Confrontation and Incorporation: Igbo Ethnicity in Cameroon

Extract

The upsurge of ethnic consciousness in urban America which crested during the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired a sustained academic interest in ethnicity as a social phenomenon. This may partly explain the fact that American scholars over the past two decades have been largely concerned with urban ethnicity and have shown little inclination to carry their investigation into rural areas. Among Africanists, Wallerstein (1965: 477) has gone so far as to suggest that ethnicity is an exclusively urban phenomenon. The present paper argues that, although this generalization is unwarranted, one does tend to find more striking manifestations of ethnicity in urban areas than in the countryside. However, the author's study of Igbo migrants in Cameroon reveals that rural centers often favor the articulation of an ethnic identity which is, in some aspects, more functional and consolidated than in the town.

The Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth and his colleagues broke new ground with their provocative analyses of ecological factors which condition the maintenance of ethnic boundaries. They noted that individuals often downplay or transform their ethnic identity in response to the local environmental situation or particular ecological niche that the group comes to occupy. Extreme examples of ethnic transformation are Barth's (1969) southern Pathans who are incorporated into Baluchi tribes as serfs and Haarland's (1969: 61) Fur cultivators who acquire many cattle and ultimately become Baggara Arabs. Less extreme examples of identity manipulation include Eidheim's (1969: 39) Lapp fishing villages and the Mon peasants studied by the American anthropologist Brian Foster (1974).