The manufacture of the scientific association

Bureaucratic practices and subjective processes in the university environment

Abstract

Since 1990 in Cameroon, the consecration of the freedom of association enables the emergence of diverse associations reflecting the existence of individual wills to act collectively in the face of a state concerned about its maintenance. Although the political-identity dimension of associations in this country has been largely investi- gated, their bureaucratization, and the processes of subjectivation they enable remain understudied. Based on an ethnography of the Association of political science majors of the University of Yaoundé II, this article analyses, on the one hand, the appropriation by students of bureaucratic skills to make their associative project work and, on the other hand, the way in which bureaucratic associations enable them to make biographical ruptures take control of their lives within the academic world. This article shows that bureaucratic associations are places where emancipatory utopias are constructed.