Publisher's Synopsis
Alternative Narratives offers a compelling scholarly reappraisal of the Bamenda Grassfields, confronting dominant historiographies and privileging indigenous epistemologies. Through rigorous analysis of migrations, displacements, marital rites, matrilineal systems, chieftaincy formation, traditional security mechanisms, gender roles in agriculture, and traditional medicine, it exposes overlooked aspects of identity, power, and cultural resilience. As a stand-alone volume, it provides in-depth engagement with foundational cultural and historical themes. Yet, when read alongside Volume 2, it forms a comprehensive decolonial intervention. The volume revisits socio-political structures, peacebuilding strategies, artistic forms, and belief systems, blending oral history, ethnography, and gender theory. It repositions the Grassfields at the center of Cameroonian modernity and decolonial scholarship. A product of brilliant historians, it challenges conventional frameworks and illuminates continuities and transformations in local societies.
