Gens du pouvoir/gens de la terre: un point de vue Batié (chefferie bamiléké de l’ouest-Cameroun) By Emile Tsekenis

https://www.academia.edu/2941421/Gens_du_pouvoir_gens_de_la_terre_un_point_de_vue_Bati%C3%A9_chefferie_bamil%C3%A9k%C3%A9_de_l_ouest_Cameroun_?nav_from=6698a0d4-165d-4592-ae8e-64e742a96c16 The paper takes as a starting point a “debate” between MacGaffey and de Heusch concerning the ‘dualism’ and the political meaning of the priest/chief opposition characterizing central African kingdoms (MacGaffey 2005 ; de Heusch 1987, 2000) and often conceptualized, in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa, as a relation between autochthony and power; It then moves to explore an analogous pair in the Cameroon eastern Grassfields through the description and analysis of the enthronization ritual, the boys initiations and the (chiefdom’s) foundational narratives, and suggests that the opposition between autochthony and power must be understood as a ‘value hierarchy’ featuring ‘reversal’ (Parkin 2003) as one of its a fundamental properties (see Dumont 1966, 396 sq. ; 1983, 244-5). It thus suggests a new reading of the relations between ritual, power and kinship in pre-colonial eastern Grassfields and may be, comparatively, a way of resolving the “MacGaffey/de Heusch debate”. Keywords: chiefdom, autochthony, power, ritual, ‘hierarchy’, eastern Grassfields, Cameroon. ...