War and Public Value: Memory, Conflict, and Moral Contestation in Cameroon

Purpose: This paper examines the Anglophone conflict in Cameroon as a sociological and moral crisis of public value and collective memory. Drawing on classical sociological theory and contemporary interdisciplinary perspectives, it argues that the crisis is not merely a political or territorial struggle but a contest over moral meanings how unity, justice, and legitimacy are defined and remembered. Building on Durkheim’s conception of the collective conscience, Weber’s notion of legitimacy, and Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power, the analysis reveals that both the state and separatist movements manipulate moral and mnemonic frameworks to consolidate authority. Method: This study employs a qualitative and interpretive approach grounded in interdisciplinary insight drawn from Halbwachs, Assmann, Foucault, and Ricoeur classical sociological reasoning by showing that struggles over values are inseparable from struggles over memory. It is a desk-based analysis of secondary data rather than a field survey, designed to theorize rather than quantify, thus journals, NGO reports, media archives like Youtube clips, online communiqués from separatist movements, and social-media narratives for it analysis were consulted. Results: The Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict demonstrates competing narratives; official and insurgent construct of alternative moral orders grounded in selective remembrance and strategic forgetting. Empirically, the study draws on scholarly literature, institutional reports, and public discourse to demonstrate how the erosion of shared values and memory practices has transformed the conflict into a moral anomie. Conclusion: This study concludes that moral and mnemonic foundations are intrinsically fragility especially where shared values and memories are politicked. It concludes that resolving the Anglophone crisis requires a reconstitution of collective moral legitimacy grounded in what Ricoeur terms an “ethics of memory”: a reconciliation of truth, justice, and forgiveness.