Émile Tsékénis: Gens du pouvoir − gens de la terre. Un point de vue Batié (chefferie bamiléké de l’Ouest-Cameroun)

Abstract. − The article takes as a starting point a “debate” between MacGaffey (2005) and de Heusch (1987, 2000), concerning the “dualism” and the political meaning of the priest/chief opposition, characterizing central African kingdoms, and which is often conceptualized in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa as a relation between autochthony and power. Then it explores an analogous pair in the Cameroon eastern Grassfields by describing and analyzing the enthronization ritual, the boys’ initiations, and the (chiefdom’s) foundational narratives, suggesting that the opposition between autochthony and power must be understood as a “value hierarchy” featuring “reversal” (Parkin 2003) as one of its fundamental properties (Dumont 1966: 396ff.; 1983: 244f.). It thus offers a new reading of the relations between ritual, power, and kinship in precolonial eastern Grassfields and possibly a way of resolving the “MacGaffey/de Heusch debate.” [Cameroon, eastern Grassfields, Bamiléké, chiefdom, autochthony, power, ritual, hierarchy]