Généalogie de la société civile algérienne : étude historique critique de la construction du concept de société civile en Algérie

الملخص EN

Starting from the postulate that every political or social system comes from a specific social, economic, historical and cultural frame, the functions and the place of civil society are determined by the specificities of the context Through this work, we will try to identify the elements that are at the origin of Algerian civil society.

Therefore, we used the genealogical method as defined in the works of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Veyne in order to sort those historical elements and study the way they influenced the construction of the concept of civil society in Algeria, as well as the power relationship that bounds them, producing a critical historical analysis of the concept.

Through our work, we were able to sort three core elements that played a key role in this process, the cultural element, the religious element and the militant element.

First, the cultural elementis divided into two parts.

The first part is the traditional solidarity, which we mostly find in the rural areas and the pastoral tribes, it takes the form of traditional solidarity institutions like twiza or tadjmaat that represent some of the good practices that produce social capital.

The second part is the city corporations that we find among the merchants and craftsmen of the cities and through which they createdcafés and private clubs as new places of socialization, where questions of public good were debated.

Second, the religious element, which is also divided into two parts.

The first being the traditional religious institutions , like zaouias, that established a third power in the region between the tribes and the central state, combining the religious and the temporal power, what became a sovereign power working for the common good in some of the most remote regions of the country.

The second part is the religious reforms of the 19th century that are embodied in the association of the Muslim ulemas founded in 1932.

Its purpose was to reform the religion of Islam by eradicating the traditional superstitions that got into it throughout history, and promoting a modern vision of religion that takes place inside a nation-state frame as part of a civil society.

Third, the militant element that is rooted in the struggle for the independence of Algeria, it takes form in the political and ideological system that took place in the country after the revolution, and is also divided into two parts.

The first one being the network of state-ruled and centralized associations and organizations that frame all the aspects of the social life in the country, and the second one is the intellectual elite of the country that tries to play the role of Gramscian organic intellectual elite that leads the nation.

These elements that are the traditional solidarity, the Muslim society, and the militant tradition, form a framework of recognized social references that regulate and justify the actions as well as the very existence of civil society organizations in Algeria.