memory in Finland’, American Ethnologist 27 (3): 591–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bahloul, Joëlle. 1996. The Architecture of Memory: a Jewish-Muslim household in colonial Algeria, 1937–1962. Trans. by Catherine du Peloux Ménagé. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (1992. La Maison de mémoire. Ethnologie d'une demeure judéo-arabe en Algérie, 1937–1961. Paris: Métailié.)Google Scholar
Barth, Fredrik (ed.). 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: the social organization of culture difference. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget; London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Battaglia, Debbora. 1992. ‘The body in the gift: memory and forgetting in Sabarl Mortuary Exchange’, American Ethnologist 19 (1): 3–18.Google Scholar
Bayart, Jean-François. 1993. The State in Africa: the politics of the belly. London and New York: Longman. (1989. Etat en Afrique. La Politique du ventre. Paris: Fayard.)Google Scholar
Behar, Ruth. 1991. ‘Death and memory: from Santa Maria del Monte to Miami Beach’, Cultural Anthropology 6 (3): 346–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell, John. C.Orubuloye, I. and Pat Caldwell, . 1992. ‘Fertility decline in Africa: a new type of transition?’, Population and Development Review 18 (2): 211–42.Google Scholar
Carter, A. T. 1995. ‘Agency and fertility: for an ethnography of practice’, in Greenhalgh, S. (ed.), Situating Fertility: anthropology and demographic inquiry. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casterline, John, Paul Hewett, Dominic Agyeman, and Peter Aglobitse, . 2002. ‘Women's vs. men's social networks and contraceptive use dynamics: longitudinal evidence from Ghana’. Paper presented at the Population Association of America Annual Meeting, 9–11 May, Atlanta GA.Google Scholar
Climo, Jacob J. and Cattell, Maria G. (eds). 2002. Social Memory and History: anthropological perspectives. Walnut Creek CA and Oxford: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Jennifer. 2001. Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the art of memory in Madagascar. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dongmo, Jean-Louis. 1981. Le Dynamisme bamiléké, Cameroun. Vol. 1. La Maîtrise de l'espace agraire. Yaoundé: Université de Yaoundé.Google Scholar
Fardon, Richard. 1996. ‘The person, ethnicity and the problem of ‘’identity’’ in West Africa’, in Ian Fowler, and David Zeitlyn, (eds), African Crossroads: intersections between history and anthropology in Cameroon. Providence RI: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Feldman- Savelsberg, Pamela. 1999. Plundered Kitchens, Empty Wombs: threatened reproduction and identity in the Cameroon Grassfields. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Feldman- Savelsberg, PamelaNdonko, Flavien T., and Bergis, Schmidt-Ehry. 2000. ‘Sterilizing vaccines or the politics of the womb: retrospective study of a rumor in Cameroon’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 14 (2): 159–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fotso, M.Ndonou, R.Libité, P. R.Tsafack, M.Wakou, R.Ghapoutsa, A.Kamga, S.Kemgo, P.Kwekam Fankam, M.Kamdoum, A. and Barrére, B.. 1999. Enquête Démographique et de Santé, Cameroun, 1998. Yaoundé and Calverton MD: Bureau Central des Recensements et des Etudes de Population and Macro International.Google Scholar
Fricke, Tom. 1997. ‘Culture theory and demographic process: toward a thicker demography’, in David Kertzer, and Tom Fricke, (eds), Anthropological Demography: towards a new synthesis. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Geschiere, Peter, and Josef Gugler, . 1998. ‘Introduction: the urban-rural connection - changing issues of belonging and identification’, Africa 68 (3): 309-319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goheen, Miriam. 1996. Men Own the Fields, Women Own the Crops: gender and power in the Cameroon Grassfields. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Alice, Susan Cotts Watkins, and Ann Rosen Spector, . 1994. ‘Childhood health-care practices among Italians and Jews in the United States, 1910-1940’, Health Transition Review 4 (1): 45-62.Google Scholar
Greenhalgh, Susan. 1995. ‘Anthropology theorizes reproduction: integrating practice, political economic, and feminist perspectives’, in Susan Greenhalgh, (ed.), Situating Fertility: anthropology and demographic inquiry. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hammel, E. A. 1990. ‘A theory of culture for demography’, Population and Development Review 16 (3): 455-485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubert, Lawrence. 1985. ‘Combinatorial data analysis: association and partial association’, Psychometrika 50 (4): 449-467.Google Scholar
Johnson- Hanks, Jennifer. 2003. ‘An Uncertain Honor: negotiating motherhood in an African postcolony’. Unpublished MS.Google Scholar
Joseph, Richard A. 1977. Radical Nationalism in Cameroon: social origins of the UPC rebellion. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kertzer, David. 1983. ‘Generation as a sociological problem’, Annual Review of Anthropology 9: 125-149.Google Scholar
Krackhardt, D. 1987. ‘QAP partialling as a test of spuriousness’, Social Networks 9: 171-186.Google Scholar
Krackhardt, D. 1988. ‘Predicting with networks: nonparametric multiple regression analysis of dyadic data’, Social Networks 10: 359-381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, Ulla. 1995. ‘Differentials in infertility in Cameroon and Nigeria’, Population Studies 49 (3): 329-346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1952. ‘The problem of generations’, in Karl Mannheim, , Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Ed. and trans. by Paul Kecskemeti. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nkwi, Paul Nchoji, and Antoine Socpa, . 1997. ‘Ethnicity and party politics in Cameroon: the politics of divide and rule’, in Paul Nchoji Nkwi, and Nyamnjoh, Francis B. (eds), Regional Balance and National Integration in Cameroon: lessons learned and the uncertain future. Leiden: African Studies Centre; Yaoundé: ICASSRT (International Center for Applied Social Science Research and Training).Google Scholar
Nyamnjoh, Francis, and Michael Rowlands, . 1998. ‘Elite associations and the politics of belonging in Cameroon’, Africa 68 (3): 320-337.Google Scholar
Peel, J. D. Y. 1983. ‘Making history: the past in the Ijesha present’, Man NS 19: 111-132.Google Scholar
Pollack, Robert, and Susan Cotts Watkins, . 1993. ‘Cultural and economic approaches to fertility: proper marriage or mésalliance?’, Population and Development Review 19 (3): 467-496.Google Scholar
Price, Neil. 1996. ‘The changing value of children among the Kikuyu of Central Province, Kenya’, Africa 66 (3): 411-436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rowlands, Michael, and Jean- Pierre Warnier, . 1988. ‘Sorcery, power and the modern state in Cameroon’, Man NS 23 (1): 118-132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuman, Howard, and Jacqueline Scott, . 1989. ‘Generations and collective memories’, American Sociological Review 54 (3): 359–381.Google Scholar
Shaw, Rosalind. 2002. Memories of the Slave Trade: ritual and the historical imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simpson, William B. 2001. ‘The quadratic assignment procedure (QAP)’. Working paper presented at the North American Stata Users’ Group Meeting, 12–13 March, Boston MA.Google Scholar
Stoller, Paul. 1995. Embodying Colonial Memories: spirit possession, power, and the Hauka in West Africa. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Terretta, Meredith. 2000. ‘Cameroonian Women and the Writing of a Popular Nationalism’. MA thesis. Department of History, University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Tostensen, Arne, Inge Tvedten, and Mariken Vaa, (eds). 2001. Associational Life in African Cities: popular responses to the urban crisis. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.Google Scholar
Valente, Thomas W.Watkins, Susan C.Jato, Miriam N.Ariane Van Der Straten, and Tsitsol, Louis-Philippe. 1997. ‘Social network associations with contraceptive use among Cameroonian women in voluntary associations’, Social Science and Medicine 45 (5): 677–687.Google Scholar
Valeri, Valerio. 1990. ‘Constitutive history: genealogy and narrative in the legitimation of Hawaiian kingship’, in Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, (ed.), Culture Through Time: anthropological approaches. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wakam, Jean. 1994. De la Pertinence de théories ‘économistes’ de fécondité dans le contexte socio-culturel camerounais et negro-africain. Yaounde: IFORD (Institut de formation et de recherche démographiques).Google Scholar
Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 1985. Echanges, développement et hiérarchies dans le Bamenda pré-colonial, Cameroun. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Watkins, Susan Cotts. 2000. ‘Local and foreign models of reproduction in Nyanza Province, Kenya’, Population and Development Review 26 (4): 725–760.Google Scholar
Weinreb, Alexander. 2000. ‘Interviewers, Community and State in the Production of Demographic Behavior’. Ph.D. dissertation. Graduate Group in Demography and Graduate Group in Sociology, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard. 1998. ‘Introduction’, in Richard Werbner, (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony: African anthropology and the critique of power. London: Zed Books; New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Yang, Song, and Dabid Knoke, . 2001. ‘Optimal connections: strength and distance in valued graphs’, Social Networks 23: 285–295.Google Scholar
Yang, Song, and Henry Hexmoor, . 2004. ‘Measuring optimal connections in large networks: a new algorithm and its applications’, Journal of Mathematical Sociology 28 (3): 197–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar