Nicolas Argenti

Since 1990 I have carried out research on youth and childhood, social hierarchy, and collective memories of slavery and political violence in the Grassfields of Cameroon. I received my doctorate from University College London in 1996. My thesis examined the exclusion of young people from both local hierarchies and national elite structures, focusing on young people and children's use of dance, art production and other embodied practices to confront their social subordination and their periodic subjection to state-sponsored violence. A major monograph, The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence and Belated Histories in the Cameroon Grassfields (University of Chicago Press 2007), examines the historical development of youth as a political force in the Cameroon Grassfields, focusing on collective memories of political violence to which young people have been subjected since the era of the slave trade.

In 1997-1998, I carried out postdoctoral research in Southern Sri Lanka, examining the changing role of healing performances amongst children and young soldiers in a context of political violence. In 2002 I co-edited a book on youth in Africa with Alex de Waal that brings together the Issue Papers prepared for the Pan African Forum on the Future of Children in Africa, jointly held by UNICEF and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo in May 2001.

I have continued my investigation into historical memory in Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission, a book I co-edited with Katharina Schramm on the relationship between violence and memory which brings together case studies from round the world, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Central and South America, and Africa (Berghahn Books 2010). My ethnographic research has recently focused on fosterage in Cameroon (Argenti 2010 and 2011).


I was on research leave for the 2009-10 academic year, beginning a new research project on social memory in Chios, Greece. In 2011 I received an ESRC Mid-Career Development Fellowship and will be on leave for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 academic years. The project, 'Remembering Absence: Catastrophe, Displacement, and Identity Among Chiots and the Chiot Diaspora,' examines collective memories of the 1822 massacres of Chios.

• Co-convenor of the MSc in the Anthropology of Childhood, Youth and Education
• Module designer and convenor, The Anthropology of Childhood and Youth (UG and PG).
• Anthropological Research Methods (MSc).
  

Research Interests

Childhood, youth, performance, political violence, collective memory

PhD Supervision

I am currently supervising doctoral students working on childhood, youth, performance, political violence and collective memory.

Publications

Journal Papers

(2011) Argenti, N., Things of the ground: Children's medicine, motherhood and memory in the Cameroon Grassfields, Africa 81 (2) : 269- 294

(2010) Argenti, N., Things that don't come by the road: folktales, fosterage, and memories of slavery in the Cameroon grassfields, Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (2) : 224- 254

(2006) Argenti, N. and Röschenthaler, U., Introduction: Between Cameroon and Cuba: Youth, slave trades and translocal memoryscapes, Social Anthropology 14 (1) : 33- 47

(2006) Argenti, N., Remembering the future: slavery, youth and masking in the Cameroon grassfields, Social Anthropology 14 (1) : 49- 69

(2002) Argenti, N., People of the chisel: Apprenticeship, youth and elites in Oku (Cameroon), American Ethnologist 29 (3) : 497- 533

(2001) Argenti, N., Kesum-body and the places of the gods: The politics of children's masking and second-world realities in Oku(Cameroon), Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7 (1) : 67- 94

(1998) Argenti, N., Air youth: performance, violence and the state in Cameroon, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (4) : 753- 782

(1997) Argenti, N., Review of Masks and masquerades by John Emigh, Journal of Material Culture 2 (3) : 361- 381

(1992) Argenti, N., African aesthetics: moving to see the mask, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO) 23 (3) : 197- 215

Book Chapters

(2009) Argenti, N. and Schramm, K., Introduction: Remembering violence. In: Argenti, N. and Schramm, K. eds. Remembering violence: anthropological perspectives on intergenerational transmission. Oxford, UK : Berghahn Books

(2008) Argenti, N., Youth movements. In: Middleton, J. and Miller, JC. eds. New Encyclopedia of Africa. Charles Scribner's Sons

(2008) Argenti, N., Youth: Rural. In: Middleton, J. and Miller, JC. eds. New Encyclopedia of Africa. Charles Scribner's Sons

(2005) Argenti, N., Dancing in the borderlands: the forbidden masquerades of Oku youth and women (Cameroon). In: de Boeck, F. and Honwana, A. eds. Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa. Oxford, UK : James Currey Publishers 121- 149

(2004) Argenti, N., La danse aux frontières: les mascarades interdites des femmes et des jeunes à Oku. In: Bayart, J-F. and Warnier, J-P. eds. Matière à politique: le pouvoir, les corps et les choses. Paris : Karthala 151- 180

(2002) Argenti, N., Youth in Africa: a major resource for change. In: De Waal, A. and Argenti, N. eds. Young Africa: Realising the Rights of Children and Youth. Africa World Pr 123- 153

(2001) Argenti, N., Ephemeral monuments, memory and royal sempiternity in a Grassfields Kingdom. In: Forty, A. and Küchler, S. eds. The Art of Forgetting. Berg Publishers 21- 52

Books

(2010) Argenti, N. and Schramm, K., Remembering violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission. Berghahn

(2009) Argenti, N. and Schramm, K., Remembering violence, anthropological perspectives on integenerational transmission. Berghahn Books

(2007) Argenti, N., The intestines of the state: youth, violence and belated histories in the Cameroon grassfields. University of Chicago Press

(1999) Argenti, N., Is this how I looked when I first got here? Pottery and practice in the Cameroon Grassfields. British Museum Press