The rise of an ‘indocile middle class’ in Cameroon

ABSTRACT This article sheds light on subterranean and subjective dimensions that shape specific sectors of African middle-classes: processes of personal subjectivation, understood as the construction of oneself as an actor of one’s own life, against the hold of political, cultural or economic domination. Cameroon offers an insightful case study. Most of the country’s middle-class owns its status and economic situation to the regime’s patronage system. However, our series of biographical interviews shows the emergence of new subjectivities in citizens who decided to change the course of their lives following the 1990s democratic protests. Members of this ‘indocile middle-class’ have prioritised the development of economic, media or cultural projects that have allowed them to implement different values and set up spaces that escape the cultural and social control of the political regime and may contribute to a more democratic and better developed Cameroon.