This study deals with the entangled relations that developed between Jews and Berbers in Morocco. From the beginnings of the Arab rule, Jews lived as Dhimmis under the protection of Arab or Berber dynasties in urban centres, or Berber tribes and clans in rural ones. They not only shared the same spaces and material culture with the Berbers but also popular beliefs and practices, such as the veneration of saints, magical thinking, folk medicine and a great repertoire of Berber songs, dances, tales and proverbs. However, their asymmetrical political status as protectors and protected and their divergent Jewish and Muslim faiths led Berbers to ambivalent misconceptions about Jews and their forms of life, despite their intimate coexistence and their complementary economic cooperation. After a long separation, Berbers and Jews are currently attempting to reconstruct their memories of the other, and both parties seem to idealise their shared past.
Intimacy, Cooperation and Ambivalence
Social, Economic and Cultural Interaction between Jews and Berbers in Morocco
Joseph Yossi Chetrit
Negotiating Honour and Shame in the Contemporary Moroccan Rif
A Review of Concepts and Literature
Gina Crivello
In this article I review concepts related to honour and shame and explore how these are understood within the context of the contemporary Moroccan Rif, a Berber-speaking region that is characterised by outsiders as closed and 'conservative', despite its long-established history of out-migration and transnational ties to Europe. The article argues that despite many changes to the political, economic and social landscapes of the Rif, understandings of honour and shame continue to shape gender hierarchies among Riffian Moroccans. As part of a broader system in which individuals negotiate status and respectability, honour and shame mediate relationships between individuals, families and 'honour groups' or moral communities in which they participate.
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2008
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 38–56
Hilary Pomeroy
The eleven articles in this issue of European Judaism reflect the social and religious culture of Moroccan Jews set against an ever changing backdrop of persecution and conflict, interaction and cohabitation. Ranging from Berber Jews to forced converts, scholars, courtiers and artisans, Moroccan Jews were constantly under threat. Despite this unstable situation, they produced literary and religious works in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Spanish as well as creating distinctive life-cycle customs, songs and a highly skilled material culture. While the Jewish community of Morocco is today considerably reduced, Moroccan immigrants in Israel, France and the Americas keep the memory and identity of Jewish Morocco alive.
A Camp for Foreigners and “Aliens”
The Harkis' Exile at the Rivesaltes Camp (1962–1964)
Jeannette E. Miller
The French government placed 20,000 of the approximately 100,000 harkis repatriated to France following the Algerian War in the Rivesaltes camp. Located in rural French Catalonia, it had previously lodged foreigners and French citizens whom the government removed from society. The decision to house the harkis in this camp, made during summer 1962 as the French government extricated itself from its 132-year empire in Algeria, symbolized that they were aliens: Berber and Arab repatriates, nearly all of whom obtained French nationality shortly after they arrived in France, were targeted by government housing policies that distanced them from public view. The camp's architecture, living conditions, isolation from French citizens, military oversight, and “reeducation” classes, beyond functioning as powerful symbols, reinforced—and contributed to—the government's treatment of the harkis as aliens. Over the twenty-seven months it remained open, Rivesaltes fostered an exilic existence for these harkis and socially excluded them from French society.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2013
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 21–44
Fanny Colonna
Thinking Differently Under Colonialism
Arthur Asseraf
Eastern Algeria in 1875, Baptiste lived a remote, peaceful life in the mountains of the Aurès. Uniquely, he was seen by the local Berber-speaking shawiya people not as a settler, but as one of their own, a “native.” However, he never converted to Islam
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Review Article
- Pages:
- 123–130
Wake in Guangzhou
The History of the Earth
Maria Thereza Alves
opportunities for the influx of seeds. Trains, cars, ships, and animals also transport seeds. Wind and rain sweep seeds from one place to the other. The investigation of the arrival of seeds in Guangzhou began with Ibn Battuta, a Berber from Algeria who was a
Editorial
‘But No One Died’: A Brief Reflection on Place and Time
Edited by Christine McCourt
turned to Pierre Bourdieu’s (1970) work on habitus, which was rooted in his earlier ethnography of the design of the Berber house, and Mary Douglas’s writing about religion, symbols and the body. Both captured and described something that we know, but
Instead of a Novel
Sophia Yablonska's Travelogues in the History of Modern Ukrainian Literature
Olena Haleta
. Encountering non-European cultures for the first time, she describes rarities that catch her attention: fire-swallowers, a snake eater, a Senegalese dancer, or a Berber fabulist performing on a central square. Arriving in Morocco, she focuses on unusual events
Introduction
Experiences of Time in the Ibero-American World, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Javier Fernández-Sebastián and Fabio Wasserman
, historia y memoria (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2013); Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage, eds., Breaking Up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). 4 Javier Fernández-Sebastián, “Historia
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 43–47
The Rhizomatic Algerian Revolution in Three Twenty-First- Century Transnational Documentaries
Algérie tours, détours (2006), La Chine est encore loin (2009), Fidaï (2012)
Nicole Beth Wallenbrock
history as in Algeria. Bensmaïl’s documentary imparts a portrait of a symbolic and utilitarian geographical location, Ghassira, a northeastern village in a Berber (Chaouia) tribal area where the Revolution “began” in 1954 after the murder of a French
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 103–127