Couscous

2020 ◽  
pp. 383-393
Author(s):  
Sylvie Durmelat
Keyword(s):  
Food Production ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
North African ◽  
African Immigration ◽  
Cultural Hierarchies ◽  
The Military

This article proposes to consider couscous, a North African specialty and a favourite dish of the French, as an edible site of memory. Displacing the focus from gastronomy, a discourse of national culinary superiority, to a single dish, I retrace the irresistible ascent of couscous to fame in the French culinary pantheon. The military conquest and colonization of Algeria familiarized French diners with the dish and associated it with forms of racialized and sexualized colonial burlesque in songs and vaudeville. Settlers appropriated it as terroir to claim their “Algérianité.” North African immigration and decolonization created a de facto market of consumers in France, while the industrialization of food production made this preparation into a valuable commodity and a ready-made meal, obfuscating its colonial roots. The French’s affection for couscous is often hailed as a sign of tolerance in an otherwise divisive and fraught public conversation about immigration, identity, and discrimination. However, couscous’ colonial baggage and racialized legacy continue to resonate, shaping tastes, and informing political rhetoric as well as cultural hierarchies. The (after)taste of empire lingers on at a granular level, as edible memory.

Variations among North African Military Regimes

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Federico Battera
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
North African ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Supreme Council ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Military

This article explores the differences between two North African military regimes—Egypt and Algeria—which have been selected due to the continuity of military dominance of the political systems. Still, variations have marked their political development. In particular, the Algerian army’s approach to civilian institutions changed after a civilian president was chosen in 1999. This was not the case in Egypt after the demise of the Hosni Mubarak regime of 2011. Other important variations are to be found in the way power has been distributed among the military apparatuses themselves. In the case of Egypt, a principle of collegiality has been generally preserved within a body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which is absent in the case of Algeria, where conflicts between military opposed factions are more likely to arise in case of crisis. How differences generally impact the stability of military rule in these two cases is the main contribution of this paper.

Coup-Proofing in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Lutterbeck
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Common Finding ◽  
North African ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Military

Coup-proofing—that is, measures aimed at preventing military coups and ensuring military loyalty—has been a key feature of civil–military relations in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) states. Just as the MENA region has been one of the most coup-prone regions in the world, coup-proofing has been an essential instrument of regime survival in Arab countries. The most commonly found coup-proofing strategies in the region include (a) so-called “communal coup-proofing,” involving the appointment of individuals to key positions within the military based on family, ethnic, or religious ties; (b) providing the military with corporate and/or private benefits in order to ensure its loyalty; (c) creating parallel military forces in addition to the regular military, so as to “counter-balance” the latter; (d) monitoring of the military through a vast internal security and intelligence apparatus; and (e) promoting professionalism, and thus political neutrality, within the military. The experiences of the “Arab Spring,” however, have shown that not all of these strategies are equally effective in ensuring military loyalty during times of popular upheavals and regime crises. A common finding in this context has been that communal coup-proofing (or militaries based on “patrimonialism”) creates the strongest bonds been the armed forces and their regimes, as evidenced by the forceful suppression of the popular uprising by the military in countries such as Syria, or by parts of the military in Libya and Yemen. By contrast, where coup-proofing has been based on the provision of material benefits to the military or on counterbalancing, as in Tunisia or Egypt, the armed forces have refrained from suppressing the popular uprising, ultimately leading to the downfall of these countries’ long-standing leaders. A further lesson that can be drawn from the Arab Spring in terms of coup-proofing is that students of both military coups and coup-proofing should dedicate (much) more attention to the increasingly important role played by the internal security apparatus in MENA countries.

Rewriting the memory of immigration: Samuel Zaoui’s Saint Denis bout du monde

2018 ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Mireille Le Breton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
North African ◽  
First Generation Immigrants ◽  
Migrant Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
African Immigration ◽  
Economic Boom

This article reflects on the memory of North-African immigration in twentieth-century France, and focuses more particularly on the fate of the chibanis, the first generation of immigrants who came from Algeria to work in France during the economic boom of the post WWII era. Grounded in the works of historians of memory Nora and Ricoeur, this chapter analyzes how Samuel Zaoui’s novel Saint Denis Bout du monde portrays first-generation immigrants in a new light. Indeed, moving away from the traditional, largely negative, stories of loss, the novel partakes of new narratives of regaining and repairing, what Susan Ireland calls ‘a kind of Narrative recovery.’ The novel can be read as the story of the forgotten generation, which repairs collective amnesia as it regains memory, in order to reconcile itself with the past. This article goes further to show how a new narrative of reconciliation is able to trigger the shift in the episteme of migrant literature.

The Legacies of Patrimonial Patriarchalism

2011 ◽  
Vol 636 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwynn Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Military Coup ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
Ideological Influence ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Familial Roles

In Chile, how citizens and political leaders have understood, incorporated, and contested the relationship between the familial and the political has been central to the development of their society. The author examines the ideological influence that familial beliefs had on the process of delegitimizing the presidency of Salvador Allende and legitimizing the military coup through an analysis of political rhetoric surrounding the mobilization of women in the March of the Empty Pots and Pans. The author argues that the march was a pivotal moment in which generalized beliefs about the state’s responsibility for familial welfare, including protecting men’s and women’s familial roles, were transformed into a powerful critique against Allende and his government. The author shows how the arguments put forward by Allende’s opponents drew on embedded beliefs about the relationship between families and politics to frame the emerging debate about the political legitimacy of President Allende.

scholarly journals Society of North Africa on the Eve of the Empire’s War with the Vandals and Its Attitude to Justinian’s Reconquista

2020 ◽  
pp. 198-205
Author(s):  
Natalya Zolotukhina ◽  
Nikolay Bolgov
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
African Society ◽  
North African ◽  
Extreme Caution ◽  
Latin Culture ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
The Military

Introduction. The article presents an analysis of North African society on the eve of Belisarius’s campaign against the vandals in North Africa (533–534). The campaign directed by Justinian under the leadership of Belisarius aimed to return the territory of North Africa to the Roman Empire. Methods. The methodological basis of this work is the concept of the Late Antiquity, the core of which is studying the people’s mentality, since the existing work on this issue focuses solely on socio-economic and political cause-and-effect relationships of the further confrontation between the Moorish and Roman tribes. Actually, the methods are the following: the historical-systemic method was the most important (an attempt to analyze the specifics of North African society on the eve of the war with the Vandals). Analysis. We divided North African society into three groups: the Vandals, the Libyans, the Moorish. The last two groups and their attitude towards the inclusion in the Roman Empire were of the greatest interest. Some of the tribes supported Justinian’s idea of the Reconquista and fought against the Vandals. Some supported the vandals. Nomadic tribes remained neutral. In our opinion, supporting the military campaign against the Vandals was due not only to economic reasons, but also mental ones. Thus, the research interest was caused by the transition period but not only in relation to the “Late Roman – Early Byzantium” line, but also because the region was romanized (presence of Latin culture, including the language segment), then it was part of the Vandal kingdom, after that – part of the Roman Empire (synthesis of Greek and Latin culture, with the predominance of Greek one). Results. In the course of the campaign against the vandals, North African society was represented by several social groups: the Vandals, the Libyans and the Мооrish – tribes that have their own cultural characteristics. Some tribes, who were in the Romanized zone (before the arrival of the Vandals), were on the side of Belisarius and fought against the Vandals. With extreme caution, we can say that this was due not only to socio-economic or political reasons, but also to mental ones. In our opinion, Byzantine Africa was a synthesis of Latin and Greek with the prevalence of the latter, and the Romanized population still wanted to feel part of the Roman Empire.

Conclusions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Covey ◽  
Sonia Alconini
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Local People ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
The Military ◽  
Imperial State

This chapter is an editorial conclusion to Part 3, responding to the central issues raised in chapters on the military, political, and economic power of the Inca state. The concluding chapter mentions some large-scale theoretical formulations for imperial rule, and then discusses the trajectory of Inca militarism as the empire expanded beyond the Cuzco region. Conquest led to varying manifestations of Inca economic power, and many aspects of the political economy were projected from the household of the ruling Inca and his wife. Kinship served as a key means for connecting Inca rulers with subject populations, but local people could evade the imperial state under some circumstances, especially in areas where food production practices were different from those most familiar to the maize-farming Incas.

scholarly journals Bridges Across the Mediterranean Sea: An Introduction to the Maghreb-Southern Europe Migration System

Finisterra ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (77) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Abreu ◽  
João Diogo Mateus
Keyword(s):  
Systems Approach ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Physical Barrier ◽  
North African ◽  
Migration System ◽  
African Immigration ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Migration Systems

The current geopolitical importance of the Mediterranean isheightened by the fact that it is both a dividing physical barrier between a developed Europe and a chronically peripheral Africa and one of the main structuring corridors for international migration. This note builds on the assumption that the Maghreb-Southern Europe migratory flows are best analysed in a “migration systems” approach and makes a contribution to the awareness of the history andpresent characteristics of the flows within this particular system. The note is divided into five sections: Section 1 further specifies the object of the note; Section 2 provides a brief historical account of the main periods and events of relevance to the dynamics of this migration system; Section 3 is a quantitative analysis of thestocks and flows of North African immigration to European countries in the recent past; Section 4 looks into these flows in further detail, seeking to identify some of their recent characteristics; finally, Section 5 identifies some foreseeable (economic, institutional, demographic,…) developments that are likely to affect the future dynamics of the system.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document