Riparian communities activities threaten conservation in biosphere reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Yangambi Biosphere Reserve (YBR) is no exception to this degradation. Thus, the objective of the presents study was to elucidate the local factors underlying the high pressure on natural resources and analyze the complexity of biosphere reserve zoning management using an interdisciplinary approach combining document review, field surveys and semi-structured interviews. Our results revealed that the zoning applied to the YBR did not take into account social dynamics. With population growth, the riparian community is doomed to remain in restricted areas, leading to over-exploitation of the space and land degradation, forcing the population to travel long distances to reach fertile plots into the protected area. Also, the lack of employment and the absence of participatory zoning also exacerbate tensions between the manager and the riparian community. For an effective management of the YBR, political authorities should become more involved in the participatory zoning of conservation areas and village exploitations. In addition, they should improve farming techniques to mitigate soil degradation.
In the Jengi ceremony of the Baka (southern Cameroon), words used as names for spirits or with reference to the sound of a hunting amulet, the performance of the Jengi mask and its dance steps evoke a symbolic landscape. This landscape is made up of 'anthropological places' that, referring to more or less precise geographical locations, can be identified owing to their ecosystemic and sonorous aspects and to regional distinctions through toponyms as well as dialectal, ethnoecological variants. The variable degree of precision assigned to these anthropological places reflects the intensity of the relationships between ritual specialists who come from various regions to take part in a ceremony. A dynamic process is at work among the open anthropological places. This place-making occurs in an abstract manner as a dynamic memory process in contrast with the principle of commemorations or memorials that take the form of visible, stable, shrines, steles or sacred groves.
La littérature grise en sciences sociales, lorsqu'elle est produite dans le contexte des projets, comporte des particularités cognitives spécifiques qui entravent une contribution opératoire aux politiques de coopération au développement. Dans ce cas, ce n'est pas la littérature en anthropologie du développement qui est mobilisée pour la constitution de la boîte à outils de la recherche appliquée. Il s'agit d'un autre cadre cognitif a-historique, sectoriel et non cumulatif dont les particularités heuristiques sont notamment l'incomparabilité et la non prédictibilité. Ceci mène à la récurrence d'un problème dans la pratique appliquée consistant à entretenir une confusion entre recommandations structurelles et conjoncturelles. Cette contribution est illustrée par des exemples tirés d'une étude pluridisciplinaire sur la gestion participative des forêts dans le Bassin congolais
The Baka's ritual expressions take place within a system based on fluidity, flexibility and malleability. In spite of certain common cultural resources throughout the Baka territory, one may observe an important variability on a regional level due to different modalities of innovation. This leads to regional variants of the rituals, but also to a fragmentation of the patrimony through the creation of new local associations or the borrowing from the non-Baka neighbours. Such diversification processes of the Baka's ritual system have been described in the domain of religious anthropology (Joiris 1996, 1997-98; Tsuru 1998, 2001). Our paper will focus on the musical aspects of ritual creation and situate this type of innovation in the Baka's ritual and musical patrimony as a whole. It has been proven that all innovation processes converge on a system which is characterised by a patchwork of stable elements. In the musical field, the polyrhythmic formulæ which characterise the ritual associations are composed with a very reduced stock of basic rhythms, whereas the songs make use of general, widespread features of Baka singing.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the management of rangelands used by mobile populations, such as transhumant herders, must include large scale, sometimes cross-border, components. This mobility, common and significant in transhumant livestock production systems is, in most cases, not taken into account in conservation and natural resources management strategies around protected areas. Most conservation projects which include a development goal are designed to provide support to sedentary subsistence agricultural populations. Securing "pastoral lands'' is seldom included as part of protected areas land management approaches. This paper focuses on the difficulty of integrating pastoral, agricultural and conservation issues into a regional land management plan. Based on a case study in Chad (Zakouma National Park), we pay particular attention to local mechanisms of land tenure negotiation, the mobile actors and the complex political landscape that this creates.
This article presents a synthesis of available information about the framework of re- lations between Pygmy peoples and neighbouring local communities called "villagers" or "farmers." From an epistemological point of view, the literature is more detailed about the origin of that rela- tionship than about the analysis of its framework. From an ethnographic viewpoint, a comparison of the two most researched case studies in different cultural settings provides evidence of the existence of a similar relational interethnic model in the Congo River basin. This model involves both aspects of the "ideology of solidarity," sustained by links of pseudo-kinship, and of the "ideology of domi- nation," political-economic dominance over the Pygmy peoples by the "villagers." The relationship also appears fluid in that it allows a multiplicity of partnerships. The interethnic relational model suits an environment of mobility and of acephalous political organization. The author argues that the model is not specific to hunter-gatherer societies, nor to Pygmy communities in general, but rather to Pygmy groups in regular contact with villager communities characterised by mobility and non-hierarchical political organization.
This article presents a synthesis of available information about the framework of re- lations between Pygmy peoples and neighbouring local communities called "villagers" or "farmers." From an epistemological point of view, the literature is more detailed about the origin of that rela- tionship than about the analysis of its framework. From an ethnographic viewpoint, a comparison of the two most researched case studies in different cultural settings provides evidence of the existence of a similar relational interethnic model in the Congo River basin. This model involves both aspects of the "ideology of solidarity," sustained by links of pseudo-kinship, and of the "ideology of domi- nation," political-economic dominance over the Pygmy peoples by the "villagers." The relationship also appears fluid in that it allows a multiplicity of partnerships. The interethnic relational model suits an environment of mobility and of acephalous political organization. The author argues that the model is not specific to hunter-gatherer societies, nor to Pygmy communities in general, but rather to Pygmy groups in regular contact with villager communities characterised by mobility and non-hierarchical political organization.
This paper deals with the problems of the relations between the settled BaGyeli (or BaKola) Pygmies and their non-Pygmy neighbours from the perspective of techno-economic changes in BaGyeli society. The first pan concerns the hypothetical recon struction of the history of the ancestral relationship between these Pygmies and their agri cultural neighbours, particular attention being paid to the inequalities existing today be tween these two communities. The second part studies cenain aspects of changes and influ ences affecting BaGyeli society which seem to be more imponant for the activities of women than for those of men.
