Igor Kopytoff’s seminal contribution on The Internal African Frontier as the interstitial spaces-in-between has given us an important explanatory trajectory to understand the processes of pacification and inculturation of pre-colonial African peripheries. This panel revisits his frontier concept to bring it into conversation with political anthropology and political economy of the contemporary African state through ethnographic case studies as well as more comparative analyses.
From
precolonial fluidity to postcolonial essentialism: the 'African
frontier' and the changing concept of 'autochthony' (the case of the
eastern Grassfields- Cameroon)
