Anthropologist
Extended Preview for Something New in Old Town. To learn more about this film and where to purchase it, visit: www.bonestudios.org For personal viewing, visit www.amazon.com for a copy at $9.99 If you’ve watched the documentary film, join us for … Continued
As you may or may not know, I’m an ethnographic filmmaker with a passion for telling African stories that would otherwise not be heard or seen. In 2016, I released my debut documentary film, Something New in Old Town. It has played at film festivals in the USA, Switzerland and Nigeria, where last year, it won the best documentary film at the inaugural Lekki International Film Festival in Lagos.
In this short video, I share with Jean-Marie Tieno, a legendary Cameroonian filmmaker – my thoughts on Freedom and the concept of Sovereignty in Africa. The filmmakers were interested in learning how the concept of freedom is expressed in African languages.
In this lecture, I examine some of the theoretical models that have dominated the anthropological debates on development. In the course of this exploration, we will demonstrate the privileged insights that anthropological approaches can bring to bear on our understanding of culture and the human quest for peace. Three key theoretical approaches are examined – namely, modernization, dependency theory and post-development. I discuss the basic tenets of each of the models and provide brief critiques, substantiating them with ethnographic examples from Africa, including my own fieldwork in Cameroon.
In his book, Lela in Bali: History through Ceremony in Cameroon (2006), anthropologist, Richard Fardon contends that Lela could be understood as a “barometer of the state of play in Bali politics: a ceremony that has adjusted to reflect the changing composition and external relations of the community” (2, italics mine). To extend this argument, it’s absence over several consecutive years could also index the state of politics – one that shows the growing dissonance between the ruled and the rulers.