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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will note the "differences in reception" that structure the understanding of several real estate practitioners (sub-prefects, bailiffs, surveyors, lawyers, managers of real estate companies and civil servants) of the land categories set out in the Cameroonian legal system.

Paper long abstract:

In Cameroon, land management is regulated by the 1974 ordinances, which have undergone several modifications. These ordinances delimit land into three main categories: the national domain, the private domain and the public domain. According to the land law in force, the public domain includes all the spaces that belong neither to the national domain nor to the private domain and that are both artificial and natural spaces. This domain, unlike the others, is inalienable. This categorization seems self-evident.

However, if this strict categorization is measured against the discursive practices of professionals and experts on land issues, it emerges that it takes on plural varieties and forms : practitioners and jurists do not have the same conceptions and apprehensions not only of the definition of these categories, but also of the related procedural systems (A). But this plurality of conceptions of the legal categories thus given does not mean, however, that they are essentially aimed at circumventing, turning away from or standing outside the legal register relating to land registration. In practice, the reality resists this dichotomous perspective: although developed through informal networks, this standard knowledge does nothing more than renew the matrix of the legal land regime through three processes: rereading, incorporation and attestation. It is this set of processes that I designate, drawing on the reflections of Paul Ricoeur, as the "refiguration" of land law in Cameroon (B).