The Algerians
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The Algerians by Pierre Bourdieu Translated by Alan C. M. Ross With a preface by Raymond Aron Beacon Press Boston First published in France in 1958 under the title Sociologie de L'Algérie Revised edition ig6i Copyright © 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France English translation copyright © ig62 by Beacon Press All rights reserved Published simultaneously in Canada by S. J. Reginald Saunders and Co., Ltd., Toronto Library of Congress catalog card number: 62-15604 Printed in the United States of America Maps and graphs by Françoise Mallet Preface This book by my friend Pierre Bourdieu concerns itself with Algeria, not with the war in Algeria. Bourdieu, a sociologist and philosopher, has lived in that country for many years. He has the ability to observe with detachment and to understand with sympathy, to reconstruct the outlook and system of values of different communities at the same time that he perceives the growing unity of those communities as they ranged themselves against the colonial condition. For almost eight years the drama of Algeria weighed upon the French like an obsession, a guilt, and also like a duty. It precipitated the fall of a regime, split a nation asunder. It im• periled domestic peace and spread throughout the mother coun• try a climate of passion and crime. It could no longer be con• sidered a simple episode in a historically irresistible movement called "decolonization"; it became a tragic moment in the history of France. Those who care about the destiny of France and of the West cannot remain indifferent to Algeria; they will find in this volume the necessary data for reflection and judgment. The population of Algeria is neither ethnically nor cul• turally homogeneous: Kabyles, Shawia, Mozabites and Arabic- speaking peoples—although all Islamized to a certain extent— share neither the same traditions, the same way of life, nor the same social structure. For many reasons, geographical as well as psychological, the Algerian communities throughout the cen• turies have been unable to build a nation comparable to the ones that existed to the east and west, in Tunis and Morocco. The idea of the "clean board of 1830"—i.e., that before the French conquest nothing would have existed in Algeria—is un• questionably a legend. But it is true that political unification was far from being achieved throughout the territory that is to be the Algerian republic. The immigration of Frenchmen and Europeans into an Algeria officially assimilated into the v vi Preface metropolitan territory and divided into départements has pro• gressively created the situation that Pierre Bourdieu analyzes at the end of his book. Between the traditional culture of all the peoples of Algeria and the culture—French and modern—that the colons brought with them, there is a radical incompatibility. The Europeans did not understand and did not wish to understand the au• thentic nature of the traditional culture. As the dominant mi• nority, they feared that they would be swamped by the majority if they accorded to the vanquished the civic equality which the latter had long demanded. The Moslems, for their part, sus• tained the shock of both a foreign culture and a humiliating status. Their culture was shattered, partially broken up by con• tact with the modern culture of the dominant group. The swift growth of the Moslem population (2.5 per cent annually) also helped to upset the traditional pattern, to increase the number of those who had no regular work and who felt themselves lost in a hostile world, without meaning in an incomprehensible society. Thus, all the conditions were joined to a pitiless war, in which nationalists fought for the independence of their country-to-be and for their dignity, and in which the European minority defended its right to live on the land which their fathers' toil had made productive. As for the French in the homeland: some wanted to hang on to the last segment of empire, others wished to protect their compatriots who had settled on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean, and still others hoped passionately that France would pursue her voca• tion of liberty to its ultimate end. We already know what the horrors of the Algerian war have been. What the future will bring, no one can tell. But, in spite of the blood that has been spilled and the crimes that have been committed, the mere fact of a final agreement be• tween the Algerian republican government and the French government does not permit us to conclude on a note of de• spair. Precisely because the struggle has given them an aware• ness of their own worth, the Moslems of Algeria henceforth are open to modern civilization. The French, on the other hand, do not feel that they have been defeated. They realized finally Preface vii that the conflict itself had lost its meaning and that the accession of Algeria to the status of nation was both inevitable and just. Will Algeria's European minority resign itself to living in an Algerian republic, or will its members return to the mother country? What proportion of Europeans will make the decision one way or the other? Will the government of an independent Algeria that emerged from revolution tolerate in actuality the preservation of a European minority? Will the association with France be anything more than a brief and precarious transition between the colonial condition and a socialism more or less totalitarian, a neutralism more or less positive? We shall not attempt to predict what course of action will be followed. But let us continue to hope and, above all, let us continue to perpetuate the firm bonds which the dialogue, alternately peaceful and bellicose, has forged between the two peoples. RAYMOND ARON Maps and Graphs Figure Page 1. Plan o£ a Kabyle House 6 2. Plan of a Kabyle Village: Alt Hichem 14 3. Social Organization of the Tribe of the Alt Yahia and of the Village of Ait Hichem 18-ig 4. The Tribe of the Alt Yahia 21 5. The Tribes of the Aures 26 6. Simplified Plan of the City of Ghardai'a 52-53 7. Growth of the Principal Cities Between 1954 and 1960 63 8. Plan of a Part of the Domain (haouch) of the Ben Chaoua 76-77 g. Family Tree and Social Organization of the Tribe of the Ouled Rechaich 86-87 10. Dynamics of the Social Groups in Kabylia 100 11. Distribution of Farm Properties According to Size and Ethnic Category 124 12. Statistical Tables According to Departement 126-127 13. Distribution of the Male Algerian Population According to Type of Activity and Age Group 136 14. Population Shifts Within Algeria Between ig54 and ig6o 142-143 15. The Military Situation in ig57 166-167 16. Population Shifts in the North of the Departement of Constantine 168 17. The "Resettlements" in the Territory of A'in Arbel 173 18. The "Resettlement" of A'in Arbel (detail) 177 lg. The "Resettlement" in the Kerkera Region (Collo) 180-181 Contents Preface, by Raymond Aron v ' Introduction xi Chapter 1. The Kabyles 1 The Social Structures 2 The Gentilitial Democracy 16 Chapter 2. The Shawia 25 Domestic Organization 27 The Social Structures g2 Chapter 3. The Mozabites 37 The Challenge of the Desert g 7 Social Structure and City Government ... 40 Puritanism and Capitalism 45 The Interaction Between Permanence and Change 50 Chapter 4. The Arabic-Speaking Peoples .... 56 The Gity Dwellers Nomads and Semi-Nomads ...... 65 The New Sedentary Peoples 70 Chapter 5. The Common Cultural Heritage ... 92 Cultural Interpénétration and Kaleidoscopic Mechanism g2 The Economy and Attitude Toward Life . 102 Islam and North African Society . , . 107 Chapter 6. Disintegration and Distress . 119 The Colonial System 12o The Colonial Society , . .. 129 The Total Disruption of a Society .... 134. Contents Chapter 7. The Revolution Within the Revolution 145 Special Form and Meaning o£ the War . 147 War as Cultural Agent 155 The Resettlement Policy 163 End of a World 184 Glossary of Arab and Berber Terms 193 Selected Bibliography 202 Index 204 Introduction Arab writers relate that Caliph Omar used to say (with a pun on the Arabic root word frq, meaning "division"): "Ifriqiya [North Africa] stands for breakup!" Certainly the past and the present of northwest Africa—the Maghreb—would appear to support this statement. Which condition, then, confronts us: Diversity or unity? Continuity or contrast? If we note only the existing differences, are we not liable to overlook the under• lying identity which prevails? 1 There are so many criteria, so many lines of cleavage that rarely coincide, so many cultural areas that overlap. For example, according to climate and topography, there is contrast between the Tell coastal region and the "Sahara," between mountain dwellers and the inhabitants of the plains and hills. According to the way of life, contrast exists between nomads and sedentary peoples, but with varying intermediate degrees of semi-nomads and semi-sedentary peoples. According to the type of habitation, there is opposition between those who live in different types of dwellings: terraced houses in the Saharan Aures and Mzab, houses with tiled roofs in Kabylia, Moorish houses in the cities, but again with a series of transitional types, of which one of the most common is the humble earthen gourbi; opposition be• tween the grouped dwelling places of the "old sedentary peo• ples" and the dispersed dwelling places of the people that have 'It is obvious that Algeria, when considered in isolation from the rest of the Maghreb, does not constitute a true cultural unit. However, I have; limited my investigation to Algeria for a definite reason.