Baka Pygmies in Cameroon

This thesis explores the socio-cultural aspects of hunting and wildlife crisis through data collected during 14 months of fieldwork in two Baka villages of southeastern Cameroon. The Baka "Pygmies" live in a context polarized by conservation measures on one side and economic incentives for bushmeat trade on the other. This thesis provides a broad view of how the Baka society reacts to a fast changing context where fauna has become a major stake. To do so, I analysed the way Baka hunt, consume, and commercialize wild meat, but also how they interpret environmental changes and their potential impacts on social structure and wellbeing. Through the different chapters of the thesis, I used an ethnoecological approach and combined data collected through qualitative and quantitative methods. Specifically, I used systematic surveys to collect data on informants’ (n=269) socio-economic characteristics, hunting outputs, hunting knowledge, status, and meat consumption. These data are associated with information from semi-structured interviews and from insights generated during long periods of participant observation. For the Baka, the acquisition and sharing of wild meat remains a critical symbolic and social practice, although the context of hunting seems to have changed to what was previously described. Nowadays, the Baka hunt and consume mostly small mammals, notably rodents, in a landscape seemingly depleted due to past over hunting. Hunting is not equally practiced by all the Baka: while most Baka have relatively low hunting outputs, some others –pushed by economic incentives and the unregulated presence of shotguns in the area– seem to be largely involved in bushmeat trade. Variations in hunting practices relate to variations in hunting knowledge and skills, which in turn are reflected on different social status. Previous patterns of status attribution to hunters are, however, being altered arguably because of the decrease in bushmeat sharing, notably by elephant hunting specialists. Finally this thesis shed light upon Baka perceptions on wildlife changes and conservation measures, a process that is mostly negatively perceived by the Baka, who express feelings of marginalisation and fear due to the use of force and abuses from conservation agents. This thesis is the first to provide a deep analysis of hunting in the current context of Baka populations. It highlights intracultural variations on social aspects related to hunting, such as diet, status, income, and social perceptions. At the applied level, this work suggests that current conservation policies critically need a full understanding of local people’s cosmovisions, reactions to changes, and the consequences of both defaunation and imposed conservation measures on their social, economic and cultural frameworks.

Ethnographers of Congo Basin hunter-gatherers have emphasised ritual as a levelling mechanism that strengthens community spirit and mediates power evenly between individuals and subgroups. Pursuant to recent research with a Baka community in Cameroon, now largely abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, I analyse the mutual causal interactions between ritual alterations and other markers of social change. I argue that there is a positive feedback loop between ritual change and general social transformation towards a less egalitarian mode of sociality. Increasingly pressed into convening with globalizing forces and integrating into the capitalist economy, the rhetoric of development has been adopted by the Baka. This community talk of a history of isolation, as a public road was extended to the district as late as 2007 by a mining corporation. The result of the new road and burgeoning mining activities is that the community has been exposed precipitously to new peoples, lifestyles and technologies.  Ritual has become an arena in which Baka individuals grapple with a widely experienced ethnic identity crisis, leading to structural changes that encourage further social transformation. Ritual diversion thus refers to social changes being explored through mimesis in ritual spaces, resulting in the changing character of ritual. It creates a hierarchical flow of power among the Assoumindele Baka. The hypothesis this case study yields is that, in egalitarian societies, ritual rebellion favours explorations of inequality, whereas in hierarchical societies it explores equality. In situations of rapid social transformation these ritual potentialities can be consolidated into the social order.

Pygmy populations occupy a vast territory extending west-to-east along the central African belt from the Congo Basin to Lake Victoria. However, their numbers and actual distribution is not known precisely. Here, we undertake this task by using locational data and population sizes for an unprecedented number of known Pygmy camps and settlements (n = 654) in five of the nine countries where currently distributed. With these data we develop spatial distribution models based on the favourability function, which distinguish areas with favourable environmental conditions from those less suitable for Pygmy presence. Highly favourable areas were significantly explained by presence of tropical forests, and by lower human pressure variables. For documented Pygmy settlements, we use the relationship between observed population sizes and predicted favourability values to estimate the total Pygmy population throughout Central Africa. We estimate that around 920,000 Pygmies (over 60% in DRC) is p...

For long, the importance of fishing for forest societies has been hiding behind the term “hunter-gatherers”. Whereas the importance of hunting is commonly recognized among such societies, some research has also highlighted that fishing is a primordial resource for subsistence, as well as a key element in the cosmology of several forest societies. However, very few studies — and less so among Central African forest societies — have focused on fishing practices and their social, cultural and symbolic complexity. To contribute to fill this gap, we analyze fishing activities among two Baka communities from southeastern Cameroon, particularly focusing on fishing productivity as well as the ethnoecological specificities and the socio-cultural role of fishing. Data were collected through interviews and systematic observations of fishing activities carried out with children and adults and weekly interviews on productivity carried out during twelve months (n = 272 individuals). Results of this study highlight that fishing, and most specifically dam fishing, a collective women fishing technique, bears a specific place in Baka society. In contrast with hunting, whose value is mostly associated to the cultural valorization of the wild meat, the cultural importance of fishing is largely based on the activity in itself, through its socio-cultural dimension. Dam fishing creates a specific space where, in the absence of men, women create social cohesion through exchanges and sharing. Furthermore, dam fishing represents a privileged space for learning, because it allows not only the transmission of ethnoichthyological knowledge, but also the transmission of other aspects of cultural knowledge that shape the early gender differentiation between boys and girls. This paper aims to highlight the socio-cultural value of fishing activities in the livelihood of contemporary forest hunter-gatherers.

This article introduces the concept of motility, the capacity to be mobile, as an in-depth way to account for changes in forager mobility and social organization. Motility adds to the understanding of diversified mobilities by focusing not only on actualized observable mobility, but by also considering the choices and limitations, which precede movement. The notion of 'mobility capital' evidences how changing individual and group mobilities challenge Baka egalitarian social organization.

Pygmy populations occupy a vast territory extending west-to-east along the central African belt from the Congo Basin to Lake Victoria. However, their numbers and actual distribution is not known precisely. Here, we undertake this task by using locational data and population sizes for an unprecedented number of known Pygmy camps and settlements (n = 654) in five of the nine countries where currently distributed. With these data we develop spatial distribution models based on the favourability function, which distinguish areas with favourable environmental conditions from those less suitable for Pygmy presence. Highly favourable areas were significantly explained by presence of tropical forests, and by lower human pressure variables. For documented Pygmy settlements, we use the relationship between observed population sizes and predicted favourability values to estimate the total Pygmy population throughout Central Africa. We estimate that around 920,000 Pygmies (over 60% in DRC) is p...

Les forêts du bassin du Congo sont un des lieux emblématiques de la confrontation entre deux visions de la « nature » et de la forêt : la vision de ceux qui souhaitent la protéger et la vision de ceux qui souhaitent continuer à y vivre. Dans ce billet, Romain Duda revient sur les limites des politiques actuelles de conservation de la nature en Afrique centrale et la manière dont elles sont imposées aux populations par l’entremise de grandes ONG internationales.

Attempting to effectively address the situation of Indigenous peoples across the globe in a single inclusive document, Dr. Kelly NGYAH presents this unique and innovative literary manual that brings national and global politics on indigenous peoples closest to your intellect. It extensively highlights the indigenous worries of your people, where ever you are in the world, and further provides strategic openings for enhancing policy advocacy frameworks towards strengthening ties between your people and their national governments.
Across 325pages and 95,130words multicoloured textual and imagery demonstrations, the document exhumes the anthropological perspectives of Indigeneity through the human rights based contexts of tribal peoples as given in the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). It as well, carves out the world’s indigenous peoples within measurable regional regrouping dimensions and communicates the indigenous ethical contrasting and synonymy politics within the targeted national and regional zones.
In addition, to ensure an exclusive representation or inclusiveness of the world’s indigenous peoples, the document overviews the indigenous and/or ethnic minority peoples’ Politico-Legal situations in over 14 zones including: South America, Russia as of whole, Central, East and South Asia, Middle East, North America, the Arctic region, Australia, Eastern, Central, Northern, Southern, and Western Africa through an inclusive focus on over 400 indigenous peoples in over 70 countries
Rhetorically, the study is presented via three principal parts which include: Indigeneity, Anthropology, Political Transnationalism, and the analyses of Indigenous peoples outside Africa; the situation of indigenous peoples within Africa; and a summarized cross-sectional comparative study of the presented cases in the earlier parts.
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Knowledge within this document, truly empowers you on both Academic and Professional Bases

Pygmy populations occupy a vast territory extending west-to-east along the central African belt from the Congo Basin to Lake Victoria. However, their numbers and actual distribution is not known precisely. Here, we undertake this task by using locational data and population sizes for an unprecedented number of known Pygmy camps and settlements (n = 654) in five of the nine countries where currently distributed. With these data we develop spatial distribution models based on the favourability function, which distinguish areas with favourable environmental conditions from those less suitable for Pygmy presence. Highly favourable areas were significantly explained by presence of tropical forests, and by lower human pressure variables. For documented Pygmy settlements, we use the relationship between observed population sizes and predicted favourability values to estimate the total Pygmy population throughout Central Africa. We estimate that around 920,000 Pygmies (over 60% in DRC) is p...

Pygmy populations occupy a vast territory extending west-to-east along the central African belt from the Congo Basin to Lake Victoria. However, their numbers and actual distribution is not known precisely. Here, we undertake this task by using locational data and population sizes for an unprecedented number of known Pygmy camps and settlements (n = 654) in five of the nine countries where currently distributed. With these data we develop spatial distribution models based on the favourability function, which distinguish areas with favourable environmental conditions from those less suitable for Pygmy presence. Highly favourable areas were significantly explained by presence of tropical forests, and by lower human pressure variables. For documented Pygmy settlements, we use the relationship between observed population sizes and predicted favourability values to estimate the total Pygmy population throughout Central Africa. We estimate that around 920,000 Pygmies (over 60% in DRC) is p...

Pygmy populations occupy a vast territory extending west-to-east along the central African belt from the Congo Basin to Lake Victoria. However, their numbers and actual distribution is not known precisely. Here, we undertake this task by using locational data and population sizes for an unprecedented number of known Pygmy camps and settlements (n = 654) in five of the nine countries where currently distributed. With these data we develop spatial distribution models based on the favourability function, which distinguish areas with favourable environmental conditions from those less suitable for Pygmy presence. Highly favourable areas were significantly explained by presence of tropical forests, and by lower human pressure variables. For documented Pygmy settlements, we use the relationship between observed population sizes and predicted favourability values to estimate the total Pygmy population throughout Central Africa. We estimate that around 920,000 Pygmies (over 60% in DRC) is p...

The African pygmy phenotype stems from genetic foundations and is considered to be the
product of a disturbance in the growth hormone–insulin-like growth factor (GH–IGF) axis.
However, when and how the pygmy phenotype is acquired during growth remains unknown.
Here we describe growth patterns in Baka pygmies based on two longitudinal studies of
individuals of known age, from the time of birth to the age of 25 years. Body size at birth
among the Baka is within standard limits, but their growth rate slows significantly during the
first two years of life. It then more or less follows the standard pattern, with a growth spurt at
adolescence. Their life history variables do not allow the Baka to be distinguished from other
populations. Therefore, the pygmy phenotype in the Baka is the result of a change in growth
that occurs during infancy, which differentiates them from East African pygmies revealing
convergent evolution