Public Defense of PhD thesis (6 dec, Danmark)

Please find attached and kindly circulate the announcement regarding the public defense of Rogers Orock’s PhD thesis in anthropology at Aarhus University in Denmark, entitled ‘Belonging, Democracy and Development in Cameroon’s Patrimonial State: an Anthropology of Political Elites’ on December 6th, 2013. Rogers Orock – PhD defense 6 December 2013

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis is a study of political elites in contemporary Cameroon since the country’s transition to democracy in 1990. Examining elite practices of belonging and patronage politics in democracy, the thesis critically analyzes how such practices constitute a central part of the cultural, but also largely state-fostered, repertoire of elite politics in Cameroon and, suggests that these elite political practices are legitimated and evaluated by the notion that they must be geared towards development for their communities. It explores how Cameroonian political elites define themselves and are also defined by their communities as political leaders within a personalized logic of patronage, development and belonging (kinship, ethnicity, regionalism) that mobilizes cultural symbols to foster the interactions between communities and the state. While the ethos of dependency and mutuality in Cameroon’s patrimonial politics reveals it as a cultural style of domination that promises political intimacy and inclusion, the thesis also shows that the reality of exclusion for non-elites is the source of contradictions and tensions over the morality of elite power within a lively social discourse on elites in Cameroon. Notwithstanding these contradictions and contrary to the pessimism in largely institutionalist accounts of democracy, this thesis demonstrates that an ethnographically grounded and historicized approach to the cultural practice of democracy and development by Cameroonian political elites holds important and interesting lessons for re-interpreting the nature and practice of democracy in Africa.