The increase in armed conflict on the African continent after the end of the Cold War has challenged scholars to come up with explanations. Among these explanations are war motivated by economic incentives (greed, not grievance); as a result of collapsing patrimonial structured states (spoils politics); or by overpopulation and/or diminishing natural resources (neo-Malthusian). However, explanations focusing on the rural political culture are fewer in number. Mkandawire has argued that there is no need for this, because ‘the African rural setting is generally deeply inimical to liberation war [unlike the Latin America situation], because peasants enjoy direct control over their own land, and surplus expropriation takes place through the market, rather than through an exploitative landlord class’. Argenti's book shows how wrong Mkandawire is in assuming that rural Africa is populated with happy peasant farmers with access to land and – particularly important in the context of West Africa – labour (including their own). The Grassfields area in north-western Cameroon has been the theatre of centuries of structural violence towards all those – but in particular the young – who were not affiliated with the ruling elite. Once known for its abundant supply of slaves for the plantations in the West Indies and America, the Grassfields then became the main (forced) labour source for the German colonial plantations along the Cameroonian coast. Perhaps most disturbing was that the violence and threat came from within society: traditional rulers (the fon) and elders, while portraying themselves as protectors of their subjects from ‘alien’ slave raiders, were heavily involved in selling their own people – and abductees of neighbouring chiefdoms – into slavery. To expose this history of protracted betrayal, Argenti provides a detailed ethnographic study of the masked dance performances in the Grassfields – those performed by the palantine elite as well as those by villagers. Palace masks – which cause fear (and fascination) among the audience – and their dances are full of references to slaves and slave raiding practices. The great deceit of the palatine elite is that while it is acknowledged through these dances that they have ‘occasionally’ preyed on their subjects, this is portrayed as necessary to build up a strong state, and thus for the benefit of their subjects. In contrast, village masquerades expose the hollowness of the palace discourse, and give full testimony to the centuries of violence. As a result they become cathartic for its performers and the audience.
Argenti's work is essential reading material for those studying armed conflict in Africa. One cannot fully understand (West African) conflicts without proper acknowledgement of the existence of a two-class society, and the role of an exploitative rural elite in its creation. Argenti's book is equally essential for those interested in masked dance performance, since it provides an extremely detailed and rich study of this subject. Perhaps the only, though insurmountable, weakness of the book is that these two interests do not often come together, leaving both categories of readers with some parts of the text which they may find of less relevance to their field of study.
