The domestication of modernity: different trajectories

Abstract

The following two articles were originally presented at a four-day seminar on the ‘domestication’ of modernity in Leiden and The Hague in June 1995. The aim of the seminar was to compare the different trajectories in which African societies try to appropriate modernity: how they deal with the images and dreams of a modern way of life which flood the continent—the spectacular successes of the few and the deep feelings of disappointment of the many. ‘Modernity's enchantment’—a phrase coined by Jean and John Comaroff (1992)—applies very well to Africa. Jean-Pierre Warnier's remark, in his study of entrepreneurs in west Cameroon (1993), that ‘le goût des Camerounais pour tout ce qui est importé plutôt que produit localement est légendaire’ is true of many if not all African countries. Achille Mbembe (1992) forcefully demonstrates that the popular masses are as intent as the elites on participating in the consumerist rituals of new forms of wealth and power. But it is clear also that this obsession with modernity follows very varied trajectories. Jean-François Bayart (1989) emphasises that the marked consumerism of African elites is not to be seen as just an atavistic outcome of la politique du ventre; rather, it is related to specific imaginaires of the link between wealth and power and to varying pressures ‘from below’ towards redistribution.