Kfaang and its technologies: towards a social history of mobility in Kom, Cameroon, 1928-1998

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Dissertation / thesis

Title:	Kfaang and its technologies: towards a social history of mobility in Kom, Cameroon, 1928-1998
Author:	Nkwi, Walter Gam
Year:	2011
Issue:	30
Pages:	216
Language:	English
Series:	African Studies Collection (ISSN 1876-0198)
City of publisher:	Leiden
Publisher:	African Studies Centre
ISBN:	9789054481010
Geographic term:	Cameroon
Subjects:	Kom polity mobility infrastructure social change dissertations (form)
External link:	https://hdl.handle.net/1887/17674
Abstract:	In this study of mobility in Kom, the second largest kingdom in the Bamenda Grasslands of Cameroon, life histories and archival files enlighten the social history of mobility in relation to the development of communication technologies such as roads and schools. Between 1928, when St. Anthony's Primary School was opened, and 1998, when the road linking Kom and Bamenda was tarred, the number of people travelling out of Kom and back steadily increased. The key concept of the study is 'kfaang', which connotes newness, innovation and novelty, as well as the material indicators and relationships resulting from it. 'Kfaang' may be internally generated, but it is almost invariably externally induced, and in many ways translates into 'modernization' in the Western sense. Depending on the circumstances, 'kfaang' denotes a process and a product; both involve change mediated by mobility and by implication the technologies which facilitate spatial and social mobility. [ASC Leiden abstract]