Forests of Belonging: Identities, Ethnicities, and Stereotypes in the Congo River Basin

3. Spaces: Beyond Nature and Culture

93 H istories of the confluences and intermingling of Bangando, Baka, Bakwélé, and Mbomam in southeastern Cameroon reveal the extent of spatial and social integration among the communities. In contrast , classic models of forest peoples that insist on dividing communities into categories such as “pygmies” and “villagers” or “hunter-gatherers” and “farmers” emphasize spatial distinctions between “forest” and “village” and corresponding conceptual—even moral—distinctions between people believed to nurture the forest versus those who cut the forest down. There are perhaps, 200,000 people living in the Ituri forest who are commonly referred to in the scientific literature as Pygmies. . . . The villages of the farmers who live adjacent to the Pygmies are usually only a bit larger but they are visuchapter three Spaces beyond nature and culture 94 chapter three ally very different. The villagers cut down the forest whereas the Pygmies leave it standing. . . . the village and the forest are diametric opposites. The problem for any anthropologist, therefore, is how to think about the relationship between the farmer and hunter-gatherer. . . . Are farmer communities and the Pygmy communities that live alongside them separate societies, or ethnic groups in a single multiethnic community? Do the farmers dominate the Pygmies or do the Pygmies dominate the farmers? (Grinker 2000: 79-80) While the dichotomy between nature and culture has been central in European intellectual traditions since the Middle Ages (Thomas 1983; Ritvo 1997), and its power as a simplifying, explanatory framework in various societies has been elaborated (Lévi-Strauss 1969), the uncritical acceptance of this rubric in identifying and analyzing people risks obscuring rather than illuminating social realities (MacCormack and Strathern 1980). Yet within the field of “hunter-gatherer” studies in anthropology, “pygmies” and “huntergatherers ” continue to occupy a unique niche as people in nature. In studies of equatorial African forests, the “pygmy” emerges again and again as the emblem of “natural man,” whose life continues to be intimately, even primordially, associated with land and resources. Observers in southeastern Cameroon project the nature/culture dichotomy onto perceptions of people and their spaces, perpetuating oppositional, conceptual models of forest and village as discrete, bounded places, and “people of the forest” and “people of the village” as discrete, bounded communities. However, the uses of spaces in southeastern Cameroon bring communities together in social and spatial relationships that affirm intercommunal ties rather than segregating communities in distinct spaces. The organization of space in the Lobéké forest region today reflects relationships that traverse ethnic boundaries and socioeconomic categories. Rather than conforming to spatial and social stereotypes of “forest” and “village,” the layouts of households, residential patterns within villages, and access to natural resources reflect relations of belonging and multifaceted social identities based on attributes such as gender, kinship, and friendship. Nature : Culture : : Hut : House Two architectural house styles predominate in villages throughout southeastern Cameroon: dome-shaped, leaf-shingled “huts” and square, wattleand -daub “houses.” The conceptual differences between hut and house are spaces 95 significant, for they represent basic differences in the position of the structure ’s inhabitants in either nature or culture and the associated (im)possibility of development and progress. In German, French, and English, the primary languages of formal documentation and discourse on Cameroon, a Bangando home is consistently referred to as a Haus, maison, or house, whereas a Baka home is called a Hütte, hutte, or hut, regardless of the actual structure of the building. The moral assumption embedded in these terms is that people who have the capacity to develop socially and culturally live in “houses”; inhabitants of houses are “villagers,” and in this context, Bangando , Bakwélé, or Mbomam. In contrast, people whose lives are embedded in nature, and who have little interest in or capacity for development, live in “huts”; inhabitants of huts are “pygmies” and, in the context of southeastern Cameroon, Baka. Similarly, outside observers usually describe a collection of Bangando homes as a “village,” whereas a collection of Baka homes is considered a “camp.” Even a number of Baka houses made of wattle-anddaub and located in a line along the main road—indistinguishable from nearby Bangando houses—is typically described as a “camp” by missionaries , development agents, and government officials once they are aware that the people who live in these dwellings are Baka. In these stereotypes of domestic space, the actual physical architecture of the buildings and the layout of the communities are less important than the...