Table of contents
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- Vol 1 No 2 - July 2021
- Vol 3 Number 1 February 2023
- Vol 3 Number 2 July 2023
- Vol 4 No 1 February 2024
- Vol. 1 - No.1 - February 2021
- Vol. 2 No.1 February 2022
- Vol. 2 No.2 July 2022
Sustaining the Future of Art Pedagogy and Practice in the Face of Technology. Get the full PDF
Sunday JAMES……………..………………………………………………..…1-15
There is no doubt that technology is here to stay. Its influence is being
noticed and reflected in studio and classroom situations. Students of Art
in the 21st Century are technology-driven. Their orientation and day-to-day
experience toll this line. Despite the many opportunities afforded to
art teachers in technology today, many of them avoid these opportunities;
either because they are not interested or they prefer the traditional way
of teaching or they lack the know-how to use them. A cursory look at our
Art institutions and Departments in Nigeria today reveals a need to
overhaul the training methods and facilities in the system to meet global
standards and the technology-driven society of our time. The author
thinks, there is a need to embrace the use of technology in the teaching
and learning of Art if its future is to be sustained. This paper discusses
the place of technology in Art pedagogy; looking at studio practice and
theory, its influence on Art production, careers in Art now; and
sustainability in the future. The methodology adopted includes literary
review and practical studio work experience. The paper points to the fact
that the role of technology cannot be over-emphasized in art teaching and
learning, exhibition and sale, recording, preservation, as well as
documentation and archiving of art experiences. It is recommended that
teachers of Art must be up-to-date with modern techniques in teaching
in the dynamic and technology-driven world of today.
Keywords: Camera Obscura, Education, Future, Pedagogy, Technology
Pictures (images) and construction of gender economic roles among the Nso’ of Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Noela Kinyuy Banla, Paul Animbom N., & Nixon Takor K. …..……..17-43
Discourses on gender are most often very complex over roles. Scholars
especially on Black African societies in many ways have attempted to
demarcate such roles along the female-male divide. As interestingly as
this knowledge construction is it has more or less been limited to textual
representations which do not quickly display visual imageries of the
specific and cross-edging roles that gender division of roles play in African
socio-economic processes. It is in this context that with the aid of visual
illustrations and using a qualitative historical research design informed
by primary and secondary sources, this paper presents and critically
examines the extent to which economic functions are shared and
distinguished between females and males among the Nso’ of the
Cameroon Grassfields. It questions whether or not these roles from an
iconographic point of view have remained resilient or whether the line is
progressively blurring off to give room to more complementary trading of
roles. It is argued that the overburdened textual literature on how females
and males negotiate economic roles among the Nso could be quickly
conveyed in visual symbols.
Keywords: Construction, economic, gender, pictures, images
Les lieux de mémoire à Ongola. Get the full PDF
Landry Ghislain Tele Djousseu ……………………………………………….………44-71
Ongola, ou encore Yaoundé, la ville aux sept collines a connu une
croissance remarquable ces dernières décennies. Ce sévère
accroissement a contribué au déracinement des populations en
développant le culte de l’oubli et le détachement aux valeurs intrinsèques
de la ville. Les lieux de mémoire oubliés de Yaoundé définissent
cependant les cadres de référence et de repères historiques d’Ongola, des
sources inestimables de son patrimoine. Il est nécessaire pour ses
habitants de reconsidérer cette mémoire oubliée parce qu’elle joue un rôle
important dans la notabilité de la ville. Elle contribue à redorer l’image
des activités quotidiennes et se présentent comme, un atout indéniable
du développement de la région. À Ongola, les lieux de mémoire sont
totalement déconnectés de la sphère politique de plusieurs citoyens. Ils
ne sont pas connus par de nombreux habitants de la ville, étant donné
que la politique culturelle locale s’appuie très peu, sur des valeurs
symboliques publiques à caractère national. Le problème de cette étude
est relatif à la précarité existentielle et à l’incertitude ontologique du futur
des lieux de mémoire à Ongola. Il est nécessaire de se tourner vers le
passé d’Ongola pour y trouver des repères, créer du vivre ensemble et
tenter de retrouver une identité spécifique de la ville, affaiblie par une
mondialisation de plus en plus globalisante. L’objectif de cette étude
consiste en l’identification et en la connaissance de certains lieux de
mémoire de la ville de Yaoundé afin de lutter contre le syndrome d’une
société en crise d’identité, sans projet, où règne surtout l’instantanée.
Notre méthodologie de recherche s’est échafaudée autour des enquêtes
orales. A l’aide des sources primaires et secondaires, et sur la base des
observations effectuées sur le terrain, nous avons procédé à la
reconnaissance sélective des espaces à mémorialiser. Cette démarche
nous a permis de recenser 5 lieux de mémoire d’Ongola d’une importance
manifeste. Ces résultats révèlent la nécessité, d’une réconciliation avec
l’histoire commune de la ville au service de la reconstruction nationale.
Mots-clés : Lieux de mémoire, Histoire, Héritage culturel, Monuments,
Mémoire collective.
An Empirical Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of The Covid-19 Pandemic in Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Muluh Henry & Sopse Majolie …………………………………………….…….……72-103
This study is primarily concerned with Newspaper Coverage of the
COVID-19 Pandemic in Cameroon. Newspapers written and published in
Cameroon constituted the study population of this work. The main
objective of the study was to assess how newspapers covered the COVID-19
Pandemic in Cameroon in 2020. It was guided by two theories namely;
the Diffusion of Innovation theory and Framing theory. Data was
collected through content analysis, using a mixed approach with three
newspapers published in the English language: The Post, The Guardian
Post, and Cameroon Tribune as the purposive sample. The findings
suggest that newspapers exploited eight frames in covering the pandemic
with the political frame being the most used. Also, consistency is very
much evident in the reports. It further highlights that the reports lacked
balance, were ununiformed, and not coordinated which accounts for the
fact that journalists do not do proper investigation and research before
writing their reports concerning the pandemic thereby making these
reports doubtful. The study concludes that Cameroonian newspapers
have been instrumental and frequent in providing vital information to the
public on the nature, prevention, and medication of the COVID-19
pandemic. The newspapers also recognised the place of proximity in news
selection by reporting more frequently the outbreak in Cameroon than
that of distant outbreaks of similar diseases in foreign countries. Based
on this conclusion, journalists should adopt Hallin and Mancini’s model
of media and politics, which states that crisis communication should be
truthful, fast, consistent, and explanatory. This will help reduce
inconsistency in reporting. Again, while newspapers are available for
content analysis, a survey of audience perception of broadcast media
reports on the pandemic or health crises is necessary and recommended
for further study. This is because it will determine if there is a health
behaviour change caused by the media. It will also determine if there is
a fast rate of diffusion caused by media reports. This will greatly
complement the findings of this study.
Keywords: Newspaper, Coverage, COVID-19 Pandemic
Analyzing Communication in Television Adverts: The Case of MTN TV Advert “Eto’o Peut”. Get the full PDF
Kamtchuang Anne …………………………………………………………….………104-120
This paper examines how the advertiser uses modes of communication
in TV advertisements in an interactive way to communicate the
advertising message to the consumer. These modes of communication,
language, visuals, music, sound, and paralinguistic elements, are often
seen and studied as semiotic resources. Very few look at it from a
communication angle, that is, how they are used to pass the advertising
message to the consumer present in the advert. What is of interest to
them, is the structure of the semiotic resource, that is, the grammatical
and syntactic structures of the semiotic resources used. Some studies
have equally looked at each of these modes of communication
individually, forgetting that in a TV advert, they automatically interact to
share the message. This study is undertaken within the framework of
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) drawing from Multimodal Discourse
Analysis (MMDA), which provides methodological tools that are applied
in the analysis of the TV advert “Eto’o Peut”. The data of this study
consists of the linguistic, visual, musical, and non-verbal elements
obtained from the observation of the TV advert. The analysis shows that
the advertiser uses mostly nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs for
verbal communication, sound quality, rhythm, and pitch for musical
communication, contact and social distance for visual communication,
and dress code and tone for non-verbal communication. All these
communication devices interact to convey the advertising message to the
consumer.
Keywords: communication, modes of communication, advertising
message, Eto’o Peut, consumers.
Centering African Traditional Dance Principles in Contemporary Dance. Get the full PDF
Chamba Nana Mirelle Flore ………………………..………………………….……121-157
This article interferes with the problems posed by contemporary dance
paradigms rooted in dominant Western epistemologies as illustrative of a
persistent ethnocentric and narrow discourse that portrays imperialist
ambitions and related exclusionary practice, which triggers skepticism
amongst Africans. Alternatively, it suggests that contemporary dance be
conceptualized as a cosmopolitan dance form influenced by a variety of
geocultural dance styles, amongst which African traditional dances, as a
perspective for circumventing and decentering this domination.
Grounded in qualitative research supported by Fanon’s postcolonial
cosmopolitanism, the paper models what colonial contradiction reading
might offer, showing how once trash and outlawed African traditional
dance principles were transposed into contemporary dance. Results show
the destabilization of Africans to connect with contemporary dance is
rooted in Western hegemony that disempowered African traditional
dances during colonization. However, the integration of these traditional
dance principles confirms African presence in contemporary dance and
more importantly challenges the dominant Western epistemology. As
such, from colonialism to cosmopolitanism, both African and Western
cultures are interconnected in the fashioning of contemporary dance. The
presence of heterogeneous dance aesthetics in contemporary dance
establishes a flexible counter-discourse of this practice which owes its
legacy to the global human community with which it shares a history
entrenched in cosmopolitanism. Thus, a sense of belonging is important
to engage Africans in the canon, and the fact that the characteristics of
contemporary dance are also embedded in African traditional dances
could strengthen communities, distance Africans from the many quarrels
linked to this denomination, and push them to dig more into the richness
of African dances to question the new Africa and join the new
cosmopolitan project of cultural globalization.
Key words: contemporary dance; African traditional dances; postcolonial
cosmopolitanism; decolonization; aesthetics
African Spirituality and Resistance to Neocolonial (Bad) Governance in Lake God and Dance of the Vampires by Bole Butake. Get the full PDF
Amadou Danlami……………………………………………………………………….159-179
Africa continues to suffer from European imperialism and its related
extensive ills like exploitation, ethnocide, corruption, dictatorship,
embezzlement, and murder. In his plays, the Cameroonian dramatist,
Bole Butake, handles numerous problems plaguing Cameroon and other
African countries, and one of these is bad leadership caused by
neocolonialism. This study examined Butake’s perspectives on the
connection between European expansionism and African autochthonous
spirituality. Using Cultural Resistance by David Jeffress as the
theoretical framework, the work sought to answer the question: What is
Bole Butake’s vision of the link between neocolonialism and African
sacredness? The paper, which is divided into three parts, concludes that
Butake projects African traditional religion as a solution to
neocolonialism and its negative offshoots. It opines that African spiritual
entities should be associated with governance as elements of regulation,
control, and punishment so that bad leadership and the subsequent
suffering of Africans can be mitigated or eliminated.
Keywords: Neocolonialism, African spirituality, Postcolonialism,
Resistance, Leadership
- Castigating Corruption in the American Political Space: A Study of Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier and The Titan. Get the full PDF
Nyaa Hans Ndah …………………………………………………………………….180-202
The American political space depicted in Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier
and The Titan presents a clear picture of the antagonism that prevailed
in the United States between capitalism and socialism in the first half of
the 20th century. We set out in this paper to portray how Dreiser
problematizes corruption in American politics and how this challenge is
addressed. This study is significant in that corruption is still endemic in
American politics, and the reforms suggested in Dreiser’s novels under
study are still relevant today as far as the democratization process in the
United States of America and the world is concerned. This study is based
on the hypothesis that the 20th century American political space
portrayed in Dreiser’s The Financier and The Titan is plagued by
corruption. The Marxist theoretical approach was considered suitable for
our analyses in this study. The major finding of this study borders around
Dreiser’s commitment in the two novels to castigate the alarming rate of
corruption that has destroyed party politics in the United States of
America. One also finds out that Theodore Dreiser fully endorses Karl
Marx’s vision of a classless society as an ideal system that can eliminate
the inequalities that prevail in the capitalist space. According to him,
such a classless society can go a long way to reduce (to the barest
minimum), corruption in American politics.
Keywords: Castigate, politics, corruption, capitalism, socialism
A Sociolinguistics impact of Ngamambo greeting culture and Identity. Get the full PDF
Sirih Nagang Nancy Nyindem ………………………………………..………………203-227
Despite the increasing rate of modernity nowadays, language has always
been and is still used as an ingenious device for transmitting ideologies
from one generation to the other. This study documents and examines
the sociolinguistic importance of greetings as a fundamental interactional
ritual in Ngamambo, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken by the Mbu
people in the Mezam Division of the North West Region of Cameroon
(Eberhard et al., 2019). Greetings are indices of appropriate socialisation
that portray the relationship between the interactants and serve as a
binding fabric that holds the community together. Through an
ethnographic approach, qualitative and quantitative data were obtained
from forty (40) language consultants (20 adults and 20 youths) employing
interview and participant observation. Thirty greeting forms were
identified, recorded, and transcribed using Elan. These forms were
presented and analysed within the speech act theory (Austin, 1975) and
the linguistic anthropology approach, revealing their semantic
implications and the circumstances surrounding the salutation. The
study established that the greeting culture in Ngamambo, which
expresses the relationship between the speakers and the community’s
living and dead members, is declining due to modernity, Christianity, and
the influence of the dominant language, English, and the specific forms
reflect the Identity of the tribe and clan. The study reveals that the
Ngamambo speakers use various verbal and nonverbal greeting forms
determined by social factors such as age, religion, social status, and
location. It documents the greeting forms in the language, which are
gradually becoming endangered.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, impact, greetings, Ngamambo, culture, and
Identity
The Culture of Increasing Coups D’États in Africa and its Implications on Democratic Institutions. Get the full PDF
Bamnjo Herman ………………………………………….……228-245
Coups d’état have been prevalent in different countries globally. However,
Africa has been the most affected, leading to significant consequences for
its socio-economic growth and democratic governance. In the last few
years, the frequency of coups d’état has increased, thus compromising
the progress of making the continent more democratic and peaceful. This
paper set out to investigate the culture of increasing coups d’état in Africa
and its implications on democratic institutions. Underpinned by the
Modernization theory, the study adopted a qualitative method. The unit
of analysis was based on interviews and secondary sources. The study
explores the various types of coups d’état and the reasons for the coups
d’état in Africa. Results proved that leaders who have stayed in power for
too long attempt unconstitutional changes to the constitutions which
later result in the unconstitutional ousting of them. The study also found
out that the Militarisation of Politics and entrenchment of guns have
accounted for increasing coup d’etat in Africa of recent. The study
therefore concludes that Africa needs to have stronger institutions than
stronger men for their democratic process to be stronger and
recommends that military juntas should call for democratic elections as
fast as possible to enable a peaceful transition
Keywords: Coup d’état, Democratic Institutions, Culture, Africa
11. De la Gratuité à la Commercialisation des Manuels Scolaires au Nord-Cameroun 1960-2018
Garga Bargue ……………………………………………………………….244-275
L’école occidentale s’est implantée au Cameroun précisément dans la
zone côtière en 1844. Depuis la création des premières structures
d’éducation jusqu’en 1960, les manuels scolaires ont fait l’objet d’une
distribution gratuite dans les établissements scolaires publics sur
l’ensemble du territoire national. Le Nord-Cameroun, quant à lui, a
continué à bénéficier de cette gratuité jusqu’en 1984 alors que dans la
partie sud du pays les élèves s’offraient les manuels scolaires dans les
lieux de vente. Comment la dynamique politique sur les manuels
scolaires a-t-elle été maintenue au Nord-Cameroun depuis 1960 jusqu’en
2018 ? Pour répondre à cette question, un certain nombre d’ouvrages
ayant traité de l’éducation en générale et les manuels scolaires en
particulier sur le Cameroun et la région septentrionale ont été consultés.
Une enquête a été menée sur le terrain auprès des personnes ressources
ayant côtoyé le milieu scolaire pendant cette période. Toutes les
informations collectées ont permis d’une part de présenter les facteurs
ayant maintenu la gratuité des manuels scolaires dans la partie
septentrionale. D’autre part, le présent travail analyse les raisons ayant
conduit à la commercialisation avant de jeter un regard sur la trajectoire
et les acteurs de la commercialisation des manuels scolaires.
Mots clés : commercialisation, gratuite, manuels scolaires, Nord Cameroun.
List of Contributors. Get the full PDF
Funeral Songs among the Wimbum: An Experience in Non-Normative Theatre. Get the full PDF
Jesse Moba & Edward Adamu Lambe …………………………………………1-16
The essence of this article is to analyse funeral songs among the Wimbum people
as a piece of non-normative theatre which is a pro-social non-conformist theatre that
consists of actions that benefit the community. Operational in a community that is
essentially oral, funeral songs among the Wimbum are performed as a kind of therapy as
through them, the people are purged of the pains imposed on them by death. Using the
sociological and performance-centred approaches, the article demonstrates that Wimbum
funeral songs are theatrically satisfying as performers actualize their texts in ways
particular to a people by way of their manner of performance. As a kind of theatre that
does not conform to laid down norms due to its oral nature, performance becomes a
leitmotif for its survival in the context of globalisation where orality is being threatened
by the stronger forces of modern technology.
Keywords: Funeral, song, Wimbum, theatre, Mbumland
Railed Resistance: Memory and Political Discourse in Julius Angwah’s Before Our Eyes. Get the full PDF
Nyanchi Marcel Ebliylu. ………………….………………………………………17-40
The quest for selfhood results to internal conflicts between Webaz and Recam after the
departure of the colonial masters. Memories of colonial and post-colonial rule in Julius
Angwah’s Before Our Eyes reveal the desire for patriots from different socio-cultural,
linguistic and historical backgrounds to come together under the banner of a united
rainbow nation to rethink a new county. Ironically, through the visions and memories
displayed by different characters in the novel, the realities in Webaz and Recam make
one to interrogate and problematise the nexus of the new socio-political power that is built
on deception and exploitation in the post-colony. Using the Postcolonial and
Psychoanalysis theories, this paper hinges on the hypothesis that the political discourse
which is revealed through memory sets the rail as a new vista for both ideological and
physical resistance. Through the commingling of dreams, mysticism and memory,
Angwah uses Before Our Eyes to fictionalise and satirise an ongoing political crisis in the
Anglophone regions of Cameroon through Webaz and Recam who are in full panoply for
a battle to re-write their history and carve a niche for their future in contemporary
geopolitics. This crisis which is not based on retribution for decades of subservience, aims
at arriving at a political resolution that would celebrate difference as a force of unity
within an ideal state called WebazRecam.
Key words: memory, political discourse, vista, spirituality, rail, post-colonial, rainbow.
Appearance Verses Reality in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Ghosts. Get the full PDF
Innocent Ettia Meh ……………………………………………………………….41-54
A close reading of Henrik Ibsen’s dramas reveals that most of his critics and scholars
capitalize on the playwright’s creation of rebellious female characters. Very little or
nothing is often said about the hypocritical or pretentious lives led by the female
protagonists that eventually leads to their rebellion. Sometimes, statements about the
pretentious existence of these female characters are limited to hypothetical
pronouncements. The hypocritical existence of women in Ibsen’s plays is probably due
to the strict Victorian values the playwright satirizes in his works. The Victorian
conventional norms like the respect of ‘’law and order,’’ the subordination of the woman
in the family and society had very debilitating consequences on the female sex. In an
attempt to respect these principles, women generally led inauthentic hypocritical lives.
They put on social masks which were betrayed at some crucial point as the drama
unfolded. This paper seeks to examine how Henrik Ibsen in A Doll’s House and Ghosts
represents his female characters as individuals who lead a double existence, namely, that
of appearance and reality. Women are portrayed as having a double consciousness, one
which conforms to what is expected of them by the patriarchal society and another which
is in consonance with their true natural inner selves. Reading the plays from the New
Historicist and Feminist, perspectives, the study submits that societal norms and values
constraint women to lead untrue non-self-fulfilling lives that are diametrically opposed to
their real natural desires for self-assertion. The study also demonstrates that women, tired
of societal unrealistic principles against them, generally shade off their unreal selves at
some critical moment in the plays and reveal their real personalities. They rebel against
obnoxious societal norms that inhibit their search for self-assertion and fulfilment.
Key Words: Appearance, Reality, Victorian, societal norms, values.
Novel to Film Adaptation and the Problematic of Transposition in Adaptation Discourse. Get the full PDF
Derick Yong & Paul Animbom N…..…………………………………………..…55-74
In cinema discourse, adaptation serves the purpose of visual translation from any genre
of literature to film adaptation. This research paper looks at process, the problems
affecting this process, and the elements that survive it. In this guise, the paper investigates
the mechanisms put in place by the filmmakers in transmitting the messages which the
novelist sought to transmit. While some of these adaptations have been considered
successful many of them are met with the same pattern of criticism by the audience
members when comparing it with the novel. The question raised here is whether a film’s
fidelity to the book that it is based on has any effect on its success, or if it impacts the
film in other ways. This research therefore seeks to uncover how fidelity and infidelity
can both create a successful film adaptation. In essence, a film is rooted in the
communication and promotion of ideas, and ideas serve as veritable instruments of
enlightenment and education. Based on an intertextual analysis of the novel and the
adaptation, it is revealed that the films transform all subjects and objects into new signs
which communicate to the audience in a better way as compared to the novel.
Keywords: Adaptation, visual narrative, textual narrative, fidelity, film, novel.
Renegotiating Film Production in Cameroon during the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Virus in front and behind the Camera. Get the full PDF
Tafor Ateh ……………………………………………………………….………..75-93
Film production in Cameroon during the corona virus pandemic period witnessed a
number of disruptions in conventional film practices. Many Cameroonian filmmakers
found themselves trying to negotiate a new practical audiovisual paradigm for their film
praxis. Given the many restrictions that came with the virus, film stakeholders realised
they had to rethink their filmmaking approaches. What kinds of films should they be
making and who will be the audience of the films they make during the Covid-19 period?
How have filmmakers been affected by this crisis and how are they negotiating a way
forward? Through direct informant interviews with Cameroonian filmmakers, this article
sought to examine the nature of film practice in Cameroon during the peak period of the
corona virus crisis 2019/2020. It was difficult for some Cameroonian filmmakers to
accept the advent of and operation within the covid-19 crises. In most cases though, they
were bound, even unwillingly, to accept the operational difficulties of making a film
within the context of the health crises. Finding a voice for the filmmaker in the crises
turned out to be one of the most challenging negotiations they had to make as they sought
new ways to cope with the situation. The advent of covid-19 took a toll on both the artistic
and technical aspects of filmmaking in Cameroon. In most cases, it had a negative effect
on the processes of filmmaking but also brought about innovations, skill acquisition and
more open-mindedness in the perception of most Cameroonian filmmakers.
Keywords: Covid-19, production, filmmaker, innovation, filmmaking
Television Influence on Children’s Upbringing in Bambili, North West Region, Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Victor Ngu Cheo ………………………………………………..…………….….94-118
The creation of the University of Bamenda in Bambili has attracted more population of
both students, workers, and business people, a good number of whom live in Bambili.
There is therefore a significant presence of both families and the student population than
before. Also, there has been an increase in the number of households with television sets
due the increase in purchasing power from income generating activities and more salary
and wage earners living in Bambili. This paper seeks to examine the effects of television
on children’s upbringing in Bambili. The study which is a survey employed the simple
random sampling and recruited 50 freely consented parents/guardians to respond to a
well-structured questionnaire. The ensuing data was analyzed using SPSS version 21. The
results revealed that the influence of television on children’s upbringing is both negative
and positive since television viewing also enhances the cognitive development of
children. Besides, children also adopt deviant behavior from television. With a very low
rate of television viewing between parents and their children, an average of 2 hours per
day in a week, the study recommends that in addition to other regulatory mechanisms put
in place, parents should educate children at home on the dangers of adult TV content.
Key words: Television, Influence, Children upbringing, Bambili, North West Cameroontitution.
Measuring the Effect of Implementing Content and Language-Integrated Learning (CLIL) in The Institute of Languages for International Integration (ILANI): An Experimental Research Project. Get the full PDF
Charlotte Simo Dguidge ……………………………………………………….119-139
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was originally defined in 1994, and launched in 1996 by UNICOM, the University of Jyväskylä, and the European Platform for Dutch Education, to describe educational methods where “subjects are taught through a foreign language with dual-focused aims, namely the learning of content, and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language” (Darn, 2006, p.4). Springing forth from the fact that few experimental studies have been carried out on CLIL at different levels of the educational system and virtually none in language centers, this paper aims to provide insights into experimental research on a CLIL project for communicative skills in the context of a language center. The participants in the experiment were 50 learners of different age groups, different nationalities, and different academic and professional backgrounds, learning English as a foreign language at the Institute of Languages for
International Integration located in the town of Buea in the South West Region of Cameroon, a country in central Africa. The research design involved observing, conducting interviews, and administering a CLIL test with a focus on communicative skills and the target disciplines. The data collected were statistically processed and the data analysis techniques employed were mean and standard deviation (SD) and ANOVA. The data provided support for the efficacy of implementing CLIL in a language center as the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of both communicative skills and content knowledge and showed a considerably higher positive attitude towards the CLIL course than their peers in the control group. This paper could therefore serve asa stepping stone on which many similar yet profound experimental pieces of research on CLIL could follow suit in language centers to ascertain its effectiveness in all other aspects and to bring all the stakeholders implicated in language valorization to applying CLIL in the teaching/learning process in language centers.
Keywords: CLIL, ILANI, Language center, Communicative skills.
Sustenance and Dynamics of Informal Transportation in AnglophoneCameroon, 1961 to 2016. Get the full PDF
Marcel B. Sama, Nixon Kahjum Takor, & Awang Ollong Kingsley ………………..140-154
In most African cities, while there are state policies regulating the operation of
motor transport activities, informal practices are usually visible creating some
sought of anarchy. Using the case of Anglophone Cameroon, the territory roughly
representing the former West Cameroon Federal State and the contemporary
Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon, the study examines the extent by
which informal transport actorscreated a sustainable operational niche. By profiling
the informal transport practices in the towns of Bamenda, Buea and Limbe in
Anglophone Cameroon, the paper asserts that, although considered informal and
chaotic by the State because of the non-conformity to statutory regulations, the
clandestine transport sector was not altogether a chaotic setup. It had a certain mode
of organization with well-established protocols and disciplinary measures that gave
it a semblanceof order. The article is informed by evidence gathered from primary
and secondary sources analyzed following a qualitative historical design
Keywords. Informal, transport, Policies, Practices, Anglophone Cameroon.
Traditional Art History Education in Cameroon: Critical analysis of School Programs. Get the full PDF
Ndzi Yosi Godwins, Talla Richard Tanto & Paul Animbom N………………….155-169
The content of the Art History component in the General Knowledge in Arts offered at various Primary, Secondary and High Schools in Cameroon is largely of foreign art histories at the expense of the histories of Cameroon indigenous arts which are shallowly presented in the teaching syllabus. This makes the students appreciate more of the artistic cultural heritage of foreign countries making them lacking in the historical knowledge of their own rich African indigenous arts that identifies them as a people. A critical analysis of the content of the General Knowledge in Art subject proves contrary. This study therefore investigates the role of traditional arts history in effectively telling the history of the people when embedded in the curriculum. Data was gathered from primary and secondary sources by way of interviews, administration of questionnaire, as well as non-participant observation under the theoretical and qualitative research approaches. The case study design under the qualitative research approach was used for the research. This method involves the making of careful inquiry, critical analysis or investigation and examination seeking the facts of a case or an issue etc. with the aim of obtaining reliable facts to help correct, verify, devise, improve and reevaluate policies, decisions, attitudes and knowledge.
Keywords: Cameroon indigenous art, Art history, Curriculum, General knowledge in arts.
Contribution à L’étude de la « Scenographie de Mode » au Cameroun : Analyse Exploratoire et Regard Critique sur les Défilés de Mode. Get the full PDF
Fandio Ngahane Roméo………………..170-192
Cette communication se penche sur la « scénographie de mode», une pratique émergente
dans les milieux de la mode au Cameroun, un atout pour les industries de mode et
l’économie de la mode. Comment se présentent les réalisations scénographiques dans le
secteur de la mode et que nous apprennent-elles sur les défilés de mode, les tenues ou le
public ? Comment la scénographie peut-elle contribuer à la mise en valeur des réalisations
de créateurs de mode ? En confrontant les données écrites aux données orales et à
l’observation sur le terrain, nos analyses s’appuient sur les méthodes comparatives et
sémiotiques en histoire de l’art. Les résultats de cette recherche montrent que ; bien que
la scénographie de mode soit un domaine d’activité et un champ de recherche en friche
au Cameroun, son recours dans l’industrie de la mode ou l’économie de la mode n’est pas
anodin. En tant que outils stratégiques pour le marketing de la mode locale, ces usages
méritent d’être approfondis, contextualisés.
Mots-clés : Scénographie de mode, défilé de mode, industrie de mode, économie de la
mode, markéting de la mode..
Curriculum and Educational Implications of Teaching the Art of Dance in Nigerian Universities. Get the full PDF
Sunday JAMES……………………………………………………………………………..…1-12
A look at the curriculum of various levels of education in Nigeria (primary,
secondary, and tertiary) reveals that dance is one of the smallest and most
neglected elements taught within the artistic spheres. It is mostly seen and
taught as an aspect of Theatre Arts. This paper takes a look at various
definitions of dance according to different scholars and the importance of dance
education within the school system. The paper further discusses the
implications of teaching and establishment of dance departments in Nigerian
universities as well as points out issues that may arise as a result of the
development. It calls the attention of stakeholders in the education sector in
Nigeria to the need to ensure effective dance education in theory and practice.
Issues ranging from curriculum, methodology, society, infrastructure as well as
personnel are raised in this paper. The philosophical approach is adopted. This
paper calls for mandatory inclusion of dance education in the curriculum of
schools and recognition of it as just as important for students as other subjects.
Key words: Curriculum, Dance, Dance Education, Dance performance,
Pedagogy.
The Anglophone Crisis and Emerging Bilingualism Trends on State-Owned Mass Media in Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Victor Ngu Cheo……………………………………………………………………..……..13-29
One of the major causes of the Anglophone Crisis which started in 2016 was
the dominant use of the French language to the detriment of Anglophones in a
country that is dubbed bilingual and whose constitution confers an equal status
to both the English and French languages. In a bid to mitigate this situation,
the government embarked on a series of measures amongst which the creation
of a Bilingualism and Multiculturalism Commission to oversee the
implementation of official bilingualism in the country. This new wave of
bilingualism also seems to have actuated a ray of change in the practice of
bilingualism in the state media in Cameroon. Using the methodological
approaches of observation and content analysis, this paper appraises the
emerging trends of bilingualism on the state media; Cameroun Tribune, the
national radio and television, CRTV. Underpinned by the Knowledge Gap
Theory, the analysis revealed that the anglophone crisis has ushered in some
positive changes as far as the practice of bilingualism on the media is concerned.
In trying to increase the level of bilingualism practice in the state media, the
information gap between the Anglophones and Francophones has been
narrowed. This notwithstanding, there is still quite a lot to do to improve on the
status of bilingualism on the official media so as to be a good pace-setter in the
media landscape in Cameroon. On this basis, this paper recommends that
during bilingual newscasts it could be better to report one story in the French
language and then the same story follows immediately in the English language.
This will also promote the learning of French and English as the audience can
put words in context easily.
Key words: Anglophone Crisis, Bilingualism, Trends, State-owned Media,
Cameroon
Narratives of Internally Displaced Persons of Anglophone Cameroon Crisis: A Circumstantial Appraisal. Get the full PDF
Seino Evangeline Agwa Fomukong…………………………………………………………30-43
Narratives of trauma are generally aimed at expressing the depth of pain
experienced by victims in an attempt to begin the journey towards healing and
the choice of expressions show how close or distant to the victim is the narrative
event. This article examines the use of circumstantial elements to prove both
authenticity and negotiate how close to the heart the traumatic event is to the
victims of trauma in the Anglophone Cameroon Crisis. The data were collected
from sixty victims using a convenient sampling technique. Ethnographic
approaches, which include semi-open interviews, diary reading, and focus-group discussions, were used. The qualitative research design was used
focusing on the circumstantial elements found in the narratives of the victims
sampled for this work. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics was used to
analyze the data focusing largely on the use of duration, which involves time
and space; manner and cause. This work concludes that by making use of
adverbial and prepositional phrases, the victims show a very close relationship
with their traumatic experiences as expressed in the exactitude with which they
associate these experiences with the time, space, cause, and manner of
occurrence. It further suggests that, while handling the socio-political causes of
the crisis, attention should be paid to the depth of the wounds inflicted by the
crisis in the hearts of the victims through the creation of trauma healing centers
and the provision of psychosocial support for all victims.
Key words: Trauma, IDPs, narratives, Anglophone, Crisis, SFL
Pour une Élucidation de la Transmission Intergénérationnelle du Cinéma dans l’Environnement Défavorable du Cameroun. Get the full PDF
Bell Yembel Jacques Merlin………………………………………………………….………44-58
En crise depuis le milieu des années 80, le cinéma camerounais souffre
également d’un déficit de structures de formation. Malgré cette situation
regrettable et aussi curieux que cela soit, on constate qu’au Cameroun, des
générations de cinéastes se succèdent. Dans ce contexte particulièrement
difficile, comment peut s’expliquer cette transmission quasi cyclique du cinéma
de génération en génération ? C’est la principale question à laquelle nous
répondons dans ce travail que nous avons effectué en nous fondant sur les
observations théoriques émises par la Commission scientifique du 143ème
Congrès national des Sociétés historiques et scientifiques de France sur la
transmission des savoirs. Prenant appui sur ce socle scientifique, nous avons
durant un trimestre, grâce à la recherche documentaire et à l’exploitation de
documents, collecté les données que requérait ce travail. Celles-ci sont venues
s’ajouter à celles que notre observation du cinéma camerounais nous a permis
de mobiliser depuis que nous sommes dans la recherche. De nos analyses, il
ressort que la transmission intergénérationnelle du cinéma au Cameroun n’est
pas le fait d’un seul acteur, mais plutôt le fruit de l’action conjuguée mais
généralement non concertée des structures de formation conventionnelle et des
professionnels de la filière cinématographique. L’action de ces acteurs
demeurant perfectible, notamment au niveau du système de formation
classique dont la structuration et le fonctionnement permettent un contrôle,
nous avons fait quelques propositions dans ce sens.
Mots clés : cinéma, générations, transmission des savoirs, modalités de
formation.
A Socio-Onomastic Analysis of Nicknames in the Fulani Culture, Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Yepdia Leundjeu Walter………………………………………………………………………59-77
This study investigates the sources of nicknames in the Fulani language, their
situational domain, their sociocultural relevance and their perceptions within
the Fulani context from the account of Leslie and Skipper’s (1991) socio-onomastic theory. Data were collected through participant observations and
semi-structured interviews from community members. The findings reveal that
Fulani nicknames have historical, social and cultural resonances. The identified
nicknames bear sociological, pragmatic and communicative functions that
match the Fulani people’s collective existence and shared experience. This
article helps us appreciate Fulani culture’s creativity and spans our knowledge
of ethnicity and social identity. The researcher recommends that other scholars
pursue research in other aspects of Fulani culture, and to revamp studies on
Cameroon’s native languages, which face extinction.
Key words: Fulani language, nicknames, perceptions, socio-onomastics,
sociocultural relevance
Les Cadavres dans les Films de Guerre. Get the full PDF
Ekoumbamaka Paul Aimé & MBEMA Marcelin……………………………………78-100
Il n’existe pas de film de guerre sans une mise en scène des cadavres. En
s’appuyant alors sur des films de guerre emblématiques tels que Les sentiers de
la gloire de Stanley Kubrick, Apocalypse Now de Francis Coppola et Il faut sauver
le soldat Ryan de Steven Spielberg, la question au centre du présent article est
la suivante : quelles sont les intentions des cinéastes susmentionnés, lorsqu’ils
portent à l’écran les cadavres en utilisant les trois modes de représentation qui
sont l’exagération, l’atténuation et la suggestion ? À la lumière des lectures
pragmatique et rhétorique du film inspirées respectivement des travaux de
Francesco Casetti et de Guillaume Soulez, cet article se propose de démontrer
que selon tel mode de représentation des cadavres dans le corpus étudié, il y a
une attitude donnée que ces cinéastes entendent faire adopter au spectateur. Il
apparaît ainsi à l’analyse des séquences filmiques, que l’exagération semble le
moyen le plus efficace de faire détester la guerre au spectateur. Par contre,
l’atténuation et la suggestion sont mobilisées pour lui assurer une relative
tranquillité face au spectacle macabre de la guerre
Mots-clés : spectateur, cadavre, guerre.
Urbanising orality: A socio-artistic interpretation of Cameroonian Pidgin English proverbs. Get the full PDF
Kelvin Ngong Toh …………..……………………………………………………………..101-113
In this paper, the focus is that though proverbs are known to be elitist by nature,
the birth of urban spaces in Cameroon and the growth of Pidgin English have
generated a popular culture. One of the outcomes of popular culture is the
composition of proverbs in Pidgin English. The paper has, therefore, argued that
Cameroon Pidgin proverbs can contribute to the shaping and construction of
the Cameroonian worldview. This study is guided by the theoretical views of Hall
(2007) especially as he propounded that studying works from Cultural Studies
perspectives takes two angles – the aesthetic and the ideological angles. The
method of collecting data for this research was Naturally Occurring Data and
especially the tool known as Field Notes (Golato, 2017). Naturally Occurring
Data usually functions with experimenters that are not predicted in all
situations in which a given speech event may be produced (Golato, 2017). With
the help of the Field Notes research tool, the proverbs were collected on the bus
after an ensuing debate on the importance and relevance of pidgin English in
present-day Cameroon as the researcher traveled from Yaounde to Buea. The
research reveals that there is a huge corpus of pidgin proverbs that if carefully
analyzed and interpreted; they can serve, as a tool for enhancing the much needed Cameroonian national culture.
Key words: Orality, Urban, Pidgin, Culture, Popular
A Pragmatic Appraisal of Political Discourse on the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis (2016-2020). Get the full PDF
Kohole Peukeu Carine, Seino Evangeline Agwa Fomukong & Atoh Julius Chenwi …..…114-132
This paper investigates the use of pragmatic features in speeches delivered by
the former Prime Minister of Cameroon (Philemon Yang) on the Anglophone
Crisis in Cameroon. With the help of Searle (1969) Speech Act theory, we found
out that, the speeches comply with illocutionary acts. Data was collected from
the Prime Ministry, Cameroon Tribune and Google and consist of one hundred
and fourteen (114) utterances. Using a checklist, we identified the utterances
and classified them into different types of illocutionary acts and bringing out
their functions. The utterances performed illocutionary acts of directives
(requesting, ordering, advising, inviting, warning, questioning, forbidding),
assertives (asserting, reporting, clarifying, stating, informing, boasting,
claiming, describing), expressives (deploring, congratulating, thanking),
commissives (promising) and declaratives (declaring). Of these illocutionary
acts, assertives were sixty (60) in number and covered the highest percentage of
52.63% and the acts represent the ideologies of the speaker which are the call
for peace, the dropping of guns by the boys, the resumption of schools, the call
to vote for the ruling party the CPDM (Cameroon people’s Democratic
Movement), and the stop of violence. It was recommended that, in order to
completely put an end to the current Anglophone crisis that erupted since 2016,
the representatives of the government like Philemon Yang and others should try
in their subsequent visits to the North West and South West Regions to make
speeches that will contain more illocutionary act of expressives with functions
of forgiving, apologising, deploring, regretting, directives with functions like
appealing, begging and commissives with function of offering. Through these
illocutionary acts and their functions, the populace will get their ideologies, and
gradually calm may return and a platform for a genuine and inclusive dialogue
will be established so that the problem can be completely resolved.
Key words: Pragmatics, Anglophone crisis, political discourse, illocutionary act.
Youth Education and Resistance: A Reading of Darrell James Roodt’s “Sarafina”. Get the full PDF
Visi Sumbom Tubuo ………………………………………………………………………133-147
Using the case of South Africa in the face of apartheid, this paper underscores
the fact that, with the right education, young people are and can be very
instrumental in the struggle for liberation. This is captured in their struggle for
liberation throughout the film Sarafina. The use of songs, especially Sarafina,
The Lord’s prayer and Freedom is coming tomorrow in the film helps them push
through with their idea of having the right education and liberating themselves
from society problems. Our analysis of the songs in this film is guided by the
Semiotics Approach with the backing of the Marxist theory. These three songs
do not emphasize the issue of public violence but articulate resistance. Our
analysis thus evinces that in the film Sarafina the South African youth are
educated and encouraged to rise and fight for their rights in the face of a brutal
and faceless inhuman white regime, and this suggests that youths can resist
situations in life not necessarily through violence but peaceful protest.
Key words: Liberation, Right Education, Public Violence, Semiotics Approach
L’Histoire de la Naissance Tardive du Cinéma Anglophone au Cameroun et L’Avenement des Premiers Films : De L’assimilation ou de l’oppression politique ?. Get the full PDF
Yadia Calvin Boris ………………………………………………………………………….148-161
Malgré ses nombreuses prouesses au cours des dernières années, peu d’études
scientifiques se sont intéressées au cinéma anglophone. Son histoire, au sens
propre du terme, n’a guère encore été explorée de manière significative. Sa
véritable date de naissance reste inconnue, tout comme les prédécesseurs qui
ont contribué à le faire naître, y compris ses premiers cinéastes et ses premiers
films. Purement historique, et encadrée par le déterminisme social, cette étude
s’appuie sur les propos des voix d’autorité, acteurs de la naissance du cinéma
anglophone au Cameroun. Elle examine entre autres, les facteurs qui justifient
sa naissance tardive et permettent de comprendre son dynamisme économique.
Elle s’interroge également sur la contribution de l’État à la naissance de ce
cinéma.
Mots-clés : Histoire, naissance, cinéma, anglophone, politique
Cameroon Governance and Security Sector Reform: An Autopsy of State Response to Emerging Security Problems in the Central Africa Sub Region. Get the full PDF
Emmanuel Nche Ntoh, Ngam Confidence Chia & Martins Dekoum Huge Ta Nda ……….162-182
The problem in Africa, South of the Sahara was not only that countries with a
kind of thin or shoestring budget grappled to indebt themselves with loans to
build, train and equip their security sector but also that security was wholly
perceived to mean the protection of National Boarders and its resources, signing
of military accords and treaties thereby casting internal security away from
crucial concerns. The problems and contradictions imposed by this conundrum
of the parochial conception of Security architecture and operatives have
combined with an array of poor governance to beg for reform wherein state
governance and Human security must be seen as crucially interdependent. It is
with this preoccupation that the UN, EU, and AU have undertaken lasting
measures to reform the security sector placing human security and good
governance at the centrality of its hub. If this has been urgent in other areas of
the world, the need is crucially acute in the Central African Sub Region whose
member states have been encompassed not only by issues of fragile states borne
out of problematic governance as well as transnational crime, secessionists
claim and arm uprising as well as a transnational crime. This is the Nexus
underlying good governance and the Security Sector reform which is the
Substance of this study. From a thorough review of primary and secondary
sources, the study seeks to – provide the special context and circumstances
underlying Good governance and its connection to Security Sector Reform in the
Central African Sub Region- Bring out the cogent elements of good governance
and connect how this is crucial in the Security Sector Reform – Cast a Scientific
focus on Good governance within the Security Sector using key Central African
Region states and showcasing how this is important in state and peacebuilding
as offered by the UN and its corollaries.
Key words: Security reform, good governance, autopsy, challenges
Politique de Décentralisation, Un Levier pour la Rupture de L’extraversion du Cinéma au Cameroun. Get the full PDF
Yves Roland Heungap………………………………………………………………………..190-203
L’objectif de ce propos est la recherche de solutions endogènes à la
problématique de dépendance que subit le secteur cinématographique des pays
d’Afrique francophone en général et du Cameroun en particulier. Nous visons à
explorer une stratégie de développement d’une industrie du film au Cameroun
qui s’adosserait sur sa politique de décentralisation. L’intention étant d’aboutir
au résultat que la venue d’une industrie du film, affranchi de sa dépendance à
l’étranger, forte et qui se finance localement est possible par l’adoption d’une
politique de développement du cinéma adossée aux Collectivités Territoriales
Décentralisées et bénéficiant des acquis de la politique de décentralisation en
place au Cameroun depuis plusieurs décennies.
Mots clés : Développement, Cinéma, Politique, Décentralisation, Levier, Stratégie,
Extraversion.
Challenges Faced by Lower Primary School Teachers in Teaching Phonic. Get the full PDF
Mafofou Kappiwa Gerardine Laure, Muluh Henry Z. & Agbor Nicoline Tabe ……………………………………….204-217
This paper investigates the challenges primary school teachers face in teaching
phonics. Phonics Instruction according to the Open University Reading
Development Course Team (1977, p.170) is “any method of teaching which
draws attention to the relationship between phonemes and graphemes”. The
idea of phonemes brings to mind the teaching of sounds while the concept of
graphemes deals with the writing system. Thus, every phonics instruction
guides learners toward mastering reading and writing. Qualitative and
quantitative research approaches were used to understand lower primary school
teachers’ challenges in teaching Phonics. Also, research observation and
questionnaires were used as instruments to collect data through a research
survey. Three lower primary school teachers from Government Primary School
Atuakum Bamenda were selected respondents. The findings reveal that teaching
Phonics to early elementary pupils has been very challenging for lower primary
school teachers as they face many difficulties with the appropriate method. The
results also reveal that only 66.6% of teachers know and understand Phonics,
which prompts us to deeply research and understand the origin of their
challenges in teaching phonics.
Key words: Phonics, Phonics Teaching.
Social Media and the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Victor Ngu Cheo & Bamnjo Herman Yenika ……………………………………..1-14
This paper sets out to investigate social media use in the current Anglophone Crisis. The main assumption of the paper is that the increasing use of the social media by nontraditional journalists and non-state actors in the production and distribution of information, escalated the crisis in the North West and South West Regions. Underpinned by the gatekeeping theory, the study adopted a qualitative method. The unit of observations was published information on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp Chat groups by the separatist and the Head of State. The analyses were predicted on information shared on the social media platforms about the Anglophone crisis in
Cameroon by individuals, states and non-state actors. Results proved that the majority of information shared during this crisis period is mostly through Facebook and WhatsApps, although others like Twitter, Youtube etc are also employed. Prominent among the actors who use the social media during this crisis period is the Head of State, Paul Biya. He employed twitter for instance to condemn the crisis, call. The study, therefore, concludes that social media has been a tool used by both the government and non-government officials to transmit their messages in relation to the crisis in the North West and South West. However, while the government uses them to promote peace, the non-state actors rather exploit them to the contrary.
Keywords: Social Media, Anglophone Crisis, Cameroon.
Social Stratification in Niyi Osundare’s The Man Who Walked Away and The Wedding Car. Get the full PDF
Adeleke, Emmanuel B. ………………….………………………………………15-33
No society is completely classless; for, as an adage says, “all fingers are not equal.” However, in spite of the inequality of persons, many societies have managed to keep the gap between the haves and the have-nots from becoming too wide. In The Man Who Walked Away and the Wedding Car, the society dramatised has not been able to keep the gap between the classes within manageable proportion. Using the Marxist theory, this paper investigates the nature of social stratification in these plays. It finds that injustice, poverty and depression are triggered by this unbridled stratification. The paper concludes that unless these issues are redressed very fast, everyone is in grave danger because neither persons nor property will be safe.
Keywords: Stratification, Marxism, Injustice, Poverty, Depression.
Rage, fury (violence) in the Games of Football in the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon, 1980-2005. Get the full PDF
Confidence Ngam Chia & Scot Tamfu Wepngong……………………………….34-57
One of the visible fallouts of European imperialism in the contemporary Bamenda Grassfields is football. From its introduction and popularization in England, football games and competitions became an endearing practice among rural and urban folks. This game strangely inaugurated streams of passions and sensation among African folks to an extent that it almost became a major source of long-standing conflict instead of impacting social fluidity and fascination that was its prime goal. From the analysis of data combed from primary and secondary sources, this paper examines the context of the rage and furry (violence) that unfortunately animated football games and competitions during the 1980s and 90s in the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon. It submits that (a)the context of the time,(b) the nonchalance of the officiating officers of most matches,(C) the opaque nature of match programming and (d) the accumulated grievances of ignorant match spectators plus (e) the weakness of the institutions that governed the games, combined to make acts of violence like – desecration of playing grounds-threats, fighting or beating of match officials after matches-refusal of some teams to participate in some competitions as well as open fighting during and after matches. From this it offers that despite the odds and violent social and political climate that characterized the polities of the Cameroon Grassfields today, football has undergone significant paradigm shifts through and within which peace and harmony now prevails which is a marked departure from the violence and sensation that accompanied football matches and competitions in the past. Indeed, a team spirit and collective civility has built a culture where defeats and victories are accepted with no qualms as determined by the match officiating ministers.
Keywords: Rage, Furry, Violence, football, Grassfields, Cameroon, New Deal Era.
King as a throne: The symbolism of Afo-a-Kom in Kom artistry. Get the full PDF
Victor Bayena Ngitir ….……………..……………………………………………58-80
The subject of mystery and royal symbolism as incarnated in sacred objects among African peoples has never attracted as much curiosity as did the emblematic throne-statue, Afo-a-Kom, of the Kom kingdom in the Cameroon Grasslands. Crafted in the royal workshops of Laikom (1860s) and reminiscent of its patron, Foyn Yu (1865-1912), the antiquity became the subject of a highly mediatized Western campaign shrouded in controversy. Was Afo-a-Kom a prototype of African primitive art whose sole norm was wholesome superstition and witchery as painted by the West, or was it a noble standard of royalty and the intestines of a state as upheld by its kinsmen? Whisked off to the US in 1966 but restituted in 1973, Afo-a-Kom became the symbol, par excellence, of an organized rape of African art masterminded by Western collectors. This paper examines the role of Afo-a-Kom as a sacred object in kom culture and artistry, discusses its special traits, functions and significance, and assesses controversies surrounding the antiquity. In this endeavor, three questions beg for answers: What was the place of Afo-a-Kom and sacred art in Kom society? What were its peculiarities, functions and symbolisms? How far have controversies surrounding the antique subsided? Hinged on the theory of functional conservation (AO Konare, 1995) and the conservation debate (VB Ngitir, 2014), the study blends qualitative data and oral tradition, analyzed on the basis of content, iconography and chronology. From the study Afo-a-Kom emerges as soul of the Kom people, yet controversy persists on its alleged mystical manifestations both in the US and back home.
Keywords: King, throne, symbolism, Afo-A-kom, Kom.
Dynamique Performative et Spectaculaire du Nsuo Nda Nji chez les Bamoun. Get the full PDF
Moungande Ibrahim Aliloulay …………………………………………………..81-96
Les Bamoun ont connu une progression de plus en plus affirmée qui a débouché sur l’émergence d’une culture propre à ce peuple de l’Ouest/Cameroun. Sa richesse et sa singularité culturelles se traduisent notamment par un patrimoine culturel immatériel varié et préservé qui s’est transmis de générations en générations. De nos jours, certaines pratiques ancestrales sont toujours observées. C’est le cas des rites d’intronisation ou souo ndap. Face à la modernité, cette tradition séculaire s’est peu à peu réinventée à tel point que, les matrices spectaculaires y occupent une place prépondérante. L’approche sémiologique dans une perspective ethnoscénologique, permet de démontrer que c’est la dimension spectaculaire de ces rites qui cristallisent les regards et le « faire » des spectateurs.
Mots-clés : souo ndap, ethnoscénologie, sémiologie, invention des traditions, performance spectaculaire.
Jean Marie Teno’s Camera Verité as Art Intervention in Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Alasambom Nyingchuo………………………………………………..……….97-116
Historically, filmmakers in Cameroon have reacted differently to stiff censorship by the two political regimes that Cameroon has had since 1960. While some have opted for self-censorship and subtle deconstruction, a few have chosen to use their art as a liberation tool, consistently defying the status quo by decrying various socio-political injustices. Using Italian neorealism as analytical framework, this paper analyzes selected films of Jean Marie Teno, one of Cameroon’s liberationist filmmakers, to buttress how he stands in as the voice of the voiceless. At the end of this analysis, the major observation is that Teno could aptly be considered not just as a committed filmmaker with the objective to bring to the lime light alternative (and true) narratives of African life to the limelight, but also as an African theorist in present day socio-political discourse.
Keywords: Camera verité, Italian neorealism, militant filmmaking, socio-political discourse, post-colonial discourse.
Female Victimisation and Resistance in Alobwed’epie’s Trilogy: The Lady With A Beard, The Lady With The Sting and She Seized The Balls. Get the full PDF
Derick J. Mbungang…………………………………………………………….117-131
This paper examines how male characters in the corpus use tradition as a pretext to suppress female characters. The paper also demonstrates the challenges they face in their struggle with female protagonists. Feminism constitutes the theoretical lens that will be
used to analyze and interpret the texts under study. Feminism is a theory that advocates for the equality between men and women. According to feminists (de Beauvoir :1973, Gunew and Yeatman :1994, Tyson :2006) women are considered as social actors with specific characteristics which ought to be taken in account singularly. The problem the research addresses is one of representation of women in the corpus. Female characters are oppressed and victimized. The study is premised on the hypothesis that patriarchal norms are responsible for the subjugation of female characters who in turn fight back by performing roles that are known to be male in the society in which they live. The novels form a trilogy composed of The Lady with a Beard, The Lady with the Sting and She Seized the Balls. In this corpus, women are victims of male chauvinism. Male chauvinism is the belief that men are superior to women. According to Cambridge Dictionary, it is the “belief that women are naturally less important, intelligent, or able than men, and should be treated differently”. The trilogy provides great examples of mechanisms of hegemony, subordination and marginalisation through the representation of its male characters. In the fictional world which the texts depict, men denigrate women in the belief that they are inferior to them and thus deserve less treatment or benefit. What accounts for this belief is the patriarchal order imposed by the tradition of the Bakossi land. The study concludes that male characters manipulate social traditions to maintain inequality in gender relations but meet the opposition of women who are determined to
express themselves.
Keywords: Male Chauvinism, Patriarchy, Female Oppression, Resistance.
Varieties and Consciousness in Usage: Cameroon Pidgincreole and its Speakers. Get the full PDF
Fonka Hans Mbonwuh …………………………………………………………………132-152
After so many years of its existence in Cameroon and its development into varieties, both national and international scholars are still engaged in the debate about whether the various varieties of Cameroon Pidgincreole (CPc) are mutually intelligibility. This article attempts an examination of some existing varieties of CPc English and their various speakers, seeking to know whether speakers of a particular variety are aware of the existence of other varieties around them and whether they do understand such different varieties. The study used questionnaires to get the opinions of the respondents, who were both anglophone and francophone literates. The results indicate that some speakers know about the existence of CPc but not about varieties, while others are aware of the existence of varieties but cannot identify them distinctly by name. This paper is hinged on Microparametric Variation Model of Barbiers, Cornips, and vanderKleij. The results indicate that the question of mutual intelligibility is to an extent a battle among linguists, which does not directly concern the speakers who use this lingua franca daily without noticing differences. This equally indicates that even though there exist some indecipherable elements to speakers, codification and standardisation is quite possible because such elements in most of the varieties do not hinder understanding.
Keywords: Cameroon Pidgincreole, Varieties, Consciousness, Anglophone, Francophone.
Theatre and Therapy: a rapid review of related literature. Get the full PDF
Paul Animbom N……………………………………………………………….153-170
The available literature on/around theatre and therapy is increasing necessary so as to provide readers/scholars with up-to date resources. This literature, though readily available and accessible to most western countries, its availability to the Cameroonian scholars is still a problem. This review is aimed at providing the state of the art to researchers in the domain of theatre-related therapy in Cameroon so as to enable them, have a fundamental base on which to build and develop their arguments. This is necessary as more interest is manifested by young scholars who are developing concern on issues of therapy. This is a timely concern considering that, many more Cameroonians are
suffering from mental health issues and less is done with regards to the development of remedies. Theatre-related therapies are some of the alternative therapeutic modalities that can be used by Cameroonians to provide assistance to mental health patients. The paper follows a systematic review process and highlights various key and ground-breaking researches carried out on/around this area and shows that, if it is effectively applied, theatre and therapy become two sides of the same coin. This narrows the gap that has long existed between arts and health.
Keywords: Theatre, therapy, mental health, therapeutic theatre.
Orature at the Service of Environmental Sustainability in a Contemporary Cameroonian Setting: A Discourse on Bafut and Kom Spaces. Get the full PDF
Atoh Julius Chenwi & Che Chuchill Che………………………………………171-188
The role of indigenous languages expressed through proverbs to sensitize a people of a community cannot be under estimated. This essay investigates the role played by the Bafut and Kom proverbs in the sustenance of the environment. Several attempts have been made to curb environmental problems through NGOs, World Bank, WWF, UN, etc. The authors of this paper feel that if this problem can be handled in a holistic manner based on literature, with emphasis being laid on the psychological, social, spiritual, educative language and human conditions; using the case of Bafut and Kom proverbs, then environmental consciousness and preservation will be become a reality. This
investigation was guided by eco-criticism (theory) by Glotfelty (1996) and New Historicism of Gallagher and Greenblatt (2000). Data for this investigation was collected through oral performances on the said proverbs. These proverbs were first written in indigenous languages, which were later translated to English for better analysis. The results reveal that the society stands to gain much in our efforts to sustain our environments, if we go back to our cultures (which we have neglected) in general and dig deep into our oratures in particular as well as our indigenous languages to disseminate environmental information which can help to educate the masses.
Keywords: Orature, Environment, Sustainability .
Compliance and Breach of Non-refoulement Norm by the Cameroonian Authorities against Nigerian Refugees in the Conflict-ridden Far North Region of Cameroon, 2010-2019. Get the full PDF
Christian Nkatow Mafany & Emmanuel Yenkong Sobseh …………………189-209
This paper looks at the extent to which Cameroon conformed to Articles 33 of the 1951 Refugees Convention of non-refoulement which led to the influx of Nigerian refugees in the Far North Region, orchestrated by violent extremism by the Boko Haram Islamic Sect. It argues that, Cameroon complied to the non-refoulement norm by providing assistance to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), providing settlement sites and free education to refugees, providing counseling and legal assistance, as well as water, sanitation and security services. The findings reveal that, the lack of a historical consensus on fanatic acceptance of non-refoulement obligation, as an international refugee customary law, resulted to the breach of the non-refoulement norm by Cameroon State authorities. This was followed with the forcedful return of Nigerian refugees to the Nigerian-Far North Regional borders and forced repatriations between 2016 and 2019 against the Abuja
Tripartite Agreement (ATA) of 2017 that was signed by Nigeria, Cameroon and the United Nations Refugee Agency. However, this paper based on primary and secondary sources, concludes that, the forceful repatriation of Nigerian refugees and asylum seekers by Cameroon Security Forces has strained relations between Cameroon and Nigeria.
Keywords: Compliance, Breach, Non-Refoulement, Conflict, Nigerian Refugees, Cameroon.
Optimisation des compétences heuristiques des apprenants et rentabilité financière des Formations Professionnelles des établissements de l’Université de Douala. Get the full PDF
Silvère Bandjokotok Missikon, Yves Bapes Ba Bapes & Christèle Nadège Ngando…………………………………..……210-232
La professionnalisation des enseignements à l’Université publique est avancée dans le discours politique depuis les années 2000 comme la principale réponse au chômage croissant de la jeunesse africaine et camerounaise. Mais près de deux décennies plus tard, de nombreux écueils entravent son implémentation et son dénouement. La présente étude jette un regard critique sur l’optimisation des connaissances des étudiants inscrits en filière professionnelle et sur la rentabilité financière des institutions universitaires. À partir de l’analyse qualitative des entretiens et des documents, on s’aperçoit que la rentabilité heuristique des formations professionnelles à l’Université de Douala est querellée, alors que les gains financiers engrangés par celles-ci profitent moins aux institutions en tant qu’entité morale qu’aux gestionnaires (personnes privées) des établissements.
The professionalization of teaching at public universities has been put forward in the political speech since the 2000s as the main response to the growing unemployment of African and Cameroonian youths. But nearly two decades later, many quarrels hinder its implementation and outcome. The present study throws a critical look at the optimization of the knowledge of students enrolled in professional courses and the financial profitability of university institutions. From the qualitative analysis of interviews and documents, we observe that the heuristic profitability of professional training at the University of Douala is disputed, meanwhile the financial gains it produces benefits lesser to institutions as a legal entity than to the managers (private persons) of the establishments.
Mots-clés : Professionnalisation des enseignements, Filières professionnelles, Rentabilité financière, Université de Douala, Optimisation des connaissances.
Keywords: Professionalization of teaching, Professional courses, financial profitability, University of Douala, Optimization of knowledge.
La Problématique du Marché de l’Art Contemporain Camerounais. Les Ventes aux Enchères des Tableaux Chrétiens de Marc Padeu. Get the full PDF
Vendelin Abouna Abouna ………………………………………………………..1-26
Notre propos dans cet article est de démontrer qu’il existe bel et bien une économie de la culture africaine et que le marché de l’art contemporain camerounais, bien qu’étant embryonnaire, s’inscrit dans cette économie en pleine expansion. En portant un regard sur le contexte de naissance et d’évolution de l’art contemporain, le constat est clair que celui-ci se déploie dans une dialectique mettant en exergue dédain et admiration de la part de la critique. Cependant, malgré la non unanimité dans sa perception, cet art actuel prend de plus en plus de l’ampleur sur l’échiquier du marché de l’art mondial. De jeunes artistes africains contemporains inscrivent désormais leurs noms en lettre d’or dans les galeries les plus en vue de l’heure, et les grandes maisons de vente comme Christi’s, Sothebis et Piasa, pour ne citer que celles-là, proposent parfois à prix d’or leurs œuvres aux différents publics. Dans ces circonstances, le jeune peintre Marc Padeu s’y invite et propose un registre tout à fait nouveau. Il réinterprète l’iconographie chrétienne du XIVe et XVe siècle en lui revêtant un visage neuf suivant les lois de l’esthétique contemporaine. Cette iconographie chrétienne exprimée dans un langage nouveau, est plutôt bien accueillie dans le marché de l’art contemporain.
Mots-clés : Economie de la culture, marché de l’art contemporain, maisons de vente, impact économique.
La peau travaillée dans la culture chez les Massa du Cameroun et du Tchad. Get the full PDF
Fidessou Sylvestre …………………….…………………………………………27-46
Les sociétés traditionnelles africaines ont toujours reposé sur leurs us et coutumes. Les communautés du bassin du lac Tchad, en l’occurrence les Massa du Cameroun et Tchad ont eu pour identité culturelle la peau travaillée. Cette peau a toujours été arborée par les braves jeunes hommes qui pratiquent la cure de lait ou la lutte traditionnelle. La peau travaillée servait sur le plan culturel et chez les jeunes athlètes du gourouna à revêtir d’une part leurs flûtes et d’autre part comme un sarong qu’ils passaient autour de la hanche ; il jouait le rôle de kimono chez les Judokas. C’est d’autant que, jadis, tout homme massa en possédait une. Avec l’avènement de la modernité et de la mondialisation, le port de la peau travaillée est resté une pratique réservée aux cérémonies socioculturelles telles que les festivals, les danses organisées ça et là en milieux urbains pour commémorer le passé culturel. Par contre, en milieu rural, la fonction sociale première reste quelque peu préservée. Reposant pour l’essentiel sur les données empiriques, documentaires et archivistiques, l’étude prouve en dernière analyse que la peau travaillée a joué et joue encore un rôle essentiel dans les faits socioculturels chez les Massa de la vallée du Logone. Aussi, malgré les effets ‘‘dévastateurs’’ de la modernité, l’usage de la peau travaillée reste encore pérenne quoi qu’à une échelle réduite dans la culture de ce peuple.
Mots-clés : Peau travaillée, bassin du lac Tchad, modernité, vallée du Logone, Massa, mode de vie.
North West-South West Divide Within the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon: The 1985 Synod Election Crisis. Get the full PDF
Michael Kpughe Lang …………………………………………………………….47-65
Power struggles have roiled African Christian churches in multiple forms, promoting conflicts, stalling mission work and disrupting peaceful communities. The Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC) is no exception and has been the theatre of ethnic and regional differences expressed as power struggles pitching Christians from the North-West and South-West Regions of Cameroon. The principal cleavage in the PCC since her accession to autonomy from the Basel Mission in 1957 has all along resulted from power struggles. This article addresses the tensions resulting from persistent power struggles within the PCC. Such power struggles have often led to divisions and breakaway attempts within its governing structures, and this has negatively affected the growth of this Protestant denomination. Specifically, the paper investigates the 1985 Synod election crisis, discusses its manifestations, examines efforts towards it resolution, and highlights peacebuilding initiatives that followed. Its central argument is that North-West/South-West regional interests took precedence over collective concerns in the PCC, placing the church on the edge of ruin. It concludes that, historically, the North-West/South-West dichotomy has been the main factor in the power struggle and resultant tensions within the PCC. The crisis climaxed in 1985 when Synod elections allowed two North Westerners to occupy the two top posts of Moderator and Synod Clerk. The authorities of the church have managed to maintain the delicate balance of authority between the two regions by attempting to eliminate the dominance enjoyed by North Westerners through constitutional reforms.
Keywords: Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, power struggle, North Westerners, South Westerners, Synod Elections.
Rerouting the Imperialistic Parodies of African Cinemas. Get the full PDF
Aguugo, Barthelomew Gerald & Iloma Nyenwemaduka Richard……………66-80
Literary and cultural racism alongside the question of authenticity have been at the heart of much critical thinking about African Cinema. Prior and clearly during the colonial era, motion picture works about Africa effectively served to reinforce visions of the western world to the African aborigines. These imperialistic viewpoints pictured Africa as a wild and savage place existing outside the boarders of history. As filmmakers began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s from nations of the continent, with a rising consciousness about the ideological damages facing Africa, the need to quickly merge ranks became apparent, as a wide spread opinion agreeing to the reality that imperialist representations of Africa were stereotypical and inauthentic crowned it all. This paper is focused on examining this ideological counter from the early African filmmakers, not only to know how they amount to decolonization of the African motion picture industry but also to bring to bear their efforts in the struggle. The question whether the African Cinemas have been indeed decolonized decades after the colonials left is also in the spirit of this paper. The research adopts a qualitative methodology of textual evaluation to arrive at its conclusion. Amongst its findings is the fact that African Cinema was stereotyped by colonial forces to strengthen their dominance on the African landscape. The study contributes to knowledge by exposing the defaming western ideologies on the African cinema, while encouraging a Pan-African and counteractive cinematic themes and techniques for the deconstruction of western stereotypes and parody.
Keywords: Decolonization, Colonization, African Filmmakers, African Cinema.
Appraisal of the Performance/Role of Women in the Teaching and Learning of Music Education in Nigerian Colleges of Education. Get the full PDF
Julius Oluwayomi oluwadamilare………………………………………………81-91
This study examined the pattern of performance/role of Women in the teaching and learning of Music Education in Nigerian Colleges of Education. The descriptive survey research was used for this study. The population for the study comprised of twenty female Music lecturers from eight Colleges of Education. The samples of the study consisted of eight Colleges of Education purposively selected from the Federal and State Colleges of Education from South – West, South – South, South – East, and North – Central covering four geo – political zones in Nigeria where music is offered as a course of study out of the six geo – political zones. Two hypotheses were tested and inferential statistics of ttest was used to test the hypotheses. The results of the study showed that Junior and Senior female music teachers in the Colleges of Education have favourable opinion about the pattern of performance (role) of women in the teaching and learning of Music Education in Nigerian Colleges of Education{t (df.18) =0.834; P>0.05}. Their perception and attitude to Music Education Programme in Nigerian Colleges of Education do not differ {t (df.18) = -0.364; P>0.05}. It is therefore recommended that more music personnel should be employed at the federal and State Colleges of education, especially the female music personnel to maintain gender balance, to enhance the smooth running of the single and double major music programmes, and also in order to ensure compliance with the NCCE Minimum Standard requirement on staffing.
Keywords: Music Education, Performance, Teaching & Learning.
The Journey Motif in Butakean Dramaturgy: Lessons for the Developing World. Get the full PDF
David Mba Tambu ……………………………………………………..……….92-108
This paper seeks to demonstrate in what perspectives the plays of Cameroonian prolific literary baobab, Bole Butake, could be relevant not only to his ancestral territory but also to continental and transoceanic geopolitical realms. Among several plausible matrixes, it examines the journey motif in his nine published plays, two collections of plays, two adaptations for cinema and stage performances to underscore salient beyond-border migratory phenomena characteristic of his craftsmanship. Taking Thomas Sebeok’s global semiotics, Sanders Peirce’s triads and Jack Child’s pansemiotics into account, the paper adopts as approaches theasemiotics and cinesemiotics in the critical study of the key constituents of paratextuality, dramatic composition, and performance features in Butake’s plays. Through this endeavour, the paper establishes a reliable continuum among different plays by the same author; it highlights the much acceptable taxonomy of Butakean drama as well as enkindles interest in the art world on Butake’s invaluable input to the definition and edifice of African dramaturgy – a dramaturgy that is simultaneously committed, functional and educative for a universal readership and audience
Keywords: Dramaturgy, signs, theatre, drama, theasemiotics, cinesemiotics, semiotics.
Critical overview of mutations in some Contemporary African Poetry. Get the full PDF
David Toh Kusi ………………………………………………………………….109-124
The state of contemporary African poetry today reflects the mutations it has undergone from the precolonial, colonial, to post-independence periods. Before colonization, African oral poetry (songs, rituals, incantations, etc) was peculiar and depended on the performer, the audience, and the context. Iyasere (2006:326) characterised this uniqueness as “a communal literature”. Over the years, this uniqueness has been permeated by some globalising wave of hybridity and cultural mutations giving rise to the complex contemporary African poetry we have today as exemplified in the works of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Nol Alembong and Oscar Labang. This paper, therefore, attempts a postmodern/postcolonial criticism of these selected poets to delineate the extent to which their poetry project an African consciousness at the expense of a consumerist multicultural set-up that privileges the subjugation of the African identity. It further demonstrates the nature of postmodern African poetry and reveals that contemporary African poetry is an offshoot of shifts in time and space confounded in experimentation, influence and the sublimation of personal experiences.
Keywords: Postmodern, Contemporary, Criticism, Poetry, African, Culture/al, Identity.
The Paradox of the Male in Patriarchal Settings: Reading the Plays of Emeka Nwabueze . Get the full PDF
Kelvin Ngong Toh & Walters Ncham Yong …………………………………..125-136
As patriarchy solidifies, women have been at the forefront to decry its injustices so that many have thought that men’s silencing is because they benefit from the system of patriarchy. In much of dramatic productions, women have equally been at the forefront of changing the derogatory perceptions about them in patriarchal societies since the rhetoric often portrays them as the vulnerable group. Interestingly, the marginalization of men in patriarchy is often given a lacklustre attention, and the playwright, Emeka Nwabueze, demonstrates in his plays that men are equally victims of patriarchy. Gayatri Spivak’s discourse of epistemic violence and consent oppression on the subaltern are
relevant postcolonial feminist tenets that enable us to contend in this paper that in patriarchal societies, subjugation is not only meted out to women by men, but women are equally benefiting on the system to oppress and silence men. The paper concludes that Spivak’s question whether the subaltern can speak therefore demands that systems – patriarchy like matriarchy should adopt inclusive trends to gender and sex.
Keywords: Matriarchy, Patriarchy, Postcolonial feminism, Subaltern, Violence.
Adapting the Cameroonian Oral Tale in the Funnel of Process Drama, Education and Wildlife Conservation. Get the full PDF
Victor Jong Taku………………………………………………………………. 137-151
Oral narratives have been at the centre of the moralizing and educational process in traditional African societies. Apart from uniting families by the fireside, the storytelling event has facilitated the transmission of oral tales from one generation to the next. As society evolves within the dictates of modernization, the storytelling event has lost its essence in society. Even in remote areas, the presence of a generator and a television screen is enough to pull families from the fireside and keep them glued to the television set. In urban areas, the cell phone has taken over family reunion and distanced parents from their children. This paper will evaluate the role of the classroom teacher in formal learning settings in filling the gaps created by the absence of the storytelling event. It will examine the role of Process Drama in transforming oral narratives to meet the current needs of the society. Our focus will be on wildlife conservation which has been a major source of conflict in traditional societies where the people have hitherto dependent on bush meat for their survival and social prowess. With the aid of adaptation and the dynamics of process drama, we will examine how the folktale is transformed into a play with the aid of the classroom teacher and the contributions of the learners. The performance context will reveal how the tale is ripped from its original state to a new version that addresses an urgent and universal concern such as poaching.
Keywords: Adaptation, Oral narratives, Process drama, Wildlife Conservation, and Storytelling Event.
Acting as therapy for personal and social development. Get the full PDF
Paul Animbom Ngong ……………………………………………………………..1-13
For centuries gone, man has been constantly involved in acting/playing either knowingly or not. This somehow entertaining/pleasurable and spontaneous activity combines functions beyond its simplistic nature. In this light, entertainment, information, education and therapy are usually combined in a single activity in which partakers seek common outcomes. It however remains unclear how acting can be used as a therapeutic activity for personal and social development. This article addresses these perspectives through an exploratory approach of some practical considerations, to show that acting is, can, and should be used for personal and social development of persons in different contexts. It comes out of the study that acting is a form of language that facilitates expression or communication in the therapeutic space and gives the participants the possibility to understand their situations and interact better with the context. When participants involve in acting/playing, they are given the possibility to express themselves, develop their creative skills, interrelate, interact and use their imagination to dramatize situations.
Keywords: acting; therapy; personal and social development.
Storytelling and family therapy in Bole Butake’s Family Saga. Get the full PDF
Jean Robert Tchamba …………………………………………………………….15-30
This paper examines the therapeutic functions of narratives as used in traditional African context, and the use of storytelling as a tool for family therapy, from the perspective of narrative therapy, as displayed in Bole Butake’s Family Saga. It shows the process used by the playwright to showcase the African storytelling tradition in its cathartic (thus therapeutic) role, and its effectiveness in solving individual and group problems in a family context. It further demonstrates how the specific therapeutic setup is put in place in the play: stories are usually told for the healing benefit of the listener only, the storyteller being usually considered sane, and the listener the one in want. In Family Saga, both parties are in want. This accounts for the two-approach analysis used in this paper: the narrative therapy to examine the effect of stories on the story teller, and the therapeutic functions of traditional storytelling in traditional societies to understand the healing
process in the listener. It comes to the conclusion that Family Saga is a brilliant demonstration of reconciliation process in a crisis context.
Keywords: Storytelling – therapeutic functions – traditional griot – narrative therapy – Family Saga – Reconciliation.
Partnership and accountability in development initiatives: a Theatre For Development diagnosis of the Tole Tea Project. Get the full PDF
Patricia Nkweteyim ……………………………………………………………….31-47
Partnership and accountability are entrenched in development policies especially with the much drive for sustainability. Partnership assures the collaboration of players in any development project as well as advocates fair treatment of all stakeholders. The reality of these concepts which guarantee the possibility of local control and joint ownership of all the processes of any project is mostly in theory. In practice it is matched by unequal power relations especially in projects established in rural areas. Using the Participatory Action Research (PAR) as well as the Theatre for Development methodology on the privatized Cameroon Tea Estates (CTE), this article contends that partnership and accountability are vital development concepts for initiatives that have the people at heart and aim at sustainability. It argues that the difficulties that the Tole people are facing today and the threat on sustainability of the CTE are due to the non- or minimal existence of a good development plan. It is the hypotheses of this paper that accountability is engendered when partnership is established at the very beginning of a project and when there is accountability, the participation of all is automatic. Secondly, the participatory engagement of all the stakeholders will lead to sustainable fairness for all as well as the sustainability of the project.
Keywords: Partnership, Accountability, Development, PAR, TfD, Sustainability.
Traditional directorial techniques and cinematic virtual reality: compatibility drive. Get the full PDF
Aguugo, Barthelomew Gerald ……………………………………………………49-57
The popularity of Cinematic Virtually Reality has drastically appreciated in recent years. Obviously, this omnidirectional medium, which gives the viewer the liberty to see a movie from various angles of choice, needs the adaptation of traditional film making techniques, hence, this paper seeks to provide new insight into how existing techniques could be adapted to create effective Cinematic Virtual Reality experiences, as well as develop directing techniques that are exclusively for this new medium. To elucidate on the concept of Notion of Presence and, the idea of viewers’ engagement and interaction with film and cinematic storytelling, the Cinematic Virtual Reality medium has been particularly put forward. The work concludes that directors should go beyond the ordinary in designing for productions by exploring the full immersive potentials of the Cinematic Virtual Reality as an evolving technology, in this era of experimentation and sophistication.
Keywords: directing; cinematic, virtual reality, immersive.
Films camerounais et exotisme occidental. Get the full PDF
Ekoumba Paul Aimé ………………………………………………………………58-77
L’emploi du fonds esthético-culturel occidental semble une constance dans les films camerounais. Dès lors, à partir de quels aspects l’exotisme occidental s’y manifeste-t-il et à quels besoins répond-il ? Cet article ambitionne d’étudier quelques films camerounais et la manière dont la problématique de l’exotisme occidental s’y révèle. Aussi, l’approche proposée se veut un croisement entre le régime esthétique de l’art tel que présenté par Jacques Rancière et la sémiotique du cinéma d’après Francesco Casetti. Deux niveaux de développement constituent l’ossature de l’argumentation. Le premier examine l’exotisation des systèmes signifiants. Le second quant à lui, met l’accent sur l’emprunt d’un mouvement cinématographique occidental, à savoir la Nouvelle Vague. Il en découle que ces divers emprunts au patrimoine culturel et esthétique occidental, contribuent à rendre efficacement compte de l’intelligibilité du texte filmique
camerounais d’une part, et d’autre part, à créer une démarcation esthétique entre les cinéastes.
Mots-clés : Cameroun, exotisme, Occident, esthétique, culture.
Digitalization and the democratization of filmmaking in Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Alasambom Nyingchuo …………………………………………………………..79-92
From the early 70s, the film sector in Cameroon has had a long history of obstacles in financing, management, production, distribution and exploitation. The insufficiency of training facilities, funding, distribution and exploitation avenues has seriously obscured the visibility of the film sector in the country. The advent of digitalization and new technologies of Information and communication (NTICs) however has opened up avenues for young enthusiastic Cameroonian filmmakers to acquire knowledge in almost every discipline of film production, and also provided new avenues for funding, commercialization, distribution, exploitation. This paper examined the different ways in which digitalization has influenced the film sector in Cameroon. Through interviews and Focus Group Discussions with Cameroonian filmmakers and cultural entrepreneurs, it became clear that digital technologies have greatly democratized filmmaking in the country by reducing production costs, as granting greater access for the youths to knowledge on arts management, funding and fundraising, production and distribution of films. Also, thanks to digitalization, several local television stations in Cameroon and Africa now exist, which specialize in the broadcast of African and regional films. The major conclusion is that digital technologies have contributed considerably to bridging the infrastructural gap in the Cameroon film sector, especially when it comes to training, production, management and distribution.
Key words: Cultural entrepreneur, filmmaker, digital technologies, intercultural exchange.
Etude de la correlation entre niveau de developpement et industrialisation du cinema et leçons pour les cinemas du Sud. Get the full PDF
Bell Yembel Jacques Merlin ……………………………………………………..93-114
Dans un contexte mondial où le visage du cinéma change selon qu’on se trouve dans les pays développés ou dans ceux en développement, ce travail, porté par l’hypothèse que le niveau d’industrialisation du cinéma dans un pays est tributaire de son niveau de développement, étudie la corrélation entre ce dernier et l’industrialisation du cinéma. Nous fondant sur la conception sociologique de la corrélation et grâce à l’exploitation de documents, nous arrivons, en dépit des quelques exceptions observées çà et là et qui confirment la tendance générale, à la conclusion que notre hypothèse de recherche est vérifiée ; autrement dit, que le niveau de développement influe sur la capacité d’un pays à industrialiser sa cinématographie.
Mots-clés : corrélation, niveau de développement, industrialisation du cinéma.
Analyse historique de la place des monuments dans la restitution de l’histoire du Cameroun. Get the full PDF
Paul Animbom N., Fidessou Sylvestre & Tele Djosseu Landry………………..1-27
Le récit du passé consiste à analyser les événements pour relater et contextualiser ce qui a été. Le présent travail se propose de reconstituer à travers les œuvres matérielles notamment les monuments, l’histoire du Cameroun. Les monuments sont destinés à graver dans la pierre, le bois, le béton et aujourd’hui l’acier et autres technologies nouvelles, les personnes et les événements qui ont façonné l’histoire commune d’une société. Cependant, ce qui tient lieu d’histoire n’est toujours ce qui constitue le passé, elle est une reconstruction toujours problématique et incomplete. Le passé est plus évasif et profond que les seules restitution et représentation ne peuvent le restaurer dans sa totalité. Cet article a pour but de situer la place des monuments dans la restitution de l’histoire du Cameroun. Il en ressort que les valeurs culturelles et sociopolitiques que le monument représente aujourd’hui dans notre société est en perpétuelle métamorphose.
Mots-clés : Cameroun, monument, histoire, lieux de mémoire, traces, restitution.
Je suis Bamenda, Je suis Dockta: Accounting for the popularity of Bamenda Grassfields Traditional Medicine men in Cameroon since precolonial times. Get the full PDF
Joseph Lon NFI ………………………………………………………………….29-41
Les Bamenda as they are called in Cameroon today, are the people of the Bamenda Grassfields or the Bamenda Province, North West Province and North West Region as the areas was referred to at various moments of Cameroon history. These people are known to be robust, hardworking, enduring, exploitable, serviceable, respectful of constituted traditional authority but very opposed to unfair government authority. This account for their presence in household, firms and plantations in the urban and rural areas of the Southern Cameroon. This paper is interested in another aspect of their dynamism. It investigates the survival of their traditional medical practices despite colonial and missionary influences and the presences of Bamenda Dockta all over the economically advanced Southern Cameroon in towns like Buea, Victoria, Kumba, Douala, Yaounde, Edea, Nkongsamba, Ebolowa, Tiko and Kribi. Based on oral interviews, secondary
sources and the observations of the author, the paper reveals that the contact between Western or Scientific Medicines and Indigenous Medicines in the Bamenda Grassfields did not destroy the indigenous heritage like elsewhere and that the migratory character of the populations, the economic value of their medicines and liberty laws of the 1990s opened the wider Cameroon market to Bamenda Dockta. Les Bamenda are therefore also known and distinguished because of their real or imagined indigenous medicinal prowess.
Key Words: Indigenous, Medicines, Herbalists, Bamenda Grassfields, Cameroon.
Alienating Grassfields cultural objects to Western museums: who cares?. Get the full PDF
Ngitir Victor Bayena (PHD) ……………………………………………………..43-59
One of the recurrent phenomena that have plundered Africa’s rural communities for centuries has been the
ferrying of cultural heritage from village treasures and palaces towards museums in the cities and
metropolis. Despite their standard definition as permanent, non-profit institutions at the service of man and
society, museums of today have become enterprises and transit points for the trafficking of material heritage
from local communities to urban galleries and even overseas museums through covert and overt means.
Born from the ashes of colonialism in the 1930s, Cameroon’s museum institution displays a typology of
private and public museums littered on both sides of the linguistic and cultural divide. Based on collection
policies that mattered only to British and French collectors, art agents systematically plundered palaces and
community collections through looting, extortion and illicit traffic to feed metropolitan galleries and
museums far off in Europe and America. By the 1980s, thousands of artefacts, masterpieces and antiquities
– masks, thrones, royal paraphernalia and even worship objects – had been whisked off, throwing Alpha
Oumar Konare’s theory of functional conservation overboard. This paper traces the genesis and motivation
for this traffic, examines the typology and functions of artefacts ferried out, and finally, proposes a plan to
reverse the trend. Three key questions beg for answers: why the huge appetite for local cultural objects in
cities and overseas? What are the categories and functions of the displaced objects? How can this outflow
be stopped? A blend of oral tradition and qualitative data analyzed on a chronological-cum-thematic–cum
content basis reveals among other things that local agents played the go-between, facilitating illicit art deals;
that masterpieces, worship items and antiquities continue to be the most solicited by overseas museums;
and finally that a holistic African master-plan is required to reverse the trend.
Keywords: rural, heritage, traffic, museums, conservation.
Couleur et dessin : une ontologie de la matière et de la forme dans l’objet esthétique contemporain. Get the full PDF
Essono Jean Donald ……………………………………………………………..61-81
À chaque époque, telles les expressions d’une épistémè, correspondent une tradition
artistique et un mode de perception de l’art sur fond d’idéal de vie. L’homme
contemporain exige des objets qu’il perçoit ou manie que leur forme adhère à la
constitution psychophysique et biomorphologique du sujet humain. La culture
postmoderne consacre la consommation de masse, qui se veut être de tous les artefacts.
Toutes les productions humaines réalisées sous forme d’image plastique seraient dès
lors promues au rang d’œuvre d’art, quand bien même quelques-unes conservaient leur
fonction initiale d’utilité. C’est sur fond de ce besoin qu’il faudrait regarder
l’affrontement auquel continuent de se livrer le dessin et la couleur sur l’immense terrain
des arts de l’espace, mode, décoration et design industriel compris. La couleur et le
dessin rivalisent de perfection avec pour but ultime de ravir la suprématie en création.
Le dessin montre plus de chance de l’emporter sur la couleur pour son affinité avec la
géométrie et pour la commodité qu’il permet de procurer aux artefacts.
Mots-clés : artefact, commodité, couleur, dessin, forme, géométrie, matière.
Music, aesthetics and culture in Femi Osofisan’s selected plays.Get the full PDF
Adeleke, E. B. …………………………………………….……………………82-100
Most of Femi Osofisan’s plays can be described as plays pleasant. This is so because of the judicious use of music in the plays. Culture is the totality of way of life evolved by a people in their attempts to meet the challenge of living in their environment which give order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic, and religious norms and modes of organisation. Using the aesthetic theory, this essay investigates patterns of music (vocal and instrumental) in Osofisan’s selected plays against the backdrop of the culture the plays dramatize. The essay finds that music encapsulates two rites of passage (marriage and burial), abuse, and ancestral worship of the Yoruba culture represented in these plays. We conclude that music is a means of creating beauty and a veritable tool of culture expression in the dramaturgy of Osofisan.
Keywords : Osofisan, Music, Aesthetics, Culture, Rites.
The socio-cultural impact of music education in conflict resolution in Nigeria. Get the full PDF
Julius Oluwayomi OLUWADAMILARE Ph.D……………………..………101-110
The current state of insecurity in the country is a major concern to all and sundry. Hardly can there be a week without the news of kidnapping, gruesome killings/murder, rape, armed robbery, e.t.c, being reported in the Nigerian daily papers. Indeed, things are falling
apart, the centre no longer holds and people are no longer at ease as far as security of lives and property is concerned. The issue of national security is multidimensional and multifaceted, hence, the need for multidisciplinary approaches. This paper therefore examines the socio-cultural impact of Music Education on conflict resolution and management in Nigeria. Songs that teach patriotism, unity, peace and progress are emphasised in this paper since music influences human behaviour in one way or the other.
Keywords : National Security, Music Education, Conflict Resolution.
Ethnomusicologie de la contrapunctique dans la chanson Baka de Ndélélé à la lumière de l’étude de Simha Arom sur les Pygmées Centrafricains. Get the full PDF
Aristide Sanama Nguillé………………………………………………………111-129
Les chansons baka sont fonctionnelles. Elles sont exécutées lors des scènes de début de chasse, de pêche, de collecte ou pour accueillir une naissance. C’est dire que la musique chez les Pygmées baka est essentielle à l’harmonie du groupe. Pas étonnant alors que les Pygmées connaissent leur corpus musical dans son exhaustivité, indépendamment des statuts d’acteurs ou de spectateurs. Le présent article décrit l’enregistrement et l’analyse du contrechant dans une formation orchestrale pygmée à Ndélélé dans la Kadéy. L’objectif est de démontrer par l’utilisation d’outils technologiques adaptés et la Méthodologie de la Théorisation Enracinée (MTE), l’exception musicale baka. Dans une perspective ethnomusicologique, l’étude observe la technique de chant et l’orchestre. Il s’agit de théoriser leurs interactions contrapunctiques, car ce sont les musiciens, les chanteurs et les spectateurs eux-mêmes qui en déterminent les conditionnalités.
Baka songs are functional. They are performed at the beginning of hunting, fishing, and gathering or to welcome a birth. This means that, music for the Baka Pygmies is essential to the harmony of the group. It is not surprising that Pygmies know their musical corpus in its entirety, regardless of whether they are actors or spectators. The present article describes the recording and analysis of the counterpoint in a pygmy orchestral formation in Ndélélé in Kadey’s subdivision. The objective is to demonstrate using adapted technological tools and the Methodology of Rooted Theorising (MTE), the Baka musical exception. From an ethnomusicological perspective, the study observes the singing technique and the orchestra and deduce that the musicians, singers and spectators themselves determine the interaction conditions.
Mots-clés : musique, communautarisme, baka, contrapunctique, ethnomusicologie.
Keywords: music, communitarianism, baka, contrapunctic, ethnomusicology.
Dress and subculture identification in Cameroon. Get the full PDF
Ibrahim Aliloulay Moungande & BIKME Rick Constant………………….130-147
Culture and cultural identity are predominant elements which mould the customs and beliefs of a group of people. Everyone identifies to a subcommunity respective or irrespective of the wider community in which they are. Different groups of people develop different norms and values regarding cultural, political and sexual matters. The sartorial trendiness is not at rest for that matter especially in Cameroon which is an amalgamation of many cultures. This brings up the problematic, which is the cultural clash in the sartorial fashion in Cameroon nowadays. In addition to this, how does dressing identify a subcultural group? The objective in this study is to ascertain the reasons how subcultural groups identify with the dress code in Cameroon. To attain this, a cultural studies approach using an ethnographic perspective will be used. We made use documentation, interviews, observation and filmography to support our arguments with the result that, the Cameroonian subculture dress codes emanate from societal leverage
Keywords: Fashion, sartorial, subculture, cultural studies, ethnography.
