Traditional and new houses, old and new paths to social status in the Mandara highlands, Cameroon

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that in the Mandara Mountains, houses, whether traditional or modern, are means by which social relations are continuously created, reproduced, justified and transformed. This approach has relevance for the literature insofar as authors have mainly focused on the role of elite and public buildings in the generation and maintenance of power and hierarchies, while domestic architecture has been studied mainly as a symbol of group values. Building materials and architectural shapes of houses are continually morphing in the Mandara Mountains, but the social practices related to the use of the inhabited space remain unchanged. The study is original because the existing literature on the Mandara Mountains focuses more on traditional architecture. While this area has surfaced in the news as a hinterland of Boko Haram in neighbouring Nigeria, recent cultural and, in particular, architectural transformations have not received much attention.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article suggère que dans les monts Mandara, les maisons, qu’elles soient traditionnelles ou modernes, sont des moyens par lesquels les relations sociales sont continuellement créées, reproduites, justifiées et transformées. Cette approche est pertinente pour la littérature dans la mesure où les auteurs se sont principalement concentrés sur le rôle de l’architecture élitiste et public dans la création et le maintien du pouvoir et des hiérarchies sociales, tandis que l’architecture domestique a été étudiée principalement en tant que symbole des valeurs de groupes sociaux. Dans les monts Mandara, les matériaux de construction et les formes architecturales des maisons se transforment continuellement, mais les pratiques sociales liées à l’utilisation de l’espace habité restent inchangées. Cette étude est aussi originale pour le regard comparatif qu’il porte sur l’architecture traditionnelle et “moderne” quand la littérature existante sur les monts Mandara se concentre davantage sur l’architecture traditionnelle. Alors que cette zone est apparue dans l’actualité comme une des bases de Boko Haram, les récentes transformations culturelles et, en particulier, architecturales n’ont pas beaucoup retenu l’attention.

KEYWORDS:

• Mandara Mountains
• material culture
• social identity
• domestic space
• traditional houses
• modern houses
• hierarchy
• power

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Monts Mandara
• culture matérielle
• identité sociale
• espace domestique
• maisons traditionnelles
• maisons modernes; hiérarchie
• pouvoir

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Guided tours of compounds are a common practice in the Mandara Mountains, especially when interviews focus on the domestic space. See for example Van Beek (1986).

2 An exception to this is the paper published by Diane Lyons (1996) on the politics of house shape in Dela households in northern Cameroon.

3 Pseudonyms have been used throughout the paper to ensure the anonymity of informants, and some life histories have also been withheld to preserve their privacy.

4 The symbolic importance of the human belly is reported by Malaquais (1994) in the Bamileke region, where the stomach is considered the part of the human where social recognition begins. As such, it is “the locus of the very first rituals undergone by an individual, and it remains a subject of ceremonial concern throughout a person's life” (Malaquais 1994, 24).

5 See also the seminal work of Malaquais (1994) on the Bamileke regarding the same topic.

6 According to Mura, compounds can be haunted by deceased spirits or afflicted by witches. To avoid this, huts of those who died in the previous year must be exorcised during the feast of the dead (see Lyons 1998).

7 There exists in Montagnard societies a set of social practices that present wives as potential witches, and as intimate strangers in the marital home. According to Lyons (1996), these social practices are used by men to exclude wives from the control of fields, inheritance and houses. But wives sometimes use men’s fear that they may act as witches to protect themselves from their husbands’ abuse of authority (see Lyons 1998 for more details).

8 Not only must the rooms of deceased persons be exorcised but also the whole house, through some kind of cleansing ritual the role of which is to ensure the owner’s protection, well-being and success. In this respect, the entrance to every Mura house was covered with amulets, a kind of magical material generally painted red in order to protect the house and its contents from evil forces, including people (Lyons 1998). In fact, objects associated with the neutralization of the evil power should be decorated in red or with a spiral, as red color is considered as a remedy against evil powers (see also David 1991). Other inverted and broken objects like pots were also a key part of the social practices related to domestic compounds in the Mura society (Lyons 1998).

Additional information

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Melchisedek Chétima

Melchisedek Chétima is a professor of African history at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM). He was previously a Banting postdoctoral scholar at York University, fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies, Gordon Henderson fellow at the University of Ottawa, and visiting fellow at the Center for African Studies, University of Basel. His current research focuses on the historical context of Boko Haram, including parallels with and differences from the period of slavery, during which the Mandara Mountains of northern Cameroon were the target of slave hunters, and the current violence associated with Boko Haram. His work has appeared in African Studies Review, Africa Spectrum, The Historical Journal, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Cahiers d’Études Africaines and Cambridge Archaeological Journal.