Power and resistance in Cameroon – strategies, intentionality, intersectionality, and shifting spaces and identities

Abstract

This paper examines how forest communities in Cameroon engage in social transformation when faced with social injustices and uneven power relations in their interactions with local state authorities and transnational corporations. It focuses on the different strategies that marginalized resource-dependent communities employ in resisting existing forms of domination manifested in public–private-community forest governance relations. We show how power operates in closed governance spaces to work against equitable, democratic and effective policy-making. We take as a point of departure that resistance or social change cannot be understood in isolation from power. Moreover, we engage with the intentionality debate and make the case that some forms of resistance are goal oriented in character. We reveal how disenfranchised communities, using powerful traditional ritual as a form of public protest, can effectively open up closed spaces and obtain effective participation in processes denied them. Our findings have significance for resistance and power debates relating to intentionality, intersectionality and outcomes.

Keywords:

• resistance
• power
• forest conflict
• belief systems
• false consciousness
• Cameroon

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Fonchingong and Tanga (2007) on the exceptional conditions necessitating the Takumbeng – a women group that staged a successful protest in the nude against untold military brutality in the early 1990s in the North–West province of Cameroon – mobilization. Such exceptional cases are rare in practice and are often limited to the North–West region).

2. See Harris (2012) for detailed analysis of gender (-age) societies and the relationship between women of age and power in a Ugandan society.