muntu institute press

As the nature of understanding and the source of apprehension of the world, meaning is at the heart of human activity as much as of the reflection that generates, maintains, criticizes or evaluates it. The ＂Lieux de sens＂ series is open to all contributions that aim to provide our world with descriptions, explanations and even frameworks for involvement or commitment in the construction of retrospective, current or prospective discourses on people, things, mobility and territories. It’s a vast site for scientific turnaround and mobilization.

＂One of the greatest theaters of territorial complexity in the modern African environment is that of place names. In cities more than in the countryside, place names abound, appearing, enduring or disappearing at their own pace. Place names in a metropolitan capital like Yaoundé constitute a captivating universe of terms that are sometimes invariant, sometimes elusive or discordant, more or less known, more or less accepted, more or less used. Places of memory, they tirelessly offer their version of the highs and lows that have punctuated encounters and crossroads between individuals and nature, individuals and time, individuals and societies. Markers and revelators of the consistency of territories in these places teaming with diversity and issues, place names offer themselves as Arianne’s threads, a veritable machine for going back in time from moment to instance in the composite memory of urbanity introduced by urban modernity.＂ Prof. Athanase Bopda (Université du Havre, France)