Setting the scene : cultural difference and political rivalry in times of transition -- The power of the Fon : Nchaney political history -- From pastoral society to Indigenous people : Mbororo identity politics -- A shift to economic competition? : Farmer-herder conflict and cattle theft in the Misaje area -- On being Hausa : consolidation of the Hausa ethnic category in the Grassfields -- Grassfielder by birth, Muslim by choice : religious and ethnic conversion -- The murder of Mr X : legal pluralism and conflict management in the early 2000s
Summary
The Cameroon Grassfields, home to three ethnic groups - Grassfields societies, Mbororo, and Hausa - provide a valuable case study for the anthropological examination of identity politics and interethnic relations. In the midst of the political liberalization of Cameroon in the late 1990s and 2000s, local responses to political and legal changes took the form of a series of performative and discursive expressions of ethnicity. Confrontational encounters stimulated by economic and political rivalry, as well as socially integrative processes, transformed collective self-understanding in Cameroon
