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Savage Wars? Codes of violence in Algeria, 1830s – 1990s

McDougall, James

Authors

James McDougall



Abstract

Political violence in Algeria has often been accounted for only by recourse to caricatures of a society supposedly `intensely violent' by nature, or else rationalised as the product of a peculiar political culture and national historical experience. Departing from both approaches, this article suggests that different occurrences of both state and non-state violence must be understood as particular, distinct moments in both the recomposition and breakdown of inherently conflictual social relations. While Algerian history (including colonial history) provides many examples of the non-violent negotiation of social and political tensions, the social production and experience of violence have been written into dominant historiographies and public culture in complex ways. These complexities of the successive ways in which different moments of violence have been encoded belie both theories of the inescapable reproduction of cyclical violence as a pattern of political behaviour, and less sophisticated, but enduring, clichés of `Algerian savagery'.

Citation

McDougall, J. (2005). Savage Wars? Codes of violence in Algeria, 1830s – 1990s. Third World Quarterly, 26(1), 117-131. https://doi.org/10.1080/0143659042000322946

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Mar 1, 2005
Deposit Date Feb 5, 2009
Journal Third World Quarterly
Print ISSN 0143-6597
Electronic ISSN 1360-2241
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 26
Issue 1
Pages 117-131
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/0143659042000322946


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