Expertise on the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon: A Hybrid Cultural Boundary Approach

Abstract

How can we understand policy deadlocks and inactions embedded in the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon? The context sparked by corporatist demands of lawyers, teachers, and students in 2016 has included persistent rising numbers of killings, human rights issues, unending military battles, and contestations on multiple policy attempts to stop the crisis. The article looks at the Anglophone crisis as an issue of policy expertise. Policy expertise encompasses discursive practices that scan the crisis as a site of policy controversies producing deadlocks and inactions. It departs from critical policy studies towards expertise while considering the cultural context as a lens to observe and interpret expertise as a social relation. It, however, goes further, shoring up contestations and public distrust brought about by cultural differences and cultural knowledge. It places a stronger emphasis on the “historical context” to supplement the cultural context of expertise and encompass new cultural boundaries. The analysis stems from a critical postcolonial perspective, while introducing the ‘hybrid’ cultural contexts, ‘hybrid’ institutional designs, and ‘virtual’ discursive spaces which acknowledge the specific cultural character of a case study in the Global South. Using the interpretive methodology, the analysis has relied on documented history, policy discourses in different media, and interviews.