Paper short abstract:

This article proposes to examine the contribution of local know-how in the construction of participatory development in Africa. Emphasis will be given to the specific role of local know-how, in particular their participation in development.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to study how much local know-how can contribute considerably to the development of Africa. Ineluctably, the crisis that Africa has been experiencing since the 1980s is a crisis of its development models (Jean Marc Ela: 1998), which is materialized by the persistence of underdevelopment. This crisis has only exposed the inefficiency of outward-looking development policies and the incompatibility between these development models and the African environment. Therefore, the questions that are mainly presented in research on development in Africa focus more on endogenous issues. Hence the need to rethink development mechanisms in Africa at a time when we are witnessing the constant exhaustion of externalized models. In this perspective, local know-how then becomes a prospect of a credible solution to the fight against poverty. This article proposes to examine the contribution of local know-how in the construction of participatory development in Africa. Emphasis will be given to the specific role of local know-how, in particular their participation in development. We will analyze what makes their authenticity, through the processes and contents that can be mobilized for this purpose.

Paper short abstract:

With the requests for the restitution of artifacts collected during the sub-Saharan colonization, a multidisciplinary approach of provenance research is suitable, and must resort to law history to detail the object’s journey and the legal acts that occurred.

Paper long abstract:

Nowadays, a contemporary conflict appears related to the restitution of movable items collected during the sub-Saharan colonization. Therefore, it is essential to document scientifically the itineraries of the concerned objects: this is the goal of provenance research.

During western colonization, we can observe excessive collections of goods realized by Western actors on natives, while colonial law was silent. Indeed, the law(s) applied in colonies gave little importance to movable property, unlike land law which was essential in a colonial context. Consequently, the frequent local administrative settlement of conflicts occurred at the detriment of disputes treated by courts.

With contemporary restitution, are we witnessing the creation of a right of peoples to dispose of their patrimonial heritage? Or is it a question of state strategies aimed at developing a national narrative crystallized in objects?

Provenance research must be multidisciplinary, and it benefits from the recourse to law instruments. In Art History, cartels present what could be assimilated to an “identity card” focusing only on the object. Using law instruments, the provenance introduces the various legal acts of transfer of possession or ownership that have affected the object from its appropriation in situ to its subsequent journey. Such an approach seeks to establish what can be assimilated to an objects’ "passport".

Only in this way the returned object would be turned back entirely, and its return to the territory where it was born would only constitute the umpteenth stage of its journey, an additional stamp on its “passport”.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on Cameroonian and Western women’s agentivity in the circulation of objects acquired during the German colonial expedition of 1911-12 conducted by the artist Marie-Pauline Thorbecke (1882-1971), according to her 1914 travelogue, Auf der Savanne. Tagebuch einer Kamerunreise.

Paper long abstract:

Marie-Pauline Thorbecke’s 1914 travelogue, Auf der Savanne. Tagebuch einer Kamerunreise, offes a new perspective on the conditions of acquisition of “ethnographic collections” during the expedition. The author describes their interactions with women of Foumban coming to the German couple to sell objects; or her friendship with the Queen Mother of the Bamoun kingdom, Njapdounke, who provided her with an “ethnographic ensemble.” What power dynamics do these interactions between Western and Cameroonian women reveal? What meanings are embodied in the exchanged objects?

Marie-Pauline Thorbecke was in charge of the logistics and material conditions of the trip. She was responsible for managing the expedition’s “personnel” (cooks, “boys,” carriers, etc.), packing the couple’s possessions, scientific instruments and “ethnographic collections” and organizing their transportation. Consequently, she is directly involved in the socio-economic and political interactions surrounding the acquisition of collections and is an active protagonist of the forced labor practices exploiting Cameroonian men, women, and children.

Lastly, we must consider Marie Pauline Thorbecke’s travelogue as a tool of mediation between two cultures. From its writing to its publication in 1914, it accompanies the circulation of “ethnographic collections.” In fact, the discursive and literary space assigned to European women at that time confined her to a popular and female readership, deviating from the scholarly discourse delegated to her husband, as a participant in the academic world. What knowledge of the colonial expedition’s displaced objects does the author communicate to the general public? What imaginaries of Cameroonian material culture does she transmit in Germany?