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Development interventions often generate contradictions around questions of who benefits from development and which communities are targeted for intervention. This book examines how the Baka, who live in Eastern Cameroon, assert forms of belonging in order to participate in development interventions, and how community life is shaped and reshaped through these interventions. Often referred to as ‘forest people’, the Baka have witnessed many recent development interventions that include competing and contradictory policies such as ‘civilize’, assimilate and integrate the Baka into ‘full citizenship’, conserve the forest and wildlife resources, and preserve indigenous cultures at the verge of extinction.
“The book will be of interest to students, development practitioners and anthropologists more broadly, particularly as a lesson in the broader consequences of the cultural framings of the groups we engage with.” • Social Anthropology
“This is a fascinating and important case in Cameroon and a crucial lesson for anthropology, which has at times been inclined to take the erroneous position that groupness is an inexpungeable reality when it may not exist today and may not have existed in the past.” • Anthropology Review Database
List of Figures
List of Acronyms
Preface
Chapter 1. Pygmies amidst ‘development’ practices in Cameroon
Chapter 2. Claims to Belonging: A confrontation of two versions of belonging in East Cameroon
Chapter 3. Reconstructing ‘rootedness in the soil’ to authenticate belonging to the roadsides
Chapter 4. Internal differentiation and inequality among the Baka
Chapter 5. Development participation among the Baka in the East Region of Cameroon
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index