University Of Algiers Research Articles

Teaching Critical Thinking in EFL Classroom: Students and Teachers’ Perspectives

The present article investigates the perspectives of students and teachers towards the teaching of critical thinking in EFL classroom. It also explores the way teachers conceptualise the term in their teaching practices as well as the approaches and methods they adopt to teach the concept of critical thinking. In this regard, 14 Algerian English language teachers were sent an online questionnaire. Nine narrative journals have also been analyzed by means of descriptive and analytic methods with first year English degree students, at the department of English, University of Algiers 2 (Algeria).In addition, ten empirical studies which have relation with the topic under investigation have been examined to reinforce the analysis and discussion of the data obtained. The results of the questionnaire indicated that the majority of participants conceptualize critical thinking as reflective judgment and most of them do introduce the concept in their classes. For the narrative journals, the participants showed awareness of the importance of critical thinking not just in their learning processes but also in their whole life in general

Didactics of written argumentation with Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) students at university level in Algeria.

The general objective of this research is to investigate the impact of a program focusing on the development of argumentation techniques on the improvement of critical essays by SFL students at the University of Algiers 2. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study was carried out, where the indicators of textual levels obtained by the students were evaluated and compared, both before and after a learning intervention. The study involved 126 students studying SFL at the University of Algiers 2, whose essays were analyzed using Parodi and Núñez's (1999) analysis guidelines, in order to evaluate the students' argumentative competence at the three levels of microstructure, macrostructure and superstructure. Once the results were analyzed, statistically significant differences were observed in the indicators of the macrostructure, and superstructure. Furthermore, an improvement in the post-test means is observed in the indicators of these microstructure. Lastly, the intervention program strengthened students' argumentative abilities, which had a significant effect on their critical essays.

Investigating Teachers’ Beliefs about the Issues Affecting their Assessment of the Writing Skills: The Case of First-Year EFL Teachers at the University of Algiers 2

The current study intends to investigate teachers’ beliefs about the issues encountered by writing teachers when they assess writing skills at the University of Algiers2. It also examines the factors which lie behind these challenges. Understanding the nature of the perceived challenges of assessing writing is very important to rethink the assessment practices of writing skills. Therefore, this study addresses the following research question: what are teachers’ beliefs about the issues encountered when assessing students’ writing skills? In this concern, the researcher adopted mixed method research to collect data by using a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with ten teachers of writing selected randomly in the English department at the University of Algiers 2. Findings revealed that almost all teachers viewed the process of assessing writing as a very challenging task. Examples of the difficulties identified in this research include students’ language problems, teachers’ confusion between focusing on the content or the form, time pressure, overloaded classes, and lack of sufficient time to assess students’ writing skills. Regarding the reasons behind these perceived challenges, teachers believed that the abovementioned issues stemmed from the lack of participation in a professional development program, low teaching load, and students’ lack of intensive practice. This research provided a set of pedagogical implications to overcome these issues by calling for an emphasis on the importance of teachers’ participation in a professional development program, reinforcement of teachers’ training in the field of assessment, and the encouragement of students’ intensive practice, and a sufficient teaching load.

The attitudes of Algerian students on Facebook: how are they constructed?

Facebook is recognized as a place of interaction between people seeking pleasure and professionals. In this regard, in order to investigate the attitude of users when exploring the blue environment, an online survey distributed to 89 students from the University of Algiers 3 in Algeria was carried out.

The Effect of Self-assessment on the Development of EFL Reading Comprehension Skills

Using self-assessment as part of reading courses is key to improving reading comprehension skills. This study aims at exploring how self-assessment develops EFL students’ reading comprehension skills. It was conducted with a sample of 40 students enrolled in the English Department, University of Algiers 2 during the first semester of the academic year 2020/2021. To collect data, an embedded mixed-methods research paradigm was used which involved collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were test scores collected as part of a pre-experiment. The pre-experiment involved administering a pre and post reading test and implementing a treatment. The treatment implemented was a self-assessment of reading strategies checklist. The qualitative data were obtained by means of an open-ended interview on participants’ reading strategies. Quantitative data were analysed by calculating the mean score and the t-test, while qualitative data were analysed using content analysis. The findings indicated that self-assessment helped the students to increase test scores and to develop their reading strategies. It enabled them to plan, monitor, and evaluate their reading process by implementing different strategies and techniques. Drawing on these findings, it is suggested that English teachers use self-assessment of reading strategies as part of reading courses, since it can improve students’ reading comprehension skills and strategy use.

The Effects of Situational and Perceived Interest on EFL Reading Comprehension: A Gender-Based Study at the University of Algiers 2

This study aims to investigate gender differences in English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension, situational and perceived interest for gender-oriented passages. It also examines whether any gender variances in situational or perceived interest in those passages cause gender differences in EFL reading comprehension. Throughout this research, clear insights about individual differences and the unexplained variance in foreign language reading are provided. Two main research questions were formulated: (a) Do gender differences in EFL students’ situational interest explain gender differences in EFL students’ reading comprehension? (b) Do gender differences in EFL students’ PI explain gender differences in EFL students’ reading comprehension? In this concern, EFL freshmen students at the University of Algiers 2, including 35 females and 24 males, were conveniently selected. The selected materials were two tests of reading comprehension with male and female texts. Each of these tests was followed by the questionnaires of sources of interest and perceived interest, adapted from Brantmeier (2006). Findings revealed significant gender differences in tests with male and female passages. Besides, significant gender differences found in cohesion, prior knowledge, ease of recollection, and perceived interest for both male and female passages in addition to engagement for the female text did not account for gender differences in reading comprehension of their respective tests. In this way, other factors than situational and perceived interest would explain gender differences in reading comprehension.

The Effects of Situational and Perceived Interest on EFL Reading Comprehension: A Gender-Based Study at the University of Algiers 2

This study aims to investigate gender differences in English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension, situational and perceived interest for gender-oriented passages. It also examines whether any gender variances in situational or perceived interest in those passages cause gender differences in EFL reading comprehension. Throughout this research, clear insights about individual differences and the unexplained variance in foreign language reading are provided. Two main research questions were formulated: (a) Do gender differences in EFL students’ situational interest explain gender differences in EFL students’ reading comprehension? (b) Do gender differences in EFL students’ PI explain gender differences in EFL students’ reading comprehension? In this concern, EFL freshmen students at the University of Algiers 2, including 35 females and 24 males, were conveniently selected. The selected materials were two tests of reading comprehension with male and female texts. Each of these tests was followed by the questionnaires of sources of interest and perceived interest, adapted from Brantmeier (2006). Findings revealed significant gender differences in tests with male and female passages. Besides, significant gender differences found in cohesion, prior knowledge, ease of recollection, and perceived interest for both male and female passages in addition to engagement for the female text did not account for gender differences in reading comprehension of their respective tests. In this way, other factors than situational and perceived interest would explain gender differences in reading comprehension.

<p><strong>Nomenclature of the partial infrageneric classification proposed for <em>Kalanchoe</em> (Crassulaceae subfam. Kalanchooideae) by René C.J.E. Maire in 1976</strong></p>

The French-born botanist René Charles Joseph Ernest Maire, inter alia, contributed the treatment of the Crassulaceae, as volume XIV, for the Flore de l’Afrique de Nord (Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie, Tripolitaine, Cyrénaïque et Sahara) project (Maire 1976). Maire was born on 29 May 1878 in Lons-le-Saunier, in eastern France, and died on 24 November 1949 in Algiers, Algeria, with his name therefore appropriately prefixed with “†” on the title page of volume XIV of the Flore. He ended his career as Rector of the University of Algiers.

Publishing in the Global South

In this episode, we talk to Samir Hachani, PhD & lecturer at the School of Library Science at the University of Algiers, about the injustice of publications between the Global North and the Global South. We also talk about Journals On Line (JOL) and INASP's effort to create a framework for journal publishing practices and standards for the Global South. The host of this episode is Erik Lieungh.
 This episode was first published 26 November 2019.

Exile in the Desert with Sarmi Moussa

Exile in the Desert with Sarmi Moussa Melinda Smith (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Patrick Gruban In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. —Thomas Merton [End Page 47] It was past midnight, and the bench I sat on in the small mud-brick airport in Ouargla was hard. It kept me from sleeping. I was in transit in this remote oasis town, waiting until just before sunrise to board the flight to Djanet in the southeastern Algerian Sahara. It was here that I saw Tuareg men for the first time. Two large draped forms filled the bench across from me—men dressed in their traditional indigo caftans with white turbans called cheches wrapped around their heads and draped across their faces so only dark eyes were visible. Tuareg men are sometimes referred to as “blue men” because the indigo dye can stain their skin. The pictures I had seen of Tuareg people didn’t do justice to these two imposing figures, and I watched them doze off. The Berber-speaking Tuaregs of North Africa were known for their camel-caravan journeys across the Sahara. Now they take planes when they need to, and drought has forced them to sell off their herds and crowd into tented camps and oasis towns. As the long shadows of morning stretched across the stark landscape, we landed on a sandy airstrip on the outskirts of Djanet, the small town that served as the gateway to the Tassili n’Ajjer. Near the Libyan border to the east, the Tassili n’Ajjer, which means “plateau of rivers” in the local Berber language, was named when water, trees, and grass were part of an ecosystem far different from the arid, rocky landscape it has become. The Tassili is home to more than fifteen thousand Neolithic paintings and engravings depicting the vanished savannah, where herds of cattle and other large animals foraged for grass and crocodiles swam in streams and swamps. This open-air museum was well known to the Tuareg people but was “discovered” by French archaeologists only in 1933. It has since brought a slow stream of adventurers and scientists to see the record of people who lived in this high desert nine or ten thousand years ago. I’d decided that before I left Algeria, I too needed to see this remarkable landscape and its treasures. It was the 1974 winter break from my job teaching English at the University of Oran, the major higher education institution in western Algeria. I was living in Algeria because I couldn’t bear to be an American anymore. By the early 1970s, after years of street protests against the Vietnam War, after being tear-gased and arrested and demoralized, I needed to go away. The Watergate scandal had just erupted. President Nixon had ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam’s [End Page 48] only port. Media images of the burning flesh of screaming Vietnamese children stalked me. In 1972, after I turned twenty-five, I found a way out. I didn’t flee to Canada like so many war resisters. After all, my life wasn’t threatened by the draft or the war, only my sense of identity. I fled to North Africa, an unlikely place. Algeria chose me, not the other way around. The country was recruiting English teachers for its three universities. I had a newly minted MA in teaching English as a foreign language, pursued as a passport out of the US, not a career choice. Algeria had waged an iconic struggle for independence from 132 years of French colonization. The revolution was held up as the world’s blueprint by other countries fighting for self-determination, from South Africa to Palestine. One million Algerians had died in the war. The French, in their final coup de grâce, burned the library at the University of Algiers before abandoning their colony. The country began building its own institutions, educating a new generation of skilled leaders and workers. I happily accepted a job offer. Algeria had severed diplomatic ties with the US after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. I was glad to be...

The influence of socio-cultural representations on the choice of study of foreign language students - Case of the University of Algiers 2 - Algeria

Each language carries with it a particular image that is constructed and formed from the perception of the culture related to it. This image of the Other and its culture could influence our attitudes and, therefore, the interest of studying a particular language. This confirmation is, in fact, only the finding made by Castelloti and Moore (2002), which aroused our interest to expand on such a subject of research. Thus, we wanted to understand how students represent the target culture for their language of study. And to what extent can socio-cultural representations determine the choice of a specific foreign language as an object of study at the university? We stipulate that the students would have stereotypical representations about the other culture (in this case about the target country and its inhabitants); and that socio-cultural representations of each foreign language would be at the center of the factors determining the choice to study a particular language. Our descriptive survey, which is part of the scientific field of sociodidactics, is based on the data of written questionnaires submitted to first-year students. The degree of each stream taught in foreign languages at the University of Algiers 2, namely: French, English, German, Spanish and Italian.

Pierre Quézel (1926-2015), une vie et une oeuvre scientifique entre Méditerranée et Sahara / Pierre Quézel (1926-2015), his life and scientific work between the Mediterranean Basin and the Sahara

This study provides an overview of the scientific work of Pierre Quézel (1926-2015). Ecologist and biogeographer, twice Doctor of the University of Montpellier, in science and in medicine, he was professor at the University of Algiers until 1962 and thereafter at the University of Aix-Marseille where, in 1964, he set up the Laboratory for Mediterranean Botany and Ecology which he continued to head until 1990. He was also one of the co-founders in 1985 of the Mediterranean Institute for Ecology and Paleoecology (IMEP). Author of 406 scientific publications which include several books, he devoted more than fifty years to the study of the flora and vegetation of the Mediterranean region and the Sahara, working on a wide range of topics : biogeography, palaeoecology, phytosociology, ecological dynamics, human impacts and biodiversity conservation. An internationally-recognised expert, he played a major role in the understanding of Mediterranean forests and woodlands and in obtaining recognition of their specific features, as much for their structure as for the dynamics of their succession over generations. Through the orientation of his research, which also encompassed aspects of paleoecology and cytotaxonomy, and the training of innumerable research scientists from countries all around the Mediterranean Rim, Pierre Quézel succeeded in creating a very fertile dynamic for research in ecology and plant geography, thus enhancing the understanding and preservation of what has become a hotspot of biodiversity, part of the planet’s evolving biogeographic capital.

Algerian Sketches by Pierre Bourdieu (review)

Reviewed by: Algerian Sketches by Pierre Bourdieu Roxanna Curto Algerian Sketches. By Pierre Bourdieu. Edited by Tassadit Yacine and translated by David Fernbach. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013. vi + 390 pp. Pierre Bourdieu is undoubtedly one of the most influential theorists and sociologists of our era. His notions of habitus, capital, and field—among others—have exerted such a tremendous influence on the humanities and social sciences that they have become widely used concepts, even in contexts far removed from their origins in a particular social and historical reality. However, despite this association of Bourdieu with abstract concepts, his writings emphasize the need to establish a strong link between theory and practice, and to ground all general statements in empirical facts. It was in Algeria and Kabylia, perhaps more so than in the halls of the École Normale Supérieure, that he began developing the basis of his theories through his ethnographic research and writings. Although Bourdieu is familiar to many scholars as a thinker and philosopher, his work as an ethnographer of Algeria remains less known. Scholars often begin their study of Bourdieu by focusing on his later works, such as his 1979 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. For these reasons, Algerian Sketches, a hefty volume that brings together texts that Bourdieu wrote during his time in Algeria, is a most welcome addition to the field.1 Perhaps the most surprising fact about this volume is that it does not already exist. Despite the immense fascination with the work and life of Bourdieu, it is the first time that his writings on Algeria have been compiled into an English-language volume. This [End Page 245] collection includes not only many previously untranslated essays, but also Bourdieu’s interviews and letters, in which he reflects upon his own experiences with the Algerian people and the War for Independence, as well as more generally upon processes of colonization and decolonization. Expertly edited, annotated, and presented by Tassadit Yacine, with all the texts (including the introductory ones) translated by David Fernbach, this book is in fact a direct translation of Esquisses algériennes, published by the prestigious Parisian publishing house Seuil in 2008. In the “Presentation” of the volume, “Bourdieu and Algeria, Bourdieu in Algeria,” Yacine provides a useful introduction to the texts at hand. First, she outlines the formative influence of Algeria and Kabylia, where Bourdieu was sent for military service after graduating from the École Normale Supérieure in 1954, on his work. In particular, as Yacine emphasizes, it was upon his arrival in Algeria and appointment to a position at the University of Algiers that Bourdieu began to turn away from philosophy and towards the social sciences, which he viewed as a more potent political weapon. As a Frenchman experiencing the conflict in Algeria firsthand—the war for independence erupted in 1954—“Bourdieu sought to explain ‘to the French people, especially those on the left, what was really happening in a country that they often knew next to nothing about […]’” (6). The goal of the volume, as Yacine explicitly states, is “to make available to readers the articles Bourdieu wrote while he was in Algeria, along with the interviews that he subsequently gave on this period of scientific activity” (6). Yacine makes the interesting claim that the texts collected should be read at four different levels: first, as an account of “a colonized society in the midst of a war of liberation”; second, as “the experience Bourdieu acquired in the course of this war”; third, as the mode of thinking that would ultimately orient the whole of his work; and fourth, as a means of understanding the origins of his fundamental concepts (7). She hopes that Bourdieu’s writings on Algeria will be of interest not only to scholars of his philosophical work, but also to all those who seek to understand the damaging effects of colonization. Her assertion that this English-language volume is “addressed above all to Algerians, and especially the young generations desiring a better acquaintance with their memory and culture” (7) is a bit puzzling, since presumably Algerians would prefer to read Bourdieu in the original French or Arabic translation. However...

Mohammed Arkoun: An Intellectual in Revolt

Mohammed Arkoun was born on February 1, 1928, in Taurirt Mimun in Great Kabylia, Algeria. He passed away on September 14, 2010, in Paris, and was laid to rest three days later in Casablanca, Morocco. He studied Islamic literature at the University of Algiers (1950-1954). After leaving Algeria on the eve of the War of Independence, he continued to study Arabic and literature at the Sorbonne, where he graduated with an aggregation in 1956. It took another 12 years and getting through a number of conflicts before he established himself academically with his dissertation on Ibn Miskawayh in 1968. In 1971, he was brought to the University of Vincennes (Paris VIII) as a professor for the Islamic history of ideas, and he eventually went back to the Sorbonne as a professor. In 1980, he switched to the Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III), becoming director of the department of Arabic and Islamic history of ideas, and editor of Arabica. The chairs he held indicate his major field of interest: a critical reading of Islamic thought and the consequences this has for new approaches to Islam, and simultaneously to the Qur‘an. His approach challenged and still challenges orthodoxy for going beyond the borders established and defended by such—needless to emphasize that this includes orthodoxy produced by and within Islamic studies, as well. Since 1993 until his death, he was professor emeritus and visiting professor at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. Numerous decorations and awards honored his life’s work.

Sufism, Salafism and state policy towards religion in Algeria: a survey of Algerian youth

During the summer of 2011, the University of Algiers and Binghamton University undertook a public opinion survey of youth in Algeria to assess their views of Sufism and Salafism and governmental policy towards religion in Algeria. In this survey that included more than 2000 respondents from all regions of the country, an analysis of the data obtained reveals mass disillusionment among youth with both political parties and religious institutions in the country. This widespread disenchantment may explain why we have not observed high levels of social mobilisation in Algeria in the wake of the 2011 revolutions and revolts known as the ‘Arab Spring’. Our survey reveals that Algerian youth see Sufi organisations as oriented towards peaceful change, yet they also see Sufis as practitioners of unacceptable religious practices (bidaa). The majority of respondents also believe that the government's support of Sufi orders involves a political effort to increase the ruling party's chances of electoral success while deflecting Salafist critiques of government.

In Remembrance of: Anne Slack (1915–2010)

Anne Slack, past president of the AATF, passed away on 12 February at age 94, in Ithaca, New York. Now is the time to eulogize this dynamic and innovative French teacher who so well exemplified the mission of our association. Anne Slack was born in 1915 to French parents living in Oran, Algeria. Having earned her Licence-ès-lettres at the University of Algiers, she put her English skills to work during World War II as translator/interpreter for the Engineering Headquarters of the Mediterranean Theater of Operations of the US Army. For the excellent performance of her duties in Algeria and Morocco, she was awarded the Emblem for Meritorious Civilian Service. It was while on mission in Casablanca that she met her future husband Raymond who was serving in the US Navy. She and Ray were married in April 1947 in Niagara Falls, New York. In the early 1950s, the Slacks moved to Schenectady where Anne taught elementary school French, first at the Brown School and then as Coordinator of FLES for the entire city. It was during this time that she collaborated with the local television station WRGB to create the innovative Fun with French program which was featured in a photo spread in Life Magazine in May 1956. The program continued to grow in popularity and soon was being transmitted to 110 local FLES classes. One can say that Anne Slack pioneered distance learning before the term even existed. As she began exploring the potential of what was then new audio-visual media to introduce students to spoken French and the beauty of French culture, she quickly recognized the necessity for trained classroom teachers to reinforce the televised presentations and taped activities. In 1959, the Massachusetts Modern Language Project and WGBH enticed Anne Slack to move to the Boston area to join the newly created Parlons français team as TV teacher and associate director. In addition to her on-screen persona, Anne played an instrumental role in developing the lessons. These were supplemented with photographs and sequences filmed in France, as well as conversational scenes with puppet figures created by Bill and Cora Baird. Anne was also a contributing author on the tapes, the workbooks and teacher in-service materials. For Americans growing up in the 1960s, she was simply Madame Slack, the well-loved on-screen French teacher for the television program Parlons français which was viewed by over two million elementary school students as part of the “21-Inch Classroom” program. The Saturday Evening THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 84, No. 1, October 2010 Printed in U.S.A. In Remembrance of: Anne Slack (1915–2010) 12 Post wrote, “Anne Slack is perhaps the best of TV teachers.” Parade Magazine publicized the program with an illustrated article on her and her family. McCall’s Magazine honored her in 1963 with their Golden Mike Award for her “Service to the American Future.” It was during this same period that Anne Slack became deeply committed to the AATF and its mission. For over fifteen years, beginning in 1968, she edited “Le Coin du pédagogue” for the French Review, addressing linguistic questions and responding to teachers’ queries. Locally, she served as president of the Eastern Massachusetts AATF chapter. In 1972, she was elected to a three-year term as AATF Vice President with the primary responsibility of administering the summer scholarship program in France, a task she performed with great enthusiasm. Anne Slack served as President of the association from 1977 to 1979. In her first year, she organized our annual Congrès in Paris. This was the first time that an AATF convention was held outside of the United States. She followed this with a memorable convention in Martinique in 1979, setting in motion a tradition whereby every few years French teachers would be able to attend meetings in Francophone settings and thus enhance their linguistic skills and cultural awareness. After the Parlons français project was completed, she accepted the position of Lecturer in French at Boston University in 1970. She also hosted weekly French radio broadcasts in Boston. In 1976, she was named Senior Lecturer of French at Harvard University, a position which...

Meursault's Dinner with Raymond: A Christian Theme in Albert Camus'sL'Étranger

As most readers of Albert Camus's masterpiece, L'Etranger [The Stranger] are aware, Camus conceived his protagonist Meursault as a type of Christ figure. In his famous introduction to the 1955 American University edition, he wrote, [this is] the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth ... had tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve. Noting the irony in equating Jesus and Meursault, he reiterated, I have sometimes said, and always paradoxically, that have tried to portray in this character [Meursault] the only Christ we deserved. ... said this without any intention of blasphemy and only with the slightly ironic affection which an artist has the right to feel toward the character whom he has created (Preface 337). An expert in Biblical exegesis, at the time of writing L'Etranger Camus was steeped in early thought. completed his doctoral dissertation (diplome d'etudes superieures) in philosophy at the University of Algiers, a study of the neo-Platonist thinker Plotinus and his influence on St. Augustine titled, Neoplatonism et pensee chretienne in 1936, at age twenty-three (Lottman 91-92, 109). Obviously, he did not draw comparisons between Jesus and Meursault lightly. At first glance, Meursault bears scant resemblance to Jesus for the average reader. Although Camus evidently conceived of him as a Jesus persona, not many scholars have tried to decipher Camus's meaning. By contrast, numerous critics emphasize how Camus's writing in general combines humanism and a strongly temperament. They conceive him longing for a God of love, a fraternal but absent Jesus. For example, John Cruickshank, observing that Camus was denounced more often during his lifetime as anti-Marxist than anti-Christian, argues that he sensed the appetite for divinity in human beings. For that reason, he rejected blatantly atheistic or anti-religious positions (314-15). As Cruickshank observes, What makes Camus so significant, and in many ways representative, a figure of his own generation is the fact that he experienced a need in its widest sense yet was unable to accept belief (324). eulogistic philosopher James W. Woelfel concludes that Camus was an agnostic. Nevertheless, several critics have emphasized the religious or Christian aspect of L'Etranger. In a significant early comparison of the styles of Voltaire and Camus, Patrick Henry observes, The only Christ that we deserve, as Camus enigmatically and ironically referred to his hero, is offered up as a tribal sacrificial victim, not to placate the whims of a revered god, but to insure the validity of the social structure. Both Christ and Meursault epitomize the scapegoat issue, for neither of them is killed for content but for form, the maintenance of the form or structure upon which society is fabricated. Neither attempts to save his life, for each knows that, by doing so, he would lose the validity of that life, its authenticity and its redeeming quality that are only sustained if they are maintained to the end. (162) Reiterated by many other critics, Henry's standard interpretation echoes Camus's 1955 avant-propos to L'Etranger. In an assessment similar to Henry's, Eamon Maher's often-overlooked brief analysis of Meursault's Christ-like characteristics chafes at Camus's analogy to Christ. Attempting to mitigate the force of Camus's statement, the devout Maher observes, He is careful not to say that Meursault is a modern Christ which would be blasphemous, as he is about as far removed from the lofty position as you could get (276). Maher interprets Camus's avantpropos thusly, We didn't deserve the real Jesus Christ; maybe Meursault is a more fitting model for us (277). At the same time, Maher supports Camus's denunciation of a hypocritical society that, living by appearances is outraged by Meursault's brutal honesty and is less repulsed by Nazi genocide and atrocities than by Meursault's failure to weep at his mother's funeral. …

У Истоков Необычной Этносоциологии

SUMMARY: The article by Tassadit Yacine explores the impact of Algeria on the formation of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological and political views. Bourdieu arrived in Algeria in 1955 as a soldier after graduation from the Ecole Normale Superieur. After his service he began teaching philosophy at the University of Algiers in 1958. Bourdieu became a vocal critic of the colonial war in Algeria while pursuing research into the sociology of transformation of Algerian rural society. Bourdieu’s anti-colonial and anti-war views led to his deportation from Algeria. According to Yacine, the Algerian experience was formative for Bourdieu. Studying the colonial society, Bourdieu acquired intimate knowledge of power relations and social stratifications, which he later applied in his studies of French rural societies, and French academic and popular cultures. It was in Algeria that Bourdieu developed his “social chirurgic method,” and established an attentive approach not just to conventional, direct violence, but also to predominantly covert forms of domination through language, culture, and different forms of symbolic capital. To a large extent this happened during the process of Bourdieu’s intensive socialization into the milieu of Algerian intellectuals, many of whom provided Bourdieu with detailed information on Algerian society. In Algeria, Bourdieu’s search for a scholarly identity coincided with the search for a political indentity, and both aspects imbued the sociologist with a methodology attentive to issues of domination. At the same time, his personal background – his origins in provincial France and his knowledge of cultural differences submerged in the French national state – prepared Bourdieu for understanding inequalities in Algeria.

The odyssey of reappropriation

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE i A prolific writer, playwright, poet, linguist, and anthropologist of his native Kabylia and of the range of Berber-speaking populations, Mouloud Mammeri was born in 1917, the son of the mayor of his mountain village and a traditional poetic bard (anusnaw). He was schooled in Algiers, Rabat, and Paris, where he graduated in literature from the Sorbonne in 1938. After fighting in World War II, he taught French in the interior of Algeria, published his first essays on Kabyle culture and the colonial question, and earned a growing reputation as a novelist, especially due to his trilogy of 'ethnographic novels', La Colline oubliee (1952), Le Sommeil du juste (1955), and L'Opium et le bâton (1965). He spent the war of national liberation in forced exile in Morocco before coming back to Algiers in 1962, where he became president of the Union of Algerian Writers and a professor of Berber language and North-African ethnology at the University of Algiers. He directed its Center for Anthropological, Prehistorical, and Ethnographic Research from 1969 until 1982, fostering the 'Algerianization' of social research and the development of field studies covering the gamut of regions and ethnicities of Algeria, with a strong focus on Berber oral cultures and interdisciplinary cooperation, despite the growing hostility of the authorities towards anthropological research. In 1985 he founded the Center for the Study of Amazigh Culture (CERAM) and its journal Awal ('the word') in Paris, which Pierre Bourdieu helped baptize with a joint article entitled 'On the Proper Uses of Ethnology' (Bourdieu and Mammeri, 1985). Mammeri is the author of numerous books on Berber language and grammar, poetry, ethnography, and literature, and he was a leading exponent of Kabyle resistance to the forced 'arabization' of his people by

Women and Politics in Algeria from the War of Independence to Our Day

Algeria, torn between the terrorism of religious fundamentalism and the abuse of a totalitarian political system struggling to survive, is at present experiencing such a particularly traumatic situation that it would seem trivial, thirty years later, to talk about the Algerian women who fought in the national war of liberation. In fact, there is a clear continuity between those women who took part in the armed struggle for indepen? dence and the women who now demonstrate in the streets against intoler? ance and for the right to live in peace in different ways, the mark of a constantly developing Algeria. For the Islamic fundamentalists, the emancipated woman no doubt represents modernity. Fundamentalists strive, therefore, to maintain or re-establish a patriarchal order, which, while subjugating women, would stop Algerian society from developing, and perhaps even go back to the mythic golden age of the early days of Islam. Apart from illustrating the unfeasibility of a plan to exclude women, the armed battle by Algerian women during the war of 1954-62 is worth studying because it marks the beginning of women making their presence felt. In 1954, Algerian women were totally excluded from public life. Nearly all illiterate, with only 4.5% among them able to read and write, they did not have access to the world of work except in the sectors that did not demand professional qualifications. Those who had skills had acquired them through experience. Whether they were peasant women or domestic servants, work for them was a part of their struggle for survival. There were no more than 6 women doctors and only 25 teachers at secondary schools, but none in higher education. The University of Algiers had no more than 500 Algerian students, among whom were about 50 girls. As far as the colonial powers were concerned, Algerian women had no political rights, not even the right to vote. In the two political parties, the PPA-MTLD (Parti du peuple algerien/Algerian People's Party, Mouvement pour le triomphe des liberte democratiques/Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties)2 nationalist party, and the PCA3 communist party, where women had an insignificant presence, they were relegated to orga? nizations for women only. As far as men were concerned?nationalists, as well as communists?any thoughts about the condition of women were invariably put aside to be considered later, until after independence for some, and to the time when there would be a socialist government for others.