Breaking out of ethnism? The example of the Ndambomo of Gabon

ISBN-13: 9786208860813 / Angielski / Miękka / 2025 / 248 str.

Edmond-Gervais PEINDI

Opis

This book examines the ethnic future of the Ndambomo people of Gabon through the lens of cultural mobility. Due to the size of the sample surveyed and the originality of the method combining the qualitative analysis of 100 life stories with the quantitative analysis of 700 people represented in 100 genealogical diagrams, the results of this research suggest that mobility is intrinsic to any ethnic identity. Favouring an aspectual rather than a categorical anthropology, and thus considering mobility in terms of space, languages spoken, educational and professional backgrounds, religions and marriages, as well as mobility in proper names, housing technologies, tools and means of communication, the author constructs the feasibility of the concept of cultural mobility as a tool for analysing the internal and external dynamics of any culture considered to be ethnic in nature. In conclusion, the book not only tells us precisely what is happening to the Ndambomo of Gabon, but also allows us to model the recomposition of any cultural identity group in this first decade of the 21st century.