Often associated with the ‘rural’, the ‘exotic’ or the ‘folkloric’, Amazigh women’s ancestral art of weaving has not received much attention in Amazigh Studies. Drawing on primary sources, manuscripts, and printed texts, in libraries and archives, this book sheds new light on Amazigh women’s weaving practices, arguing that it was the ancestral rug designs that inspired the Amazigh alphabet Tifinagh. In doing so, the author reveals the active role women played in the process of codifying the Amazigh language. This book is of interest to scholars in Amazigh studies, women’s history, anthropology, and linguistics.
Representation of the Banlieusard in Literature, Cinema, and Performances: Francephobia explores the complex identity of the banlieusard within French society through literature, film and pop culture, such as rap music and stand-up comedy. The banlieue, known in English as the “inner city,” is home to underrepresented and marginalized descendants of North- and West- African immigrants as well as some white European immigrants or white French individuals. Established in tall housing estates located on the wider outskirts of Paris, the banlieue is a space constructed through the systemic disenfranchisement of working-class people across genders, ethnicities, and race and through associations with crime, unemployment, poverty, etc. In face of these challenges, the banlieusard(e) attempts to claim their Frenchness but finds oneself trapped by society’s negative perception. Similarly, they are also physically trapped in their space of high-rise buildings and in a social/economic sphere with preconceived beliefs making it difficult to integrate and contribute to French society. This book aims to emphasize resistance and the agency of the banlieusard(e) rather than pointing out their marginalization by society’s preconceptions. Therefore, the spatial arrangement of the projects where they live redefines, deconstructs, reconstructs and reverses the center/periphery dichotomy, in which the center becomes the banlieue and as a result, its outcast status is diminished. Through a varied selection of novels, films, rap and stand-up comedy, Emma Chebinou exposes the necessity in examining negative stigmas created by the institutional discourse and by space and gives a broader interpretation of the banlieue.
A comparative study based on extensive fieldwork, and an original database of gender-based reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, Aili Mari Tripp analyzes why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia adopted more extensive women's rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts.
In southeastern Morocco, around the oasis of Tafilalet, the Ait Khabbash people weave brightly colored carpets, embroider indigo head coverings, paint their faces with saffron, and wear ornate jewelry. Their extraordinarily detailed arts are rich in cultural symbolism; they are always breathtakingly beautiful—and they are typically made by women. Like other Amazigh (Berber) groups (but in contrast to the Arab societies of North Africa), the Ait Khabbash have entrusted their artistic responsibilities to women. Cynthia Becker spent years in Morocco living among these women and, through family connections and female fellowship, achieved unprecedented access to the artistic rituals of the Ait Khabbash. The result is more than a stunning examination of the arts themselves, it is also an illumination of women's roles in Islamic North Africa and the many ways in which women negotiate complex social and religious issues. One of the reasons Amazigh women are artists is that the arts are expressions of ethnic identity, and it follows that the guardians of Amazigh identity ought to be those who literally ensure its continuation from generation to generation, the Amazigh women. Not surprisingly, the arts are visual expressions of womanhood, and fertility symbols are prevalent. Controlling the visual symbols of Amazigh identity has given these women power and prestige. Their clothing, tattoos, and jewelry are public identity statements; such public artistic expressions contrast with the stereotype that women in the Islamic world are secluded and veiled. But their role as public identity symbols can also be restrictive, and history (French colonialism, the subsequent rise of an Arab-dominated government in Morocco, and the recent emergence of a transnational Berber movement) has forced Ait Khabbash women to adapt their arts as their people adapt to the contemporary world. By framing Amazigh arts with historical and cultural context, Cynthia Becker allows the reader to see the full measure of these fascinating artworks.
We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco explores how political economic shifts over the last century have reshaped the language practices and ideologies of women (and men) in the plains and mountains of rural Morocco. Offers a unique and richly textured ethnography of language maintenance and shift as well as language and place-making among an overlooked Muslim group Examines how Moroccan Berbers use language to integrate into the Arab-speaking world and retain their own distinct identity Illuminates the intriguing semiotic and gender issues embedded in the culture Part of the Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture Series
In this book, I attempt to show how colonial and postcolonial political forces have endeavoured to reconstruct the national identity of Morocco, on the basis of cultural representations and ideological constructions closely related to nationalist and ethnolinguistic trends. I discuss how the issue of language is at the centre of the current cultural and political debates in Morocco. The present book is an investigation of the ramifications of multilingualism for language choice patterns and attitudes among Moroccans. More importantly, the book assesses the roles played by linguistic and cultural factors in the development and evolution of Moroccan society. It also focuses on the impact of multilingualism on cultural authenticity and national identity. Having been involved in research on language and culture for many years, I am particularly interested in linguistic and cultural assimilation or alienation, and under what conditions it takes place, especially today that more and more Moroccans speak French and are influenced by Western social behaviour more than ever before. In the process, I provide the reader with an updated description of the different facets of language use, language maintenance and shift, and language attitudes, focusing on the linguistic situation whose analysis is often blurred by emotional reactions, ideological discourses, political biases, simplistic assessments, and ethnolinguistic identities.
This volume serves to make sense of the political, cultural, and social change that has occurred in North Africa since the Arab Spring. It includes a number of contributions which address the issue of democracy and cultural identity. The book points to the fact that North Africa needs a workable paradigm for political order, which answers to the economic, social, and cultural challenges and peculiarities of African society in an increasingly globalizing world. This will require that we eschew a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. The book, which targets students, academia, and civil society, argues that North Africa’s solutions must be defined and advised by policies which reflect the cultural realities of the society they are intended to serve.
This book’s ambition is to offer the most recent scholarship on North African cultures at a time when the very notion of culture is being re-evaluated in the shifting tides that both associate and divorce the forces of nationalism, globalism and neo-liberalism. Another ambition is to be a readable document about the past and the potential of North African civilizations. Those which have been crystallized into a polysemic voice from centuries of occupations, exchanges and what is now commonly called hybridizations. In this work the collective position of the authors, with their different fields of experience, is that the languages, musics, and the many expressions of common life in North Africa continue to flourish. That they are a bridge between sub-Saharan peoples and Europe. That they are a necessary antidote to the anemic political discourses that have prevailed since decolonization. That they are seminal for the future of the African continent as it begins its true voyage into democracy. It is difficult, at this juncture, to measure the distance that, in the decades to come, will be achieved on that voyage. It is, however, less difficult to evaluate the importance of North Africa on tomorrow’s world. If the past is an indicator, it will be an important force in the cross-flow of trade, ideas and of global destinies.
