Review of “Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle”

Social Forces · 2025-01-30

The Algerian Revolution, South-South Perspectives, and the “Grammar of Nationalism”

Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-01-23

Abstract The Algerian revolution (1954–1962) was one of the major wars of decolonization of the twentieth century and a touchstone for intellectuals and politicians in the Global South who sought to define their own nationalist projects. This chapter looks at how Algeria influenced revolutionary movements in parts of Africa, Pakistan, and the Middle East. It shows how the Algerian FLN (National Liberation Front) was a vanguard of various Pan-African movements, which grappled with the use of violence and the definition of African identity. In Pakistan, intellectuals and politicians expressed solidarity with Algeria despite their country’s avowedly anti-communist stance, and also viewed Kashmir in light of the Algerian struggle for sovereignty. In addition, the role of Islam served a similar function in cementing nationalist sentiments in Algeria and South Asia. Finally, the chapter looks at the Arab East, where the affective ties to the Algerian revolution were particularly strong and offered a sense of hope after the collapse of the United Arab Republic in 1961 and the war with Israel in 1967. The chapter argues that Algeria was a model that helped politicians and intellectuals in these disparate regions establish a “grammar of nationalism” as they sought to address the thorny questions of language, ethnicity, territory, and economic policy in the wake of independence.

Humor and power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021

The Journal of North African Studies · 2025-02-25

Race and Decolonization in North Africa

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History · 2023-02-21 · 4 citations

Abstract The precolonial history of slavery is fundamental for understanding the roots of antiBlack racism in the region known as the Maghreb. At the same time, the question of skin color does not capture the diverse forms of discrimination that have been experienced by populations in the region over the last two hundred years. French colonial officials, for example, upheld the Berber population as a separate race that was inherently more civilized and less Muslim than the Arab population. Jews in Algeria were offered French citizenship in 1870, further complicating the racial formation of the colonial Maghreb. Despite colonial attempts to posit a racial difference between so-called white and Black Africa, the porous geographical boundaries in the southern regions of the Sahara made it difficult to assert a clear distinction between Arab and African peoples. After independence, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia sought to foster a coherent national identity and achieve political legitimacy, and their experiences of state building in turn influenced how religious and ethnic minorities were treated after independence.

Owen White. <i>The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria</i>.

The American Historical Review · 2023-02-02

Journal Article Owen White. The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria. Get access Owen White. The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021. Pp. x, 319. Cloth $41.00. Muriam Haleh Davis Muriam Haleh Davis University of California, Santa Cruz, USA Email: muhdavis@ucsc.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 558–559, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad066 Published: 31 March 2023

3. DECOLONIZATION AND THE CONSTANTINE PLAN

2022-09-12

“Algiers and the Algerian Desert”: Decolonization and the Regional Question in France, 1958–1962

Modern Intellectual History · 2022-09-16 · 1 citations

This article demonstrates how Algerian decolonization played a key role in shaping the discipline of territorial planning ( aménagement du territoire ) in metropolitan France. A number of liberal economists, including François Perroux, articulated notions of economic space that eschewed the nation-state as a unit of analysis. In colonial Algeria, this discourse was subsequently adopted by officials who sought to integrate Muslim Algerians into the French Republic. Discussions on territorial planning in late colonial Algeria echoed debates in the United States regarding the “social uplift” of African Americans in the South, which also attempted to stem the rising tide of separatism. In the 1950s, liberal understandings of the relationship among cultural specificity, territorial scale, and economic development were challenged by a host of actors, including Algerian nationalists who espoused ideas that would later appear in the analyses of world systems theorists. After the victory of the Algerian FLN (Front de libération nationale) in 1962, discussions on regional identities provided an important tool for political claims on both sides of the Mediterranean. Moreover, techniques of territorial planning developed in Algeria were imported to the Hexagon in the aftermath of Algerian independence.

La planification économique comme « savoir racial » pendant la guerre d’Algérie

Tumultes · 2022-12-15

Une guerre à la misère ?

20 & 21 Revue d histoire · 2022-06-23

Cet article analyse le rôle joué par la Caisse des dépôts dans le développement économique de l’Algérie entre 1954 et 1962. Au-delà des coûts financiers que représente ce développement pour l’État français, l’article explique comment les réformes de la politique du logement et l’aménagement du territoire en Algérie ont influencé des initiatives similaires en France métropolitaine. Plutôt que de marquer nettement la rupture de 1962, ou de considérer le plan de Constantine uniquement comme une tentative tardive de sauvegarder l’Algérie française, l’article souligne aussi les continuités entre le développement colonial tardif et la coopération.

Markets of Civilization

2022-08-08

In Markets of Civilization Muriam Haleh Davis provides a history of racial capitalism, showing how Islam became a racial category that shaped economic development in colonial and postcolonial Algeria. French officials in Paris and Algiers introduced what Davis terms “a racial regime of religion” that subjected Algerian Muslims to discriminatory political and economic structures. These experts believed that introducing a market economy would modernize society and discourage anticolonial nationalism. Planners, politicians, and economists implemented reforms that both sought to transform Algerians into modern economic subjects and drew on racial assumptions despite the formally color-blind policies of the French state. Following independence, convictions about the inherent link between religious beliefs and economic behavior continued to influence development policies. Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella embraced a specifically Algerian socialism founded on Islamic principles, while French technocrats saw Algeria as a testing ground for development projects elsewhere in the Global South. Highlighting the entanglements of race and religion, Davis demonstrates that economic orthodoxies helped fashion understandings of national identity on both sides of the Mediterranean during decolonization.