Browsing by Subject "Land"

Cameroon’s forests and forest lands are home to diverse indigenous peoples and local communities. Cameroon has endured many colonial administrations and missionary influences throughout its history with British, French, and German rule having all left their mark on the nation’s land, plantation, and forestry sectors while realising their interests. In particular, the representation of indigeneity remains tainted within and beyond today’s land use sector and forest policy arena, and its related businesses and financial services. This thesis analyses the British colonial business media landscape to examine the dominant discourses surrounding the indigenous within the context of Cameroon’s land, forests, and plantations. Through understanding the narratives that have historically been broadcast to society and the public via business media, a greater understanding of the current status quo within the forestry sector, and therefore the workings of ‘inequality machines’ and neocolonialism, can be investigated. Furthermore, business media such as newspapers and magazines historically played a central role in the colonial enterprise, informing and shaping entrepreneurial activities but also legitimising the colonial project and providing narratives to enable the realisation of interests and profits. This research examines local and indigenous narratives and considers how these representations link to the colonial enterprise. Qualitative research methods are adopted, using a systematic literature search to identify articles from four prominent British business media sources (The Economist, The Guardian, The Observer and The Times). Search criteria, in the form of two key word search strings, selected 303 relevant articles and constructed the archival landscape of Cameroon in British colonial business media from the 1850s through to the early 2010s. Newspaper articles were inductively coded using Atlas TI software with the aim to explore the main research questions: • How does British business media represent and legitimise the treatment of indigenous peoples in the context of Cameroon’s land, forests, and plantations? • How has this evolved over time? Results from coding demonstrate the emergence of 4 main code groups that aid the legitimisation and justification of indigenous exploitation in the context of indigenous representation: Comparing, Centring, Controlling and Fearing. Power dynamics, temporality, and the linkages between these core themes, also play a predominant role. What emerges as most influential is the way in which British business media shifts its representation and legitimisation of the treatment of indigenous peoples through time, whilst continuing to reinforce power inequalities. Ultimately, indigenous representation and narratives within the British business media ‘seem’ to improve, but this is largely from the colonisers’ perspective, or to be received by the colonial gaze.