In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

8 THE CONSUMPTION OF AN AFRICAN MODERNITY MICHAEL ROWLANDS • INTRODUCTION The experience of modernity has formed the subject matter of a number of recent books and articles (e.g., Anderson 1983; Berman 1984). In certain respects, these are more sophisticated representations of classical Western sociological oppositions between radically different kinds of societies of the traditional/modern. However, they go further than these in hypothesizing the rise of a particular kind of personal identity space with modernity. For Richard Sennett (1 974) the "fall of public man" entails the dissolution of sociability via the combined disintegration of a fixed status system and withdrawal from the impersonalization of the public sphere. The public/private opposition extends into an association of childhood with domesticity and adulthood with a public role (Rosaldo 1974), the private interiorized self versus the public ego (Goffman 1954) and the public display and consumption of things as "signs of personal character, of private feeling and of individuality" (Sennett 1974: 146). But while all this is going on, "the public self is besieged by the demons of de-differentiation" (Friedman 1989: 127). The loss of old identity and the struggle to establish a new one is at the same time the appearance of desire-in-general, the establishment of lifestyles and personal identities that can only be erected via the market. To be open to novelty and change, Friedman argues, "one must be formally alienated from any specific social reality in order to seek new realities ... and this existence is signified or rather constituted by an image of self that can theoretically be attained via the market, money permitting" (Friedman 1989:127). The fundamental problem of modernity has become therefore the creation of a personal identity space in a world where no such spaces are preordained. It is also the fundamental anxiety of Western materialism that all other cultural resources have vanished except for the simulacra of prefabricated worlds energized by desire and "the wish to be." This is the true self produced by the capitalist withering away of the superordinate spheres of individual integration such that, in Marx's terms, com- The Consumption of an African Modernity 189 modities might become an "appearance of things which express the buyer 's personality." Depending on taste, this state of affairs may evoke mournful nostalgia, joyful celebration, or both, but it also implicitly supports the equally classic notion that modernization is now of global cultural proportions and is no longer restricted to "the Western experience" (cf. Jameson 1984). In some respects, therefore, we are free to theorize about differences in the meaning of individualism, consumerisJm, and modernity in distinct cultural historical settings. If an African :modernity is not simply a procrustean emulation of Western styles sitti:ng uneasily on an otherwise authentic traditional culture, then what kinds of identity are being renegotiated, what ideal lifestyles are sought after, and how contrary are they to the reality of the present? Perhaps the most interesting theme in discussioI1S of the cultural experience of an African modernity has been that of creolization or pidginization in mass culture (cf. Ben Amos 1977; Fabian 1978; Hannerz 1987). That cultures that draw from more than one source, and have severed connectioIlS with those sources, become more elaborate in their differences has been observed in the reformulated consciousness of many Third and Fourth World peoples (Graburn 1976). Understanding how such different flows of meanings are controlled and maintained in their difference involves relating forms of social power and material resources to a spectrum of cultural forms. The struggle to assimilate new objects and ideas in order to reformulate old ideas about power creolizes cultural form and gives a distinctive potency to the reproduction of modern and traditional in many deracinated worlds. The interesting question is why such struggles often center on consumption and, in particular, on fhe acquisition of modern imported goods. The reputation of comprador elites for ostentatious consumption is a byword of Third World underdevelopment and yet little attention has been paid to the meanings implicit in such acts beyond the most obvious Veblenesque stereotypical characterizations. This chapter is concerned with the study of mass consumption in Bamenda, a provincial town in Cameroon, West Africa, w'here different appropriations of modernity for political purposes are played out in the subtleties of consumption. STRATEGIES OF ACHIEVEMENT AND THE EVALUATION OF SUCC:ESS Emulation, upward social movement, pride, and their contraries, disillusion and despair, are quintessential experiences of modernity. Individuality as freedom and responsibility for oneself implies another qualita...

Share