Rogers Orock

Education:
PhD (Anthropology), Aarhus University, Denmark
MA (International Affairs), Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po Paris,
France.
BSc (Sociology/Anthropology), University of Buea, Cameroon.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
My work examines elites and the moral imagination of political leadership, governance, and development in Central and West African societies (Cameroon, Gabon, and Nigeria). My ethnographic has focused on elites around the descriptions and analyses of elites, development discourse, Freemasonry, moral panics over homosexuality, and a critical engagement with rumor, conspiracy theories, and questions of political morality and narratives of coloniality and decoloniality in postcolonial situations in Africa.

Publications
A forthcoming monograph (co-authored with Peter Geschiere), is Conspiracy Narratives in Postcolonial Africa: Freemasonry, Homosexuality, and Illicit Enrichment (link is external) (University of Chicago Press 2024). The book is a study of rumors and conspiracy theories in the wake of a moral panic over a perceived rise in homosexuality and the proliferation of the power of esoteric lodges that engulfed Cameroon and Gabon since the year 2000. The book shows how attacks on elites as homosexual predators corrupting the nation have become a powerful outlet for mounting populist anger against the excesses and corruption by the governing elites in Cameroon, Gabon, and other Francophone African states.
Previously, with Wale Adebanwi, Rogers Orock has co-edited Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa (link is external) (University of Michigan Press 2021) as well as a special issue of Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute (link is external), which was a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Achille Mbembe’s inspiring argument about the meaning of power and authoritarian complicity in the post colony in Africa.

Current Research and Teaching
Currently, Rogers Orock is interested in questions of race, blackness, and conspiracy theories about aliens and Freemasonry in the New World Order. He is currently writing an essay about Freemasonry and the racial politics of conspiracy theories on the “New World Order.” This semester Rogers Orock will be teaching “Introduction to Africa Studies” and “Ideas of Africa”, two introductory courses to Africana Studies and African Studies, respectively.