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Zusatztext Hugh Roberts's book is sharp, exhaustive, detailed and poignant. It fills an important gap and its general point about the institutional richness of Kabyle politics (and the primacy of politics more generally) is made with devastating effect. The book does not just track and explain five hundred years of 'the Kabyle polity' (though it does that) but also explores the logic of how and why the polity transformed as it did when it did. There is no arguing from first causes or flaccidly conceived 'cultural tendencies'. Roberts alerts us to multiple possible readings of every turn of events, and marshals evidence for his way of understanding each one of them. What makes this intellectually satisfying is the way these are brought together, the way empirical rigor and sometimes bewildering specificity is rendered sensible via a broader logic of institutional forms understood and acted upon in particular cultural ways. Neither the culture nor material conditions explain political life. Political life is undertaken by political actors, whom we get to know through Roberts's description, and these actors employ the institutional resources available to them in culturally sensible ways in their historically specific moments. Eric Wolf long ago complained that European scholars conceive of Others as 'people without history'. Roberts's book is a potent antidote to that. I have not read anything like it. Informationen zum Autor Hugh Roberts is the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History, Emeritus, at Tufts University, USA, and a Visiting Professor in the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He is also the author of The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002 (2017). Klappentext The political organisation of pre-colonial Kabylia, from which these traditions originate, was well described by nineteenth-century French authors. But their inability to explain it encouraged later theorists of Berber society, such as Ernest Gellner and Pierre Bourdieu, to dismiss Kabylia's political institutions, notably the jema'a (assembly or council), and to reduce Berber politics to a function of social structure and shared religion. In Berber Government, Hugh Roberts, a renowned expert on North Africa, explores the remarkable logics of Kabyle political organisation and the unusual degree of autonomy it possessed in relation to both kinship divisions and the religious field. This book further offers a pioneering account of the social and political history of Kabylia during the Ottoman period and establishes a radically new way to understand the complex place of the Kabyles in Algerian politics. Vorwort The Berber identity movement in North Africa was pioneered by the Kabyles of Algeria. But a preoccupation with identity and language has obscured the fact that Kabyle dissidence has been rooted in democratic aspirations inspired by the political traditions of Kabylia itself, a Berber-speaking region in the north of Algeria. Zusammenfassung The Berber identity movement in North Africa was pioneered by the Kabyles of Algeria. But a preoccupation with identity and language has obscured the fact that Kabyle dissidence has been rooted in democratic aspirations inspired by the political traditions of Kabylia itself, a Berber-speaking region in the north of Algeria. Inhaltsverzeichnis Chapter 1: Considering Kabylia Chapter 2: Economy and Forms of Settlement Chapter 3: Kabyle Law Chapter 4: The Kabyle Polity Chapter 5: Pre-colonial Kabylia and the Regency: Religion and Political Development, 1509-1639 Chapter 6: The Rise and Fall of the Lords of Koukou Chapter 7: The Reconstitution of Greater Kabylia after 1640 Chapter 8: Transcending Kabylia: the Constitutional Tradition and the Exceptional Tradition ...
