Can I read Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria (African Anthropology) on EtoBox?

Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria (African Anthropology) by Judith Scheele is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria (African Anthropology) about?

Traces Kabylia's history through French occupation, the Algerian war of independence, and the political turmoil that followed. Kabylia is a Berber-speaking, densely populated mountainous region east of Algiers, that has played an important part in Algerian pre- and post-independence politics, and continues to be troublesome to central government. But 'Kabylia' is also an ideal, shaped and shared by a variety of intellectual trends both in Algeria and in France. Kabylia was seen by sociologically minded nineteenth-century French authors as a model of primitive democracy and became central to their debates about good government, the nature of 'race', nationhood, and the social bond. These qualities have by now largely been appropriated by Kabyles themselves, and have become central to Kabyle self-images discussed on numerous websites run by Kabyle emigrants in France as much as by local parties and associations in Kabylia itself. Central to this image is the Kabyles' attachment to their home villages. But what exactly makes a village a village? And how can this emphasis on communal autonomy be articulated within a modern nation-state? These are the questions this book tries to answer

Author

Judith Scheele

Publisher

Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey

Published

2009

Language

EN

ISBN

9781847012043

Subjects

Anthropology, History, Political Science