Reviewed by Jude Fokwang (Canadian Journal of African Studies, 38, 2, 2004, pp. 467-469)
Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Negotiating an Anglophone Identity: A Study of the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon. Leiden & Boston: Brill, Afrika-Studiecentrum Series, No 1, 2003. 230 pp.
Negotiating an Anglophone Identity is a critical analysis of Anglophone Cameroonians' "demands for the rearrangement of state power", an excessively centralised state which, according to the Anglophones, has militated against their interests and aspirations as a distinct political constituency following their reunification with Francophone Cameroon in October 1961. Patently, this book is the culmination of the authors’ longstanding interests not only on the politics of Anglophone identity in Cameroon, but also, and more generally, on the fascinating scholarship that has focused on the politics of belonging and autochthony in postcolonial Africa. In this book, Konings and Nyamnjoh invite the reader to reflect critically on still-contentious notions such as nationbuilding, the plight of minority peoples in postcolonial states, and indeed, on the problematics of citizenship in the postcolony.
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