Charlotte Walker-Said | John Jay College of Criminal Justice (original) (raw)
Papers by Charlotte Walker-Said
Gender & History, 2017
In the French-governed territory Cameroon, religious dynamics frequently encountered the intimate... more In the French-governed territory Cameroon, religious dynamics frequently encountered the intimate sites of implementation between spousal bonds. In the years during and after World War II, African Catholic and Protestant women developed educational agendas and charitable associations that pursued specific intentions for African marriage and family life. While African family configurations had long been targets of evangelical reform since the early colonial period, African Christian women appropriated and repurposed spiritual mantras and doctrinal demands to reform longstanding non-Christian approaches to marriage such as polygamy, bridewealth, and arranged marriages and simultaneously crafted traditionalist codes that encouraged women’s submission and devotion to their spouses, homes, and families. African Christian leaders’ strands of knowledge and spiritual wisdom romanticized monogamy and companionate marriage and these ideals were powerfully and meaningfully received by women across the territory who entered women-run schools, charitable organizations, and youth centers. However, they could also prove difficult to realize completely. Marital failures or religious inconstancy appeared as evidence of an incompletely civilized African society. African Christian women teachers and leaders experienced religious conflict and moral shortcomings as rich opportunities to lead spiritual renewal and seek a rational, moral, and just future for African marriage of their own making.
Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of Christianity,, 2017
Le Mouvement Social
While scholarship on Africa at the end of empire has tended to focus on the evolution of notions ... more While scholarship on Africa at the end of empire has tended to focus on the evolution of notions of citizenship and demands for national political inclusion in the years following the end of the Second World War, the vibrancy and widespread influence of the Christian churches in France’s African territories, particularly in Cameroon, demonstrates that Africans also expressed solidarities with communities both above and below the nation-state. The history of political anti-colonialism and syndicalism in Africa has heretofore neglected the contributions of religion to national meaning making in the last decades of colonial rule and its secular focus has failed to perceive how religion mediated the costs and benefits of political modernity and national sovereignty, critically underpinning much cultural life that gave shape to various kinds of mass politics at the end of empire. This article demonstrates how African women in the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Cameroon presented an image of social and cultural continuity in the midst of political and economic disruption and articulated an alternative platform of human rights and national liberation based from that of the anticolonial political parties. In doing so, devout African women in laity and in consecrated orders inserted themselves into the revolutionary aspect of nationalism by promoting a conservative vision of pious, educated society that would ensure social and moral progress and spiritual decolonization, not only political liberty.
The economic development of African territories in the years following World War I was fostered b... more The economic development of African territories in the years following World War I was fostered by European and American capital, as well as by African societies' innovations in agricultural methods and strategies for organizing labor. African colonies in the postwar era imported greater numbers of manufactured goods, which were traded for tropical raw materials and foodstuffs as capitalist integration intensified in both rural and urban areas. Colonies expanded their civil administrations and incorporated greater numbers of African intermediaries in the form of chiefs, interpreters, clerks, tax collectors, soldiers, and police. This new professional class engaged with another rapidly expanding cohort of entrepreneurs such as farmers, traders, miners, dockworkers, and others who were salaried or compensated through harvests and exports.
Journal of African Historical Studies
Attention to African notions of wealth, economy, kinship, and society were among the founding con... more Attention to African notions of wealth, economy, kinship, and society were among the founding concerns of our field. This special issue brings together four case studies that examine the pluralities of wealth and its movement in many forms throughout and between African societies. As a set, our papers emphasize the varied strategies employed by Africans to manage wealth in contexts East and West, and pasts older as well as recent. Together they elaborate understandings of the various approaches of thought, action, and practice used by Africans to create, exchange, and expand wealth in their societies. The concept of "wealth in pluralities" 1 in this issue is explored in instances where Africans deliberately embraced and encouraged multiple forms of wealth as a means of managing risk and exploiting possibilities presented within impermanent political, social, and economic systems. Wealth in Africa has long been, as Pauline Peters has confirmed, "embedded in multidimensional social processes." 2 Relationships and human interdependencies with longstanding value kept vibrant alternative types of currency or exchange alive in moments where there were pressures to convert wealth to new forms. On the other side of the coin, new ways of securing property and prosperity shaped and were shaped by novel ways of mobilizing and exercising power, which in turn defined relationships according to evolving notions of rights and obligations. 3 The details of wealth management strategies differ greatly in each case study, yet attention to the theme of wealth in pluralities highlights aspects of common strategy found between distinctive regions and eras in African history. Not intended as comprehensive, the brief discussion that follows underscores the value of such comparisons as it situates each article.
Journal of African Historical Studies, 2015
European law dramatically affected the terms of wealth exchange in marriage throughout colonial A... more European law dramatically affected the terms of wealth exchange in marriage throughout colonial Africa. In the French mandate of Cameroon, laws governing bridewealth significantly altered the asset value of a wife and her children and with it the path towards prosperity for young unmarried men, as well as fathers, elders, and communities. In the years between the start of World War I and the end of World War II, the currency fluctuations, profit valuations, and market prices that increasingly entered into marriage arrangements in the rapidly expanding economy of Cameroon shocked Christian missionary societies, disquieted the French administration, and provoked unmarried African men whose pursuit of a wife and family became not only more onerous, but also steeped in risk. In response, the French administration set strict legal limits on the use of currency in bridewealth exchange, enforced through taxation and the etat civil. However, French law could not inhibit economic forces from rendering African communities increasingly competitive, particularly in the marital domain. In response, new African leaders—including priests, pastors, catechists, nuns, and organizers of pious brotherhoods—emerged to reform and renovate marriage culture. This paper discusses the confluence of an expanding colonial capitalist economy and burgeoning Christian devotion, which transformed ideologies regarding marriage and family building—the principal path to wealth, as well as spiritual grace—in modern Africa. It will analyze how marriage became a site of contestation between economic trends and religious movements and how Christian marriage reform movements derived from a crisis of economic inequality.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Human Rights in the New Global Economy, 2015
This chapter analyzes the corporate social responsibility agenda of sustainability as a movement ... more This chapter analyzes the corporate social responsibility agenda of sustainability as a movement that is maturing into one of the prevailing credos of human rights as well as development economics and global finance.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Human Rights in the New Global Economy, 2015
With this book, Charlotte Walker-Said and John D. Kelly have assembled an essential toolkit to be... more With this book, Charlotte Walker-Said and John D. Kelly have assembled an essential toolkit to better understand how the notoriously ambiguous concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) functions in practice within different disciplines and settings. Bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from leading figures in human rights programs around the United States, they vigorously engage some of the major political questions of our age: what is CSR, and how might it render positive political change in the real world?
French Politics, Culture & Society 33:2 2015.
Books by Charlotte Walker-Said
Faith, Power and Family: Christianity and Social Change in French Cameroon , 2018
Between the two World Wars, African believers transformed foreign missionary societies into profo... more Between the two World Wars, African believers transformed foreign missionary societies into profoundly local religious institutions with indigenous ecclesiastical hierarchies and devotional social and charitable networks, devising novel authority structures to control resources and govern cultural and social life. As part of this, African Christian religious leaders formidably and unpredictably challenged French colonial rule, and particularly forced labour and authoritarian decentralized governance, as threats to family stability and community integrity. Charlotte Walker-Said explores the radical innovations of African Catholic and Protestant evangelists who received, innovated, and repurposed Christianity to challenge local and foreign governments operating in the French-administered League of Nations Mandate of Cameroon. Inspired by Catholic and Protestant doctrines on conjugal complementarity and social equilibrium, as well as by local spiritual and charismatic movements, African Christians re-evaluated and renovated family and community authority structures to address the profound changes colonialism wrought most devastatingly in the private sphere. The history of these reform-minded believers reveals how family intimacies and kinship ties constituted the force of community resistance to oppression and also demonstrates the relevance of faith in the midst of a tumultuous series of forces arising out of the colonial situation peculiar to Cameroon.
Gender & History, 2017
In the French-governed territory Cameroon, religious dynamics frequently encountered the intimate... more In the French-governed territory Cameroon, religious dynamics frequently encountered the intimate sites of implementation between spousal bonds. In the years during and after World War II, African Catholic and Protestant women developed educational agendas and charitable associations that pursued specific intentions for African marriage and family life. While African family configurations had long been targets of evangelical reform since the early colonial period, African Christian women appropriated and repurposed spiritual mantras and doctrinal demands to reform longstanding non-Christian approaches to marriage such as polygamy, bridewealth, and arranged marriages and simultaneously crafted traditionalist codes that encouraged women’s submission and devotion to their spouses, homes, and families. African Christian leaders’ strands of knowledge and spiritual wisdom romanticized monogamy and companionate marriage and these ideals were powerfully and meaningfully received by women across the territory who entered women-run schools, charitable organizations, and youth centers. However, they could also prove difficult to realize completely. Marital failures or religious inconstancy appeared as evidence of an incompletely civilized African society. African Christian women teachers and leaders experienced religious conflict and moral shortcomings as rich opportunities to lead spiritual renewal and seek a rational, moral, and just future for African marriage of their own making.
Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of Christianity,, 2017
Le Mouvement Social
While scholarship on Africa at the end of empire has tended to focus on the evolution of notions ... more While scholarship on Africa at the end of empire has tended to focus on the evolution of notions of citizenship and demands for national political inclusion in the years following the end of the Second World War, the vibrancy and widespread influence of the Christian churches in France’s African territories, particularly in Cameroon, demonstrates that Africans also expressed solidarities with communities both above and below the nation-state. The history of political anti-colonialism and syndicalism in Africa has heretofore neglected the contributions of religion to national meaning making in the last decades of colonial rule and its secular focus has failed to perceive how religion mediated the costs and benefits of political modernity and national sovereignty, critically underpinning much cultural life that gave shape to various kinds of mass politics at the end of empire. This article demonstrates how African women in the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Cameroon presented an image of social and cultural continuity in the midst of political and economic disruption and articulated an alternative platform of human rights and national liberation based from that of the anticolonial political parties. In doing so, devout African women in laity and in consecrated orders inserted themselves into the revolutionary aspect of nationalism by promoting a conservative vision of pious, educated society that would ensure social and moral progress and spiritual decolonization, not only political liberty.
The economic development of African territories in the years following World War I was fostered b... more The economic development of African territories in the years following World War I was fostered by European and American capital, as well as by African societies' innovations in agricultural methods and strategies for organizing labor. African colonies in the postwar era imported greater numbers of manufactured goods, which were traded for tropical raw materials and foodstuffs as capitalist integration intensified in both rural and urban areas. Colonies expanded their civil administrations and incorporated greater numbers of African intermediaries in the form of chiefs, interpreters, clerks, tax collectors, soldiers, and police. This new professional class engaged with another rapidly expanding cohort of entrepreneurs such as farmers, traders, miners, dockworkers, and others who were salaried or compensated through harvests and exports.
Journal of African Historical Studies
Attention to African notions of wealth, economy, kinship, and society were among the founding con... more Attention to African notions of wealth, economy, kinship, and society were among the founding concerns of our field. This special issue brings together four case studies that examine the pluralities of wealth and its movement in many forms throughout and between African societies. As a set, our papers emphasize the varied strategies employed by Africans to manage wealth in contexts East and West, and pasts older as well as recent. Together they elaborate understandings of the various approaches of thought, action, and practice used by Africans to create, exchange, and expand wealth in their societies. The concept of "wealth in pluralities" 1 in this issue is explored in instances where Africans deliberately embraced and encouraged multiple forms of wealth as a means of managing risk and exploiting possibilities presented within impermanent political, social, and economic systems. Wealth in Africa has long been, as Pauline Peters has confirmed, "embedded in multidimensional social processes." 2 Relationships and human interdependencies with longstanding value kept vibrant alternative types of currency or exchange alive in moments where there were pressures to convert wealth to new forms. On the other side of the coin, new ways of securing property and prosperity shaped and were shaped by novel ways of mobilizing and exercising power, which in turn defined relationships according to evolving notions of rights and obligations. 3 The details of wealth management strategies differ greatly in each case study, yet attention to the theme of wealth in pluralities highlights aspects of common strategy found between distinctive regions and eras in African history. Not intended as comprehensive, the brief discussion that follows underscores the value of such comparisons as it situates each article.
Journal of African Historical Studies, 2015
European law dramatically affected the terms of wealth exchange in marriage throughout colonial A... more European law dramatically affected the terms of wealth exchange in marriage throughout colonial Africa. In the French mandate of Cameroon, laws governing bridewealth significantly altered the asset value of a wife and her children and with it the path towards prosperity for young unmarried men, as well as fathers, elders, and communities. In the years between the start of World War I and the end of World War II, the currency fluctuations, profit valuations, and market prices that increasingly entered into marriage arrangements in the rapidly expanding economy of Cameroon shocked Christian missionary societies, disquieted the French administration, and provoked unmarried African men whose pursuit of a wife and family became not only more onerous, but also steeped in risk. In response, the French administration set strict legal limits on the use of currency in bridewealth exchange, enforced through taxation and the etat civil. However, French law could not inhibit economic forces from rendering African communities increasingly competitive, particularly in the marital domain. In response, new African leaders—including priests, pastors, catechists, nuns, and organizers of pious brotherhoods—emerged to reform and renovate marriage culture. This paper discusses the confluence of an expanding colonial capitalist economy and burgeoning Christian devotion, which transformed ideologies regarding marriage and family building—the principal path to wealth, as well as spiritual grace—in modern Africa. It will analyze how marriage became a site of contestation between economic trends and religious movements and how Christian marriage reform movements derived from a crisis of economic inequality.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Human Rights in the New Global Economy, 2015
This chapter analyzes the corporate social responsibility agenda of sustainability as a movement ... more This chapter analyzes the corporate social responsibility agenda of sustainability as a movement that is maturing into one of the prevailing credos of human rights as well as development economics and global finance.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Human Rights in the New Global Economy, 2015
With this book, Charlotte Walker-Said and John D. Kelly have assembled an essential toolkit to be... more With this book, Charlotte Walker-Said and John D. Kelly have assembled an essential toolkit to better understand how the notoriously ambiguous concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) functions in practice within different disciplines and settings. Bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from leading figures in human rights programs around the United States, they vigorously engage some of the major political questions of our age: what is CSR, and how might it render positive political change in the real world?
French Politics, Culture & Society 33:2 2015.
Faith, Power and Family: Christianity and Social Change in French Cameroon , 2018
Between the two World Wars, African believers transformed foreign missionary societies into profo... more Between the two World Wars, African believers transformed foreign missionary societies into profoundly local religious institutions with indigenous ecclesiastical hierarchies and devotional social and charitable networks, devising novel authority structures to control resources and govern cultural and social life. As part of this, African Christian religious leaders formidably and unpredictably challenged French colonial rule, and particularly forced labour and authoritarian decentralized governance, as threats to family stability and community integrity. Charlotte Walker-Said explores the radical innovations of African Catholic and Protestant evangelists who received, innovated, and repurposed Christianity to challenge local and foreign governments operating in the French-administered League of Nations Mandate of Cameroon. Inspired by Catholic and Protestant doctrines on conjugal complementarity and social equilibrium, as well as by local spiritual and charismatic movements, African Christians re-evaluated and renovated family and community authority structures to address the profound changes colonialism wrought most devastatingly in the private sphere. The history of these reform-minded believers reveals how family intimacies and kinship ties constituted the force of community resistance to oppression and also demonstrates the relevance of faith in the midst of a tumultuous series of forces arising out of the colonial situation peculiar to Cameroon.