MOBILIZING CULTURAL VALUES AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES

All societies and institutions are criss-crossed by divisions that defend specific interests. Cohesion is based on aggregations and complementarities of interests, common aspirations and shared values. The Cameroonian social field is organized along identity-based networks that mobilize society on a communal and affective level. Ethnicity and region have become the cardinal identifiers influencing social relations, whether formally or implicitly. As a result, sub-state identities are openly perceived as criteria for discrimination and a factor in differential mobilization. Yet it is precisely in this same mobilization register that political parties operate, hence the entanglement between the ethnicist polarization of the social field and the ethnicization of political mobilization.