The discursive strategy of inventing a tradition and attempting to impose a one-sided definition of authentic Algerian identity seems to be a fundamental characteristic of the history of Algerian nationalism. The victory of a narrative asserting the authentic Arabo-Islamic identity of Algeria seems to suggest that inventing tradition and authenticity has been primarily a strategy that, no matter how revolutionary in its origin or intent, aims at maintaining stability and consolidating order. However, competing narratives of tradition and authenticity have come to the fore in
Algerian public debate recently, among Christian convert groups or Salafi communities. The common point between these alternative authenticity narratives is that they appear as agents of change rather than stabilization. To what extent is the strategy of inventing tradition and authenticity a force of social stabilization and regime consolidation or a force of change? Is inventing tradition always the basis of a nationalist project or can it become the basis of a multicultural, post-nationalist, trans-national project?
This panel examines the various forms, uses and implications of the strategy and discursive practice of inventing tradition and authenticity throughout various key moments of Algerian political and religious history. Two papers explore the complex relationship between power and identity during two central moments of Algerian history. A study of the complex nature of the Salafiyya movement from the 1880's to the 1930's will challenge the distinction traditionally drawn in academic representation between Islamic reformism and nationalism. A study of the electoral processes organized by the FLN between 1962 and 1967 investigates the concrete conditions under which, the FLN attempted to establish its hegemony on the nationalist narrative. Two papers focusing on the contemporary period consider the ambivalent use and potentially versatile effects of the authenticity discursive practice today. A study of the recent official policy of retraditionalization of Islam via the reinforcement of power and legitimacy of Sufi Zawiyas suggests that reinventing tradition primarily serves as an instrument of order consolidation. A study of conversions to Pentecostalism since the late 1990's demonstrates that although some converts' reference to the "true" Christian-African roots of the nation can be seen as the basis of a multicultural project, other converts seem engaged in an aggressively counter-hegemonic project rather than in a program of cultural overture and religious pluralism.
Algerian institutions are weak. This weakness has been attributed to a number of sources. Early studies focused on the role of the party-state: ideological imperatives undermined state institutions. Subsequent explanations have included the divisive nature of Algerian elites whose longstanding personal or regionalist disputes over political orientation continue to dominate politics (Quandt 1968; Harbi 1984; Entelis 1986); rival clans motivated by economic interest who seek to seize the upper echelons of power, and thus weaken institutional foundations (Dillman 2000; Werenfels 2007); or simply the continued influence of a shadow military government known as Le Pouvoir.
The explicantia are voluntarist: Algerian institutions are weak because the political and economic elite either want - through individual or collective efforts to achieve power or wealth - or cause weak institutions. While intuitive, they are deficient in timing and scale/place.
First, they focus on Algerian formal institutions after they were created. Institutions channel political and economic behavior (North 1981, 1990). Notwithstanding sudden moments of reform or revolution, the causal arrow is rarely inversed (Skocpol 1979). Second, and outgrowth of the first, the focus on Algerian administrative and representative institutions has been at the national level.
The disarticulated nature of local informal institutions, social groups, and uneven strength of local political economies that were shaped by or lay outside the colonial system (Leca and Vatin 1975; Charrad 2001) at independence has led many scholars of post-independence Algeria to discount the ability of actors within those arena to negotiate with the state in formation. Ironically, these informal / micro-institutions posed the post-colonial regime the bulk of its problems at independence (Ottaway and Ottaway 1970; Leca and Vatin 1975). Local or provincial rebellion plagued Ben Bella (1962-1965) - forcing him to rotate the regional prefects more than 250 times in three years. Houari Boumediene recognized this weakness, and organized local elections in 1967 in an effort to accommodate, co-opt, or sideline local notables that had posed his predecessor so many problems.
Focusing on Western Algeria, this paper focuses on the negotiations between local notables and state agents during the initial phase of Algerian state formation (1962-1967). Compromise on both sides - often outside of the legal framework - would weaken incipient formal institutions, from the local level, and percolating to the regional and national level. It is based on interviews and personal papers of local level state cadres involved in state building process, as well as secondary sources.
Contemporary research on Algerian politics is dominated by an approach "from above." Research based on systemic models and aggregate data is rarely interested in "politics from below." And yet the latter must be considered if one wishes to break from the standard analyse, which suggests that since elections in "authoritarian regimes" are "without choice" they lack heuristic interest. Anthropological analysis, following a natural predilection for the study of particular phenomena, tends on the other hand to ignore the effects of government systems. The two approaches fail to grasp two important analytical dimensions: patrons-client networks - the system of patronage relaying the centre with the periphery - and the embedded nature of state in the society. The electoral phenomenon reveals the nature of state-society relations, and as such is a useful exercise in breaking with such academic pathology: it allows one to observe 'what really going on', to analyze the functioning in concreto of an authoritarian regime beyond expected assumptions.
This paper explores an under-researched issue of the Algerian polity: the subtle and yet pervasive role of the zawiya networks in framing the electoral politics. This chapter examines the 'resurgence' of the zawiyas in a country whose Islamic brotherhoods bore the greatest oppression and disintegration during both colonial domination and the post-independence 'socialist' period, of all Muslim countries. Are we witnessing the renaissance of a 'sleeping maraboutism' or the 're-invention of tradition'? I propose to shed light on this issue through an examination of local electoral politics of the province of Adrar (South-western Algeria) during the legislative and presidential elections of 2002 and 2004. This paper, based on a fieldwork using in situ observation and primary resources, examines in its first part the prevalence of maraboutic symbolism in South-western Algeria. It seeks to demonstrate in the second part of the analysis the politics of inventing a neo-makhzan promoted by President Bouteflika since his ascension to power in 1999. The paper seeks to illustrate how the president has: 1) promoted the revival of the zawiya institution by the generous allocation of funds and privileges to the religious lodges; 2) constituted an electorate of followers and a stable base of political support; 3) practiced, via the Sufi paradigm of authority, an instrument of political and social control.
