Uprooting - The Crisis of Traditional Algriculture in Algeria

Between 1954 and 1960, in the midst of the Algerian War, more than two million Algerian peasants - a quarter of the population - were forcibly resettled. They were removed from their homes and villages and relocated in camps controlled by the French military in what was one of the largest and most brutal displacements of a rural population in history.
 
It was in this context of colonial violence that Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad set out to examine transformations in the fundamental structures of peasant economy and thought. By destroying the spatial and temporal frameworks of ordinary existence and reorganizing the life of peasants, the process of uprooting completed what the imperial policy of land confiscation and the spread of monetary exchange had started: the 'depeasantization' of agrarian communities stripped of the social and cultural means to make sense of the present and orient themselves to the future. This destruction of the traditional way of life was exacerbated by the quasi-urban conditions of the resettlement shantytowns, which brought about irreversible transformations in economic attitudes at the same time as they accelerated the contagion of needs, plunging the uprooted individuals into a 'traditionalism of despair' suited to daily survival in conditions of extreme uncertainty. Through their detailed analysis of these processes Bourdieu and Sayad provide a powerful account both of the destruction of a traditional way of life and of the brutal effects of colonial power.
 
This classic text, now published in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, politics, migration studies, postcolonial studies and the social sciences and humanities generally, and to anyone concerned with the impact of colonization and its aftermath.

Sommario

List of Maps, Diagrams and Tables vii Note on Transcription and Transliteration ix
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword Loïc Wacquant xii
Introduction 1
1 Forced Resettlement and the Logic of Colonialism 4
Forced resettlement and property laws 4
Landless peasants 5
Traditionalism of despair 7
Disdain and confusion 10
2 Two Histories, Two Societies 15
Acculturation and deculturation 15
Two exemplary societies: the Collo Massif and the Chélif Valley 16
Cultural transactions and colonial interventionism 18
Types of authority and types of intervention 19
The contradictions of colonial ideology and the contradiction of colonialism 21
Specifics of the study 23
3 Forced Resettlement and the Crisis of Traditional Agriculture 28
Dangers, control, and harassment 28
Kerkera: objective obstacles 30
Aïn-Aghbel: effect exceeds cause 32
Djebabra: partial and elective abandonment 35
4 The Discovery of Work 38
Employment and the awareness of unemployment 38
Experience of wages and attitudes to work 43
The prestige of a "trade" (metier) 46
A widespread attitude 48
Economic attitudes and family traditions 49
Time convertible into money 52
Discovering the scarcity of work 55
5 Tafallahu or the Consummate Peasant 58
Portrait of the "naif' 58
From naivety to folly 61
"Peasants of the end of time" 66
6 Farming Without Farmers 70
Refusal to admit 70
Unavowed disavowal 73
The alibi and the admission 75
The separation 78
7 Town-Dwellers Without a Town 82
From clan to household 83
Confronting differences 85
The broken group 89
From familiarity to anonymity 92
The urban situation and peasant values 101
Space, time, and values 108
8 The Cultural Sabir 116
Coexistence of contraries 117
Djeha's nail 121
Two contradictory abstractions 123
The educator and the bureaucrat 126
Appendices
Appendix I Glossary and Place Names 129
Appendix II The Forced Resettlement Centers of the Collo Massif 141
Appendix III The Forced Resettlement Centers of the Chélif Valley 155
Appendix IV One Aspect of Depeasantization: The Discovery of Illness 170
Notes 176
Index 209

Info autore

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was one of the most influential sociologists and anthropologists of the twentieth century. He was Professor of Sociology at the Collège de France and Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Abdelmalek Sayad (1933-1998) was an Algerian Sociologist and Director of Research at the CNRS and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Riassunto

Between 1954 and 1960, in the midst of the Algerian War, more than two million Algerian peasants - a quarter of the population - were forcibly resettled. They were removed from their homes and villages and relocated in camps controlled by the French military in what was one of the largest and most brutal displacements of a rural population in history.

It was in this context of colonial violence that Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad set out to examine transformations in the fundamental structures of peasant economy and thought. By destroying the spatial and temporal frameworks of ordinary existence and reorganizing the life of peasants, the process of uprooting completed what the imperial policy of land confiscation and the spread of monetary exchange had started: the 'depeasantization' of agrarian communities stripped of the social and cultural means to make sense of the present and orient themselves to the future. This destruction of the traditional way of life was exacerbated by the quasi-urban conditions of the resettlement shantytowns, which brought about irreversible transformations in economic attitudes at the same time as they accelerated the contagion of needs, plunging the uprooted individuals into a 'traditionalism of despair' suited to daily survival in conditions of extreme uncertainty. Through their detailed analysis of these processes Bourdieu and Sayad provide a powerful account both of the destruction of a traditional way of life and of the brutal effects of colonial power.

This classic text, now published in English for the first time, will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, politics, migration studies, postcolonial studies and the social sciences and humanities generally, and to anyone concerned with the impact of colonization and its aftermath.

Relazione

"Uprooting is at once a stunning document on colonial conflagration and a pioneering analysis of its distinctive rationale that will enrich the rapidly growing scholarship on empires, colonies and postcolonies."
Loïc Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: P Bourdieu, Pierr Bourdieu, Pierre Bourdieu, Pierre Sayad Bourdieu, Bourdieu Pierre, Abdelmayek Sayad, Sayad Abdelmayek
• Editore: Polity Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 19.06.2020
• EAN: 9780745623535
• ISBN: 978-0-7456-2353-5
• Pagine: 224
• Categorie: Scienze sociali, diritto, economia > Sociologia > Teorie sociologiche; Migration, Anthropologie, Soziologie, Gesellschaftstheorie, Umsiedlung, Algerien, Sociology, Social Theory, Algerienkrieg, Landbevölkerung, Zwangsumsiedlung