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  • 1.
    Heward-Mills, Nii Lante
    et al.
    Leeds Metropolitan, UK.
    Atuhaire, Catherine
    Mbarara Univ Sci & Technol, Uganda.
    Spoors, Chris
    Leeds Metropolitan, UK.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Priebe, Gunilla
    University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
    Cumber, Samuel Nambile
    University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
    The role of faith leaders in influencing health behaviour: a qualitative exploration on the views of Black African Christians in Leeds, United Kingdom2018In: Pan African Medical Journal, E-ISSN 1937-8688, Vol. 30, article id 199Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Introduction: Black African communities in the U.K suffer from health disparities compared to the general population. This has been attributed to the lack of culturally sensitive interventions that are meaningful to them. Faith leaders are an integral part of the community and are known to have immense influence on health behaviour of congregants and community members. However, their role in health behaviour change (alcohol and tobacco use) has been largely neglected. The aim of this study is to explore the views of Black African Christians on the role of their faith leaders in their health behaviour, with particular focus on the extent of influence and mechanisms that foster this. Methods: Eight (8) semi-structured interviews were conducted with Black African Christians between the ages of 25-44, from two churches in Leeds, UK. Data were analysed using the principles of thematic analysis. Results: Findings revealed that faith leaders could play a very important role in the health behaviour of their congregants. Faith leaders are able to influence health behaviour not only on the individual level but also on a socio-cultural and environmental level. They exert such influence through several mediators including through scriptural influence, social influence and by serving as a role models. However, no single mediator has been found to be exclusively associated to health behaviour change. Conclusion: Congregants view faith leaders as having an immense influence on their health behaviour. As a community resource, faith leaders could be better positioned to organize and foster community participation in health matters. Health promoters should thus consider collaborations with faith leaders to enhance the health of their community.

  • 2.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Challenging Patriarchy: Trade, outward migration and the internationalization of Commercial sex among Bayang and Ejagham women in Southwest Cameroon2011In: Health, Culture and Society, E-ISSN 2161-6590, Vol. 1, no 1, p. 166-192Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper documents the specific local and global social and economic forces that led to the outward migration ofBayang and Ejagham women to work as commercial sex workers on the Cameroon-Nigeria border regions in the1980s and 1990s. It demonstrates that these women’s personal accumulation strategies are adaptative- drawing ontime and space specific modes of capitalist accumulation and kinship systems of power. The intertwined nature ofthese forms of accumulation shows that patriarchal forms of power and capitalist forms of accumulation in thisregion were not competitive-but rather complementary systems. This conjuncture also gave women the latitude toclaim some form of sexual and economic agency, usefully suggesting that at least in Africa, patriarchy as a powerfield is dynamic and relational, simultaneously opening up spaces for both resistance and agency. Although theimpact of sex work has been disproportionate since most women were involved in subsistence sex and given the riskof violence and of contracting HIV/AIDS, they however reconfigured gender relations, but have not achievedliberation as most remain trapped in poverty.

  • 3.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Concurrences in Postcolonial Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, and Engagements2018Collection (editor) (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The concept of concurrences is a blanket term for challenging dominating statements of the past and present. Concurrent stories have varying claims to reality and fiction, as well as different, diverging, and at times competing claims to society, culture, identity, and historical past. Dominant Western narrations about colonial power relationships are challenged by alternative sources such as heritage objects and oral traditions, enabling the voice of minorities or subaltern groups to be heard. Concurrences in Postcolonial Research is about capturing multiple voices and multiple temporalities. As such, it is both a relational and dynamic methodology and a theoretical perspective that undergirds the multiple workings of power, uncovering asymmetrical power relations. Interdisciplinary in nature, this anthology is the outcome of scholarship from the humanities and social sciences with an interest in the multiple temporality of postcolonial issues and engagements in various places across the world.

  • 4.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Fortress conservation, wildlife legislation and the Baka Pygmies of southeast Cameroon2019In: GeoJournal, ISSN 0343-2521, E-ISSN 1572-9893, Vol. 84, no 4, p. 1035-1055Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The indigenous Baka Pygmies of southeast Cameroon depend mainly on environmental incomes for their livelihoods, usually hunting and gathering and the sustainable use of their ecological systems. They are at the verge of profound political, socioeconomic, and environmental transformations orchestrated by modern state laws regulating hunting and international development actors and agencies whose development vision expressed through conservation often underlie a contradiction with their way of life. This ethnographic study aims to document the dynamics of the institution of the great hunting expedition among the Baka. An interplay between the overexploitation of forestry resources, the creation of protected areas (fortress conservation), the full protection of certain classes of large mammals, the use of specific tools forbidden by existing forestry legislation and the ruthless behaviour of ‘eco-guards’ have led to changes in the organization of the great hunting expedition. To better address the socio-cultural aspects of biodiversity conservation and consequently strengthen the legislation regulating the wildlife sector in the country, conservation stakeholders must be conscious of the multiple entanglements between human and other life forms and the ecology of hunting. This suggests the need for a rights-based approach to conservation that recognizes the entanglement of ‘multispecies assemblages’ and respects indigenous land rights.

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  • 5.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Noble Philanthropic NGO, Cameroon.
    Gendered identity and anti-female genital cutting (FGC) activism among the Ejaghams, Cameroon2010In: Arts and Social Sciences Journal, E-ISSN 2151-6200, Vol. 1, p. 1-16, article id ASSJ-15Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper is a critical appraisal of NGO activism against female genital cutting (FGC) practices among Ejagham communities in Southwest Cameroon. The paper argues that by framing female circumcision as a ‘‘harmful traditional practice’’, local anti-female circumcision activists (NGOs and their external allies), using educational, health, legal awareness and human rights-based approaches, have produced mixed results, thereby re-inforcing resistance among cultural hardliners. Their demonization of culture and failure to address the local context of these practices tends rather, to reify and re-inscribe the practice as central to Ejagham cultural identity, personhood and femininity. Although tension is absolutely central not only to any attempt to stop the practice but probably to the processes involved in the practices themselves, I maintain that a community-led, ‘Positive Deviance Approach’ could be a way forward towards the eventual eradication of FGC.

  • 6.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Health and cultural values: female circumcision within the context of HIV/AIDS in Cameroon2011 (ed. 1)Book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    This book provides a nuanced analysis of the transformations that the ritual cutting of Female Circumcision (FC) recently underwent within the changing medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic among Ejagham tribes in Southwest Cameroon.

    Based on local level ethnography, it captures the multivocale perspectives and agency of participants thereby putting to question the uncritical feminist stance that “Third World Women” lack agency and are chattel. As the highest rite of patriarchy, the quintessential icon of gendered personhood and femininity, FC remains salient even when it is no longer the criterion for membership into the Moninkim secret society especially within the new medical and institutional context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic because it is intertwined with the whole cultural political economy of the Ejaghams. The commercialization of this feminine institution charged with feminine personhood through its spectacular performances (enacting matrimonial relations) within and beyond the Ejagham locale is evidence of its continuous centrality in the life world of participants. By focusing on health alone, anti-HIV/AIDS and anti-FC interventions by both the state and civil society actors miss the point. FC is increasingly becoming a human, social, gender rights and development issue calling for a multi-pronged development approach. The threat of the HIV/AIDS pandemic led to ferocious intergenerational debates over moral values about female inordinate sexuality and to the double appropriation of the concept of human security. Conservatives maintain that FC tempers with women’s sexuality and is therefore a useful mechanism to keep women in matrimonial service, a moral check on inordinate sexuality and a ‘‘native’’ antidote against the scourge of the pandemic. Anti-FC advocates point to the bloodletting entailed by the ritual procedures as fuelling the spread of the pandemic through the spread of diseases with HIV/AIDS inclusive among participants. A third group of cultural insiders are rather opting but for the cautious appropriation of modernity while simultaneously maintaining tradition: medicalisation of the ritual procedures. By reducing the complexity and nuances of the ritual cutting to health alone, anti-FC activism has instead produced a backlash marked by simultaneous contestation and practice. Paradoxically, the anti-FC campaigns have resulted in the privatization of FC on increasingly younger girls. However, the recent waiving of the ritual cutting as a precondition for membership into the Moninkim cult-partly because of the ageing of the initial initiates, the health risk of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and anti-FC advocacy campaigns by local NGOs shows that change is underway. Simultaneously, inter-tribal marriages with members of non-circumcising tribes and romantic love relationships beyond the purview of the traditional patriarchal orbit have led younger lovers  increasingly seeking mutually satisfying love relationships for which  FC, a ‘virtuous cut’, becomes an obstacle.

    While internal socio-cultural change is imminent and needs to consolidated, Western positionality on ritual FC has instead stonewalled eradication initiatives usefully calling for the need to “wear native spectacles”: engage participants in meaningful dialogue and convert them into their own change agents, tailor health education and social change initiatives with and not against the target population. Local processes are rooted in wider fields of power and are affected by forces at various scales calling for the need to look at the entanglement between local and global, economic, social, political and historical processes in the study of, and in interventions to change health and other cultural issues.

  • 7.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Homosexuality as ''UnAfrican'': Heteronormativity, Power, and Ambivalence in Cameroon2018In: Concurrences in Postcolonial Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, and Engagements / [ed] Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta, Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2018, p. 125-174Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In 2006, Cameroon was rocked by an anti-gay crusade when some tabloids beamed their searchlight on more than 50 of the country´s prominent figures for homosexuality. The denunciation campaign against homosexuality set in motion a furious national debate on gay rights in the country. This paper examines the Cameroon government´s ambivalence to LGBT relationships and the simultaneous entanglement of same-sex relationships with power and social mobility. Same-sex relationships involving the powerful, is part of human rights—“the right to a private life”. However, when it involves the poor, it is criminalized, and considered as a threat to national identity and sovereignty. Homosexual relationships by the former are reportedly intertwined with occultic powers and serve as a gateway to social mobility in the country´s sociopolitical landscape. Framed in terms of African nationalism—a national identity inscribed on women´s bodies since they are charged with biological reproduction, the public resistance of Cameroon´s leaders to same-sex relationships is a veil to produce a counter hegemonic discourse against the perceived intrusion of western values as well as to deflect Western attention from profligacy, human rights violations, long stays in power, and unbridled corruption. Cast against the anti-democracy discourse of the 1990s, the anti-same-sex discourse feeds into larger narratives about resistance to perceived western values and the double appropriation of political homophobia by various social actors.

  • 8.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Human rights and socio-legal resistance against female genital cutting: an anthropological perspective2011 (ed. 1)Book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Human rights-based interventions against genital cutting practices (FGC) have increasingly emphasised the need for legislation against such practices with little attention to the consequences. Accordingly,the international community has compelled state parties by linking international development aid to good governance and human rights- the rights of women and children- through the elimination of genital surgeries and other gender-based discriminatory practices by adopting appropriate legislation that will deter practitioners. This ethnographic study explores diverse local reactions among FGC practicing Ejagham ethnicities in Southwest Cameroon. It highlights the dilemmas inherent in an anti-genital cutting legislation. Drawing from the experiences of African countries that adopted anti- FGC legislation, it demonstrates that the ''bifurcated power structure” in the postcolonial Context and therefore multiple overlapping authority systems- between the national government and traditional village authority system - and the state's lack of '”statehardness” are some of the dilemmas compromising the adoption and implementation of an anti-FGC legislation in Cameroon.

  • 9.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University.
    Intersubjectivity and Power in Ethnographic Research.2010In: Qualitative Research Journal, ISSN 1443-9883, Vol. 10, no 2, p. 3-19Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper discusses my perceived positionality in an ethnographic research project on the contentious issue of female circumcision in Southwest Cameroon. My bicultural identity as a Western‐trained, African anthropologist is associated with power because of my perceived alliance with the ‘Whiteman’ (western, rational, scientific knowledge) showing how the anti‐female circumcision campaigns based on discursive practices of mortality and the harmful health effect paradigm have backlashed, suggesting the need to re‐evaluate and be aware of power dynamics between practicing and nonpracticing societies in the construction of the diverse reality of female circumcision. The ritual practice should rather be seen as opened to both rationalisation and modernisation, suggesting that there can be a synergy between local and global, rational science.

  • 10.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Moving beyond the hierarchical knowledge/power nexus in anti-Female circumcision campaigns in Africa2013In: Health Education: Parental and educator’s perspectives, current practices and needs assessment / [ed] Yvon B.Laroc and Denis C. Gustave, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2013, 1, p. 1-62Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    One controversial issue of unending emotional debate between Western and Non-Western societies pitting relativists against universalists is the ritual practice of female genital cutting (FGC).This debate mirrors larger issues of power about the social construction of reality and the positionality of actors, dichotomies between Western and Non-Western societies as well as a paradigmatic clash between modern/scientific knowledge and local knowledge systems and practices. This essay argues that there can be a synergy between modern and local knowledge systems in anti-FGC campaigns and not the outright rejection of the latter as “superstition” since both knowledge systems are not antithetical to each other. Based on ethnographic interviews from Cameroon and Sierra Leone, this chapter attempts an explanation of why decades of negative publicity which is the anchor of most anti-FGC activism, laws forbidding the practice and human rights activism has not been matched by any noticeable behavioural changes in attitudes and practices regarding this ritual practice. The chapter argues that the multi-dimensionality of ritual FGC as well as the entanglement of anti-FGC campaigns at both the global and local scales in unequal power relationships negatively affects these sensitization campaigns and has instead led to the hardening of identities and resistance at the local level. It suggests that to build effective dialogue and move the campaigns forward, interveners must adopt contextualism by “wearing native spectacles’’. They must think globally and act locally. In other words, they should set aside their Western cultural baggage on the normative conception of gender identity, sexuality and feminine personhood, be self-reflexive, and adopt listening to participants as well as an intersectionalist approach.

     

  • 11.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Neoliberal peace and the development deficit in post-conflict Sierra Leone2012In: International Journal of Development Issues, ISSN 1446-8956, Vol. 11, no 3, p. 192-207Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the structural factors responsible for why “donor darling” has not changed the pitfalls of stagnation and lifted post‐conflict Sierra Leone out of poverty.

    Design/methodology/approach– The study adopts a bottom‐up approach (“through the eyes of the poor”) and a combination of primary and secondary research methods – substantial desk research to investigate and review documentation related to the project and field interviews with development stakeholders at the national, district, and community levels with humanitarian aid workers, local civil society organisations, international non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and national government officials.

    Findings– It is argued that aid without the necessary local institutional structure for effective coordination and stringent aid conditionality – and therefore narrow focus – has stifled sustainable socio‐economic development initiatives. The international community's narrow definition and support for liberal peace, in tandem with the overarching neoliberal economic paradigm and failure to embrace an inclusivist approach to peacebuilding, has further stonewalled effective reconstruction, growth and development.

    Originality/value– The paper calls the attention of development NGOs to be self‐reflexive, “wear native spectacles”, coordinate their actions and avoid “development as dependence”, by prioritizing what matters most to the beneficiaries of development. The basis of effective and sustainable socio‐economic development is institutional building.

  • 12.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    New forms of land enclosures: multinationals and state production of territory in Cameroon2014In: Studia Sociologia, ISSN 1224-8703, Vol. LXI, no 2, p. 35-58Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The 2008 financial crises led to a scramble for land and other naturalresources reminiscent of colonialism by foreign governments and multinational corporations to feed their populations and pre-empt the eventuality of another food crises through large-scale agricultural investment. This paper discusses the creation of capitalist frontiers in the colonial agricultural enclaves of Cameroon’s Littoral region where three multinational plantation companies hold sway. It demonstrates how the coming into the country of foreign investors has transformed the meaning of land and led to contesting legal orders between customary and statutory land tenure, the transformation of man-nature relationship and the dispossession of local communities due to the developmentalist state’s production of territory. In the present neoliberal context, the state is increasingly controlling people and their relations to natural resources including land through the production of territory that is subsequently handed over to foreign investors. The paper adopts the view that the use of the expression ‘new enclosures’ is a misnomer because these developments are taking place at the very sites of the colonial frontier in Cameroon’s Littoral region. It calls attention to the need for land governance reforms so as to restitute local land rights and for the need to respect internationally recognized environmental standards by multinational corporations.

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  • 13.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Resistance against the eradication of female circumcision and the political economy of underdevelopment in Cameroon2012In: Gender, Technology and Development, ISSN 0971-8524, E-ISSN 0973-0656, Vol. 16, no 2, p. 223-245Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This article examines resistance to the eradication of the ritual practice of female circumcision in the enclaves populated by the Ejagham people in Southwest Cameroon. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this study shows how in the face of abject poverty and institutionalized state marginalization, resistance to opponents of female circumcision becomes a placemaking project. It demonstrates that the social arrangement sustaining female circumcision has been kept in place by conditions of poverty, underdevelopment, and dependency as well as by local gendered discourses of respectability, honor, and reciprocity among kin and community. Within this system of inequality, women use ritual female circumcision as a powerful tool for negotiating with patriarchy. By focusing on health alone, antifemale circumcision interventions by both the state and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) miss the point even as this practice is increasingly becoming a human, social, gender rights, and development issue. The article suggests that for health education to be successful, it must take cognizance of the local needs met by female circumcision so as to empower the people as dialogic partners in development and not ostracize the target population.

  • 14.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    The Challenges of Conservation and Large-scale Agricultural Development in an Era of Neoliberal Environmental Governance in Cameroon2016In: Privatization: Policies, Developments and Challenges / [ed] Amelia Hansen, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2016, p. 103-154Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The adoption of Western imposed neoliberal development policies by most African countries have been accompanied by unfettered effects. Through these policies, Western-based development institutions (World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) have subsequently come to have a lot of leverage on development policies and practices in the donor dependent countries of the Less Developed world including Cameroon. In Cameroon, one area of neoliberal governmentality in involves the management of the environment which is at crossroads with the establishment of largescale agricultural plantations by Western multinationals in the country. This paper explores how the American-based agro-industrial company Herakles Farm has thoroughly disregarded state and international laws and codes of conduct in the setting up of its contentious oil palm plantation that is largely located in between protected areas in the ever-green forest of Southwest Cameroon. Through its creation of uninhabited spaces via protected areas in the region, as well as by the ceding of land around these same protected areas for large-scale agricultural development, the state of Cameroon is involved in the reordering of man-nature relationship. The state´s action bespeaks of the chasm between conservation and large-scale agricultural development in an era of neoliberal environmental governance. The paper argues that the Herakle concession is a means by which the state is territorializing and controlling this unruly frontier space. It is also representative of a long trajectory of the marginalization of this space that has been discursively produced over and over and that allows for dispossession and accumulation in the name of development. The state´s creation of developmentalizable and governable spaces has wrought violence on local livelihoods in a region that has been consistently produced as a frontier space by both colonial and postcolonial powers. 

  • 15.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    The 'gendered field' of Kaolinite clay production: performance characteristics among the Balengou2014In: Social Analysis: Journal of Cultural and Social Practice, ISSN 0155-977X, E-ISSN 1558-5727, Vol. 58, no 2, p. 21-41Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This article examines the 'gendered field' of kaolinite clay production and its integration into the local socio-cultural universe of the Balengou of the Western region of Cameroon. Kaolinite clay is produced and ingested mainly by women, especially during pregnancy so as to ensure that their children are born 'clean'. Used as a herbal additive, the clay is also believed to be imbued with sacred qualities and has a symbolic role in various communal rituals. Although geophagy—the practice of eating earth—is associated with harmful health effects, the various affordances offered by kaolinite clay as a valuable object of material culture constitute a specific entanglement of nature and culture. This study makes a modest contribution to the literature on the 'politics of value' and on the relationality of human/non-human interactions.

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  • 16.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Hungary.
    The governance of nature as development and the erasure of the Pygmies of Cameroon2013In: GeoJournal, ISSN 0343-2521, E-ISSN 1572-9893, Vol. 78, no 2, p. 353-371Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The Pygmies are among the remaining ‘savages’ in West and Central Africa. This paper demonstrates how the governance of nature through sedentarization, the creation of national parks as a mechanism of forestry conservation and the failure to endorse standard environmental safeguards in the creation of the Tchad-Cameroon pipeline project have led to the devastation of the livelihood of the indigenous pygmies. Simultaneously, by categorizing the Pygmies as a ‘primitive other’ despite the very dynamism of the concept of culture, the state of Cameroon has excluded them from the benefits of postmodernist development. I demonstrate that projects aimed at modernizing them, and achieving sustainability have instead accentuated their exclusion because of their presumed cultural isolation, led to their deep entrenchment in poverty and resulted in complete erasure. The failure of these projects is due to the clash between global and local perspectives and interests over the Western protectionism and nature aesthetics that underpin conservation and development schemes, and the government’s failure to ensure that developers fulfill their obligations to affected communities, as well as the non-recognition of the multiplex relationships between hunter-gatherers and farmers that is based on cultural, historical and political ecology. Against this backdrop, development has thus, become a process of erasure in which the livelihood of the Pygmies has been balkanized and their cultural existence and identity, negated.

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  • 17.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    The impact of climate change on food security and health in northern Cameroon2013In: New Developments in Global warming Research / [ed] Carter B. Keyes and Olivia C.Lucero, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2013, 1, p. 1-50Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Agriculture and the exploitation of natural resources are the main pivots of Cameroon’s economic development. An estimated 80 % of rural households are involved in farming and contribute about 30% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, prolonged dry spells and droughts negatively affect agricultural output and economic development. This paper examines the drivers, magnitude and impact of climate change in the semi-arid northern section of Cameroon on food security and malnutrition. A conjunction between drought, climate change, desertification, prolonged dry spells and floods often lead to significant crop losses in this region. Compounding this situation is increased population pressure-partly due to the influx of refugees as well as droughts and floods which have partly led to the mobility of herds as a response to the extension of cropping areas, pasture shortage and farmer- grazer conflicts resulting from crop damage. This is happening against the backdrop of land tenure insecurity for women which, has been fuelled by competition and power struggle between customary and modern tenure systems affecting land management and access to resources. Drawing theoretical insights from the concept of “politics of the belly[1]” in political ecology and from resource use conflict theories, this chapter examines the negative impacts of climate change and calls attention to a shift away from formal institutions to individual behaviour so as to integrate and take note of the “politics of the belly” in political ecology. The omnipresent phenomenon of climate change has the potential to alter agricultural productivity, fuel illnesses and diseases in one of the least developed regions in Cameroon. Although climate, soil and vegetation are subject to variation, they are the fundamental elements of ecology and thus are interconnected. Climate can have a bearing on health and mortality in two ways. On the one hand, it conditions temperature which disproportionately affects children at tender ages as well as adults- more senior citizens die of heat stroke- and on the other, it favours the spread of infectious agents or their vectors-especially pathogenic micro-organisms. It is determinant to the type, quantity as well as the quality of food and water resources available during certain periods of the year.The paper suggests among others that the negative impacts of temperature and precipitation change could be counteracted by changing sowing dates, through the professionalisation of the livestock production system alongside the promotion of forage crops and by increasing investment in infrastructure- particularly transportation, energy and irrigation. The success of these measures will require a coordinated intersectorial and transborder approach to rural development.

    [1] Profit motive underpinning political leaning and participation as well as voting preference.

  • 18.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    The logic of benevolent capitalism: the duplicity of Sithe Global Sustainable Oils Cameroon land grab and deforestation scheme as sustainable investment2018In: International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, ISSN 1466-6650, E-ISSN 1741-5136, Vol. 17, no 1, p. 80-109Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This ethnographic study documents the concurrent debates pitting neoliberal ideology promoting economic growth and the generation of employment opportunities championed by the agro-industrial giant Herakles Farms, alongside the World Bank and the government of Cameroon - inherent in the establishment of a 73,086 ha oil palm plantation in Southwest Cameroon against the need for sustainable environment advocated for by local communities, NGOs and their transnational allies. Claims of benevolent capitalism are at odds with the perception and experiences of home loss and environmental degradation orchestrated by this project. The dissonance between the discourses and claims of benevolent capitalism with the perception and experiences of home loss and environmental degradation orchestrated by this project demonstrates that the neoliberal discourse of capitalist benevolence is a self-interested discourse that benefits the powerful at the expense of the subaltern. Local people should be empowered to negotiate with multinational corporations, laws recognising customary land rights instituted and implemented.

  • 19.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    The Social Context of Breast Ironing in Cameroon2016In: Athens Journal of Health, E-ISSN 2241-8229, Vol. 3, no 4, p. 335-360Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The aim of this ethnographic study is to explore the confluence of social factors and the social context underpinning the pervasive practice of breast ironing in Cameroon. An analysis of qualitative data revealed that the social phenomenon of breast ironing is a disciplinary technique meant to conserve the social body politic and to ensure the wellbeing of the girl child. In the wake of the moral paranoia caused by the exponential increase in the infection rate of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, high rates of under-aged pregnancy and school drop-outs, the traditional mechanism of breast massage has been reinterpreted as a governmental rationale. The study recommends womenʼs empowerment through the provision of health enhancement interventions, holistic needs-based approach to womenʼs human rights including unfettered right to education, the provision of a youth friendly contraceptive service, as well as the integration of comprehensive sex education at various levels of the secondary school curriculum.

  • 20.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Central European University, Budapest .
    The Social Epidemiology and Burden of Malaria in Bali Nyonga,Northwest Cameroon2013In: Health, Culture and Society, E-ISSN 2161-6590, Vol. 4, no 1, p. 20-36Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Malaria is an infectious disease caused by the anopheles mosquito that kills at least one million people in Sub-Saharan Africa every year, leading to human suffering and enormous economic loses. This paper examines the complex web of cultural, poor socio-economic conditions and environmental factors for the prevalence of malaria in Bali Nyonga. The study outlines and assesses the multiple notions of malaria causation with dirty environment (80.76%) and the mosquito (76.92%) as the leading causes. Other causes are poor hygiene (46.15%), impure sources of portable water (23.08%), malnutrition (15.38%), witchcraft (11.54%), human-vector contact (34.61%),and palm wine drinking (32.69%).It reveals that any effective management of malaria must be based on an understanding of traditional cultural views and insights concerning the cause, spread and treatment of the disease, as well as gender roles within a given community since women bear a greater burden of the disease than men. This study further underscores the need to incorporate folk theories of disease causation, gender and malaria issues into malaria control strategies in order to improve their coverage and effectiveness in different contexts.

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    Epidemiologymalaria
  • 21.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Towards Global Connections and Multiple Entanglement2018In: Concurrences in postcolonial research: perspectives, methodologies, and engagements / [ed] Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta, Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2018, p. 15-52Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    One of the central preoccupations of postcolonial studies is ‘‘to recover the voice and agency of the subaltern to find alternative articulations to monolithic imperial representations. Universalizing perspectives obscure their origins and threaten to silence alternatives, regardless of their validity or influence"(Fur et al., 2014: 1253). The methodological and theoretical process of recovering alternative voices in space and time while factoring in our conflicting analysis claims regarding culture, history and identity is no easy feat.  The difficulties are because either one individual academic discipline or grand theory can fruitfully explain concurrent encounters. This difficulty is rather an invitation to open our eyes to the permeability of academic disciplines, concepts and methods as captured by the idea of ‘‘travelling concepts". 

  • 22.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    When ‘property cannot own property’: women’s lack of property rights in Cameroon2017In: African Journal of Economic and Sustainable Development, ISSN 2046-4770, E-ISSN 2046-4789, Vol. 6, no 1, p. 67-85Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In most of Africa, women constitute the majority of small holder farmers. They are overwhelmingly involved in food production on land leased to them or acquired through family bonds or purchase. This paper examines how the institution of customary marriage connives with Cameroon's gender neutral statutory land tenure legislation to deprive women of access to land. Additionally, the bureaucratic land registration procedure, the gendering of the land tenure legislation, the skewing of the Land Consultative Board in men's favour and farmer/grazer conflicts further undermine women's land rights. To ensure women's collective wellbeing and socioeconomic progress, gender-sensitive, rather than gender-neutral policies are recommended.In most of Africa, women constitute the majority of small holder farmers. They are overwhelmingly involved in food production on land leased to them or acquired through family bonds or purchase. This paper examines how the institution of customary marriage connives with Cameroon's gender neutral statutory land tenure legislation to deprive women of access to land. Additionally, the bureaucratic land registration procedure, the gendering of the land tenure legislation, the skewing of the Land Consultative Board in men's favour and farmer/grazer conflicts further undermine women's land rights. To ensure women's collective wellbeing and socioeconomic progress, gender-sensitive, rather than gender-neutral policies are recommended.

  • 23.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Alubafi, Mathias Fubah
    Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, South Africa.
    The social context of widowhood rites and women’s human rights in Cameroon2016In: Cogent Social Sciences, E-ISSN 2331-1886, Vol. 2, no 1, p. 1-17, article id 1234671Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Since the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–1985) gender-based violence (GBV) has increasingly received global attention and eventuated in the earmarking of June 23rd, 2011 as the first-ever International Widow’s Day. This case study examines the social logic of superstitious beliefs and associated fears sustaining the dehumanizing practice of widowhood rites and practices (WRP) with its negative consequences on women’s well-being among the Balengou of Western Cameroon. It argues that WRP should be understood through the double process of disavowal and projection, “false consciousness” and as a “patriarchal bargain”. It argues for the strengthening of women’s rights through gender-neutral marriage, succession and inheritance legislation based on notions of equality and social justice between the sexes, the harmonization and humanization of WRP, and an intersectionalist approach to GBV and development.

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  • 24.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Atock Brice, Aristide
    ELTE University of Budapest, Hungary.
    Socio-spatial occupation, conflict and humanitarian assistance for Bororo cross-border migrants in east Cameroon2013In: International Journal of Development Issues, ISSN 1446-8956, Vol. 12, no 3, p. 271-288Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Purpose – This paper aims to examine the socio-political factors and the influence of spatial reconfiguration and transformation orchestrated by the forceful migration of Bororo herdsmen – a nomadic ethnic group from the Central African Republic into east Cameroon where they are now subsistent farmers. This livelihood transition strategy led to conflict and competition over natural resources with the local inhabitants.Design/methodology/approach – The study draws from ethnographic interviews and participant observation involving security officials and international relief agencies alongside their implementing partners. Data abducted from various stakeholders were further complemented by reports produced by various humanitarian agencies and desk research – evaluation and reinterpretation of what others have written on pastoral peoples.Findings – The paper suggests that humanitarian agencies be aware of “transnational borderland identities” by considering the specificity of particular borderland regions-isolation, underdevelopment and prone to conflict in crises of forced migration. They further need to move from a spatialized “refugee-centric” approach to the conversion of refugee relief into local development projects for refugee hosting areas.Research limitations/implications – While the problem of resource use conflict caused by the influx of refugees might be local, it highlights regional and global security concerns and articulates the growing recognition of political and environmental factors for national and international security.Originality/value – The study articulates the need to shift from a spatialized “refugee-centric” regime that directs attention only to one category of social actors in an emergency situation to a more integrative assistance programme so as to erase the fake division of identities as well as to acknowledge the importance of a “border identity” for a more peaceful development aimed at achieving better social interaction between hosts and refugees. While the problem of resource use conflict caused by the influx of refugees might be local, it highlights regional and global security concerns and articulates the growing recognition of political and environmental factors for national and international security.

  • 25.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Fonmboh, Njiki Mildred
    Unisys, Hungary.
    Experiencing neoliberalism from below: the Bakweri confrontation of the state of Cameroon over the privatization of the Cameroon Development Corporation2010In: Journal of Human Security, ISSN 1835-3800, E-ISSN 1835-3800, Vol. 6, no 1, p. 38-54Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper examines the conflict over the privatisation of the Cameroon Development Corporation between the government of Cameroon and the Bakweri tribe. It is set against the conflicting landscape and power fields of traditional, colonial and modern authority systems: a hallmark of the land tenure system in which the Bakweri find themselves today. This case study shows how local people are appropriating the western concepts of human and property rights and social justice, within the context of neoliberalism by making compensation claims for the appropriation of their land. It further suggests that present-day conflicts and threats to human security are traceable to larger contemporary, historical, economic and political processes such as colonialism and neoliberal globalisation, with varying impacts at the local level.

  • 26.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Fubah, Mathias Alubafi
    University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
    Socio-cultural determinants of infant malnutrition in Cameroon2015In: Journal of Biosocial Science, ISSN 0021-9320, E-ISSN 1469-7599, Vol. 47, no 4, p. 423-448Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This 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) are pervasive in northern Cameroon. This conjunction of factors accounts for the higher incidence of infant malnutrition and mortality in northern Cameroon. The study suggests the need for women's empowerment and for health care personnel in transcultural situations to understand local cultural beliefs, practices and sentiments before initiating change efforts in infant feeding practices and maternal health. Biomedical services should be tailored 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.

  • 27.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Mbu-arrey, Ogem Pascal
    The tragedy of the governmentality of nature: the case of national parks in Cameroon2013In: National Parks: Sustainable Development, Conservation Strategies, and Environmental Effects, Georgia, United States / [ed] Johnson B. Smith, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2013, 1, p. 1-56Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Cameroon’s rich humid tropical rainforest is degrading at an alarming rate. The government has deployed several governmentality regimes including fortress conservation through the establishment  and gazzetment of national parks and protected areas to arrest this disastrous situation. On the basis of two case studies, this chapter explores the evolution of the governance of national parks and the institutional obstacles that make protected areas a parody in Cameroon. The paper argues that while the creation and implementation of national parks as artifacts and processes illustrate the nature and extent of global governmentality upon these regions, their people and their natural resources, it highlights the chasm between law as a governmental rationale which often fails to recognise traditional usage rights and creates conflicts between protected areas and local communities. This scenerio is compounded by the acute underdevelopment that characterises protected areas where top-down development is the norm. The paper suggests, among others-a middle ground that balances both local and national, as well as national and international interests as the basis for achieving sustainable people-centered development and conservation. This will entail a radical policy shift from the present paramilitary approach of outright protectionism which is a recipe for disaster to a system that takes account of the interests of local people while still conserving biodiversity as well as the re-institutionalisation of customary land tenure norms with new legal provisions. Furthermore, sustainable national park management practices are needed. This could include the creation of a Conservation Development Authority with the mandate to initiate private sector partnership and also encourage community development and participation in the effective management and control of protected areas. The mandate of this body must incorporate active community participation in decision-making and planning for the sustainable use of ecosystem services and development of ethno-tourism, if trends in rural emigration and depopulation are to  be  halted and the national park is to be protected in line with sustainability principles.

  • 28.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Noble Philanthropic Social Group NGO, Cameroon.
    Obara, T.B.
    Noble Philanthropic Social Group NGO, Cameroon.
    Toward a reconceptualization of the “urban” and “rural” as conceptual and analytical categories in the social sciences2012In: Arts and Social Sciences Journal, E-ISSN 2151-6200, Vol. 3, article id ASSJ-35Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Globalization implies a general shift in spatio-temporal relations and the simultaneous deterritorialization of cultural phenomena orchestrated by the multiple global flows of people, ideas, and fashions. Within the context of globalization, it is troublesome for social scientists to continue using the “urban–rural” dichotomy as distinctive analytical and methodological categories because it tends to suggest a contingency in the pattern and character of social phenomena. This article sets out to theoretically rethink this conceptualization because of the multi-stranded and culturally embedded nature of human behavior in both space and time which has led to difficulties in delineating rigid subject boundaries today unlike in the past. Drawing on empirical data from diverse social phenomena, but particularly from the urban procurement and consumption of medicinal plant recipes, “dualistic” religious inclination and urban agriculture, we demonstrate that the geographic, spatio-temporal conceptualization of distinctive urban and rural phenomena are problematic. We suggest the notions of “urban-ruralism” and “rural-urbanism” as theoretical and methodological reconceptualizations to capture multiple embedded processes and to show that there exists a type of behavioral continuum/consistency because individuals have adopted hyphenated identities.

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  • 29.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Central European University, Hungary.
    Obara, Tom Bosire
    University of Glasgow, UK.
    War, social dislocation and the double appropriation of women’s human security in Sierra Leone2011In: Journal of Human Security, ISSN 1835-3800, E-ISSN 1835-3800, Vol. 8, no 2, p. 105-124Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This article combines the human security and the impoverishment, risk and reconstructionparadigms to document the threats to survival, development, and wellbeing evident bywidespread poverty, strained social cohesion, and other recurrent multiple threats to humansecurity in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Against this backdrop, the Bondo secret society whosecentral rite of initiation is female circumcision and which among other functions is the gatewayto leadership has achieved hegemonic status as a vote bank. The double appropriation of thegendered symbolic power and the social cohesion and mobilization skills of Bondo initiates bySoweis and politicians pose severe threats to women’s human and reproductive rights, and stallsdevelopment. The prevention of modifiable causes of insecurity, the strengthening of international norms, support of Sierra Leonean social resilience and institutions that protectindividuals from threats are required to improve human security.

  • 30.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Rene Nkongho, Eno-Akpa
    Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
    The Fragility of the Liberal Peace Export to South Sudan: Formal Education Access As the Basis of a Liberal Peace Project: Formal Education Access As the Basis of a Liberal Peace Project2014In: Journal of Human Security, ISSN 1835-3800, E-ISSN 1835-3800, Vol. 10, no 1, p. 59-75Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This study examines the disjuncture between the policy transposition of the Liberal Peace Project (LPP) in South Sudan from the country's local context. It underlines how deep rooted historical exclusion from social welfare services reinforces political exclusion and exacerbates poor civic engagement among different ethnicities in the country causing a constant relapse to violence. The study combines a qualitative review of data from Afrobarometer, the National Democratic Institute, international NGOs, and South Sudan's government reports within depth interviews and participants' observation. The research finds that restricted access to formal education alongside the conservative and orthodox approaches to peacebuilding, which broadly focus on centralised urban political institutions and exclude diverse local needs and preferences, limit citizenship participation to elections and preclude an equitable social order in South Sudan, establishing a continuum of fragile authoritarian peace, institutional peace and constitutional peace. In an emancipatory approach, the study proposes a framework that prioritizes an extended access to primary and post-primary vocational education as a more credible establishment for sustainable civil peace in the country. The LPP by the international community needs to be tailored to enhance the political will of the South Sudan government to extend free primary education access, incentivize primary education with school feeding programmes and to invigorate vocational training curricula. These will yield civil peace dividends, which avert South Sudan's structural source of relapse into violence with sustainable disincentives. Apart from women's empowerment through education and in all spheres of life, the government needs to ensure sustainability by guaranteeing a sustainable future for the present and for returning refugees by reducing the effects of climate change so as to cope with the increasing pressure on natural resources.

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  • 31.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Tabenyang, Chama James
    Centre for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences (CRASH), Chad.
    From hope to dystopia: Concurrent discourses of petro-dollar inspired-development in Chad2016In: International Journal of Development Issues, ISSN 1446-8956, Vol. 15, no 1, p. 35-50Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Purpose

    This paper aims to examine the dark flip side of the heightened dreams and wild expectations of development as a bright picture that accompanied the discovery of petroleum in politically unstable and donor-dependent Chad.

    Design/methodology/approach

    Data were elicited through local-level ethnography–participant observation, individual surveys and focus group discussion sessions with stakeholders on the impact of the Chad–Cameroon pipeline and petroleum development project.

    Findings

    While the “discourse of development” is about a better and new future, this new future, however, has a dark side: un/under-development, “backwardness”, corruption and patronage, leading to deeply entrenched poverty. Petroleum has become a discursive site where the competing discourses about development personified as the provision of material resources are played out.

    Originality/value

    The failure of petro-dollar-inspired development in Chad speaks to the mutually reinforcing nature of development decisions. Although firms need workers with specialized skills, workers will not acquire those skills in anticipation of employment opportunities. This disjuncture highlights the need for strategic complementarity in investment decision and coordination among economic agents. More than a decade later, the utopic dream of petro-dollar-inspired development as an aspiration is now characterized by a disconnect–environmental degradation, food insecurity, gendered and deeply entrenched poverty. This disjuncture demonstrates the need for a holistic impact assessment that involves different adaptive approaches and focus on a wide range of livelihood issues. Holistic evaluation on all programmes, plans, projects, policies and interventions will lead to the achievement of sustainable people-centred development that conserves the stewardship of nature.

  • 32.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Tabenyang, Chama-James
    University of Bayreuth, Germany.
    Cultural power, ritual symbolism and human rights violations in Sierra Leone2017In: Cogent Social Sciences, E-ISSN 2331-1886, p. 1-27, article id 1295549Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper explores the links between the socio-cultural power structures of the Poro and Bondo secret societies and their interactions with internationalist human rights discourse in postconflict Sierra Leone. It argues that these secret societies offer gendered and cultural spaces that serve as social and political mobilizing symbols. These societies further provide forums as well as a stage for counter-discourses about gender-based violence and human rights violations, particularly with regards to the campaign against female circumcision. The paper concludes that despite internal tensions and squabbles, the Bondo secret societiy has gained most of its present-day solidarity by broadly disseminating to both members and non-members the highly charged narrative that the society’s exposure leads to its destruction. The Bondo society has been able to maintain cohesion and defend its interests by appropriating and invoking traditional knowledge and ritual codes.This paper explores the links between the socio-cultural power structures of the Poro and Bondo secret societies and their interactions with internationalist human rights discourse in postconflict Sierra Leone. It argues that these secret societies offer gendered and cultural spaces that serve as social and political mobilizing symbols. These societies further provide forums as well as a stage for counter-discourses about gender-based violence and human rights violations, particularly with regards to the campaign against female circumcision. The paper concludes that despite internal tensions and squabbles, the Bondo secret societiy has gained most of its present-day solidarity by broadly disseminating to both members and non-members the highly charged narrative that the society’s exposure leads to its destruction. The Bondo society has been able to maintain cohesion and defend its interests by appropriating and invoking traditional knowledge and ritual codes.

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  • 33.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Tabenyang, Tabi Chama James
    Centre for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences, Chad.
    The paradox of petrodollar development: Chad’s military diplomacy in regional and global security2016In: South African Journal of International Affairs, ISSN 1022-0461, E-ISSN 1938-0275, Vol. 23, no 2, p. 297-322Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper examines the Chadian government’s overwhelming preoccupation with state security, rather than individual security, as evidenced by its huge expenditure on arms rather than on poverty-alleviating development projects following the unprecedented influx of petrodollars in the years since production began in 2003. This overemphasis on state security demonstrates a mismatch between the availability of natural resource wealth and ongoing low levels of socioeconomic development in Chad. The country has instead used its enormous oil wealth to boost its standing in the turbulent Central African and Sahelian regions where terrorism is rife. The country’s international diplomacy, which consists of deploying its well-equipped military in international peacekeeping missions and in the fight against terrorism, is a strategy of achieving international recognition while simultaneously diverting the international community’s attention from the country’s democracy deficit and poor human rights record. Internally, authoritarianism and political instability are accompanied by conflict, poverty and underdevelopment, which in turn perpetuate the challenges facing the country.

  • 34.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences. University of Yaonde, Cameroon ; University College Dublin, UK ; Central European University, Hungary.
    Tabenyang, Tabi Chama-James
    Centre for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences (CRASH), Chad.
    Neoliberalism, Oil Wealth and Migrant Sex Work in the Chadian City of N’Djamena2016In: Intimate Economies: Bodies, Emotions and Sexualities on the Global Market / [ed] Susanne Hofmann, Adi Moreno, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 1, p. 135-162Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This chapter documents the diverse motivations for entering sex work, and transnational Cameroonian sex workers’ experiences with clients in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. It explores their sex work practices, the risks as well as the various coping strategies they have adopted to handle the neoliberal economic context in which they operate. Cameroonian sex workers in Chad have created individual innovative, entrepreneurial strategies to adapt themselves to and to cope with the neoliberal economic and political context. While a conjuncture between a lack of marketable skills and economic crises in their home countries have pushed them into the sex trade, it allows them to make sufficient money to take care of themselves and their families and bears the chance to overcome the suffering, hardship and oppression that they face in their everyday lives.

  • 35.
    Pemunta, Ngambouk Vitalis
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences.
    Tabenyang, Tabi Chama-James
    Walter Sisulu University, South Africa.
    Fubah, Mathias Alubafi
    University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
    Communitarianism and the Obasinjom mask performance as ritual healing among the Bayang and Ejagham of Southwest Cameroon2014In: Rituals: practices, ethnic and cultural aspects in emotional healing / [ed] Alley Parish, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2014, 1, p. 1-58Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    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 diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Illnesses believed to be caused by personalistic agents-witchcraft are the domain of the Obasinjom cult agency-the god of medicine-which is physically represented by a speaking mask. The mask is believed to be omniscient and endowed with clairvoyance and supernatural powers. Through the dual processes of revelation and `remembrance’, Obasinjom connects the past, present and charts the future. This is done by using its supernatural powers to trace and unveil the mediating object and circumstances through which the malevolent spirit gained access to its victim. It is therefore involved in recreating the `biography’ (Kopytoft, 1986) of how the malevolent spirit gained access to its victim’s life essence. The Obasinjom mask is transformed through ritual performance from a banal into a ritual object thereby relating it to persons and events and attributing to it a biography and agency. This essay documents the specific role of the Obasinjom mask as overall controller over ritual medicine. The paper also examines the diffusion and subsequent appropriation of the Obasinjom cult agency by other Cameroonian ethnicities for ensuring community health and well-being because of its detective role in exposing witchcraft practices and criminal activities. Grounded in the African world view of health and personhood, the essay demonstrates that the Obasinjom cult agency’s performative ritual healing is a recreation of community sentiments among participants.

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