Product Description: The shadow cast by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory is large and well documented, but his early ethnographic work in Algeria is less well known and often overlooked. This volume, the first critical examination of Bourdieu’s early fieldwork and its impact on his larger body of social theory, represents an original and much-needed contribution to the field...read more

"... constitutes an important and much needed intervention on the themes of memory and violence in Middle East studies." ―Lisa Hajjar, University of California, Santa BarbaraThe Middle East and North Africa form a region united by a common history of armed conflict and repeated international efforts at producing a lasting peace. This interdisciplinary collection explores the connections between memories of past violence and the violence of present memories, the context for all contemporary efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation. The contributors examine the 1954–1962 Franco-Algerian war, the 1975–1991 Lebanese civil war, and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict as interconnected struggles that outline national polities, infranational fractures, and transnational political connections. Insofar as national unity has been constructed on the contested claims of sacrifice and martyrdom, the legacy of violence has remained inscribed at the heart of political identity. The case studies point to the failure of current attempts to officially forget past conflicts, at the same time indicating local successes in commemorative actions that forge at least partial peaces between individuals and groups.

Algerian migration to France began at the end of the 19th century, but in recent years France’s Algerian community has been the focus of a shifting public debate encompassing issues of unemployment, multiculturalism, Islam, and terrorism. In this finely crafted historical and anthropological study, Paul A. Silverstein examines a wide range of social and cultural forms―from immigration policy, colonial governance, and urban planning to corporate advertising, sports, literary narratives, and songs―for what they reveal about postcolonial Algerian subjectivities. Investigating the connection between anti-immigrant racism and the rise of Islamist and Berberist ideologies among the "second generation" ("Beurs"), he argues that the appropriation of these cultural-political projects by Algerians in France represents a critique of notions of European or Mediterranean unity and elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war has been transferred onto French soil.