MARRIAGE FESTIVALS AND THE APPROPRIATION OF PUBLIC URBAN SPACE IN YAOUNDÉ

Abstract

It is no more possible to analyse the African City only as a “violent” city with no future. It has to also be observed as a true “laboratory” of urban dynamics where new ways of life, new and unexpected dynamics announcing political, social and economic breaks appear. In Yaoundé or Douala, in Cameroon, there is no weekend without wedding carnivals in the main streets. These carnivals bring together hundreds of persons and tens of cars, catch everyone’s eye, provoke applauses, cries of admiration or mockery. They take up streets without administrative authorization, impose traffic jam to other citizens: they express a real occupancy of public space. This emerging phenomenon in Cameroonian cities raise questions both on its logics and significance for social actors.