Like many indigenous groups that have endured centuries of subordination, the Berber/Amazigh peoples of North Africa are demanding linguistic and cultural recognition and the redressing of ...injustices. Indeed, the movement seeks nothing less than a refashioning of the identity of North African states, a rewriting of their history, and a fundamental change in the basis of collective life. In so doing, it poses a challenge to the existing political and sociocultural orders in Morocco and Algeria, while serving as an important counterpoint to the oppositionist Islamist current.
This is the first book-length study to analyze the rise of the modern ethnocultural Berber/Amazigh movement in North Africa and the Berber diaspora. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman begins by tracing North African history from the perspective of its indigenous Berber inhabitants and their interactions with more powerful societies, from Hellenic and Roman times, through a millennium of Islam, to the era of Western colonialism. He then concentrates on the marginalization and eventual reemergence of the Berber question in independent Algeria and Morocco, against a background of the growing crisis of regime legitimacy in each country. His investigation illuminates many issues, including the fashioning of official national narratives and policies aimed at subordinating Berbers in an Arab nationalist and Islamic-centered universe; the emergence of a counter-movement promoting an expansive Berber "imagining" that emphasizes the rights of minority groups and indigenous peoples; and the international aspects of modern Berberism.
On television, the Arab Spring took place in Cairo, Tunis, and
the city-states of the Persian Gulf. Yet the drama of 2010, and the
decade of subsequent activism, extended beyond the cities-indeed,
...beyond Arabs. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman brings to light the sustained
post-Arab Spring political movement of North Africa's Amazigh
people.
The Amazigh movement did not begin with the Arab Spring, but it
has changed significantly since then. Amazigh Politics in the
Wake of the Arab Spring details the increasingly material
goals of Amazigh activism, as protest has shifted from the arena of
ethnocultural recognition to that of legal and socioeconomic
equality. Amazigh communities responded to the struggles for
freedom around them by pressing territorial and constitutional
claims while rejecting official discrimination and neglect. Arab
activists, steeped in postcolonial nationalism and protective of
their hegemonic position, largely refused their support, yet
flailing regimes were forced to respond to sharpening Amazigh
demands or else jeopardize their threadbare legitimacy. Today the
Amazigh question looms larger than ever, as North African
governments find they can no longer ignore the movement's
interests.
The changing contours of Morocco's involvement in the inter-Arab system over nearly a century was largely instrumental. It was driven by both "realist" concerns and domestic political issues related ...to fundamental matters of regime legitimacy and societal cohesion, i.e. the very nature of Moroccan national identity. With the decline of Arabism's political salience, and a monarch who preferred to keep a low profile in Arab affairs, Morocco's relations with Arab Mashriq countries became increasingly devoid of traditional markers of Arab solidarity and brotherhood. Domestically, the emergence of the Amazigh factor led to Morocco's collective identity becoming a renewed subject of contention.
This study examines the place of the Amazigh movement and communities in the evolving political fortunes of North African states. It evaluates the prospects for attaining a genuine recognition of ...Amazigh ethnocultural demands as part of a broader democratic transformation of society and state, and the Amazigh movement's likely contribution to that transformation. The Amazigh movement has the potential to make alliance with governments and other sectors of societies, in part to try and balance the strength of Islamist groups. However, the process is only at the beginning stages, and there is also a possibility that Amazigh self-assertion may lead to greater polarization of North African societies.
This article examines the efforts of the Amazigh (Berber) identity movement during the last 7 years to redefine the content of North African states' collective national identities, and the responses ...of state and other societal actors during a period of renewed political contestation. In highlighting the increasingly charged and contested political environment in North Africa, it argues that (a) the Berber-Amazigh identity movement has registered important symbolic achievements, (b) translating these symbolic achievements into concrete ones remains enormously difficult, and (c) the discourse and praxis of the Amazigh current has become increasingly militant, and even ethnonational.
The Berber-Amazigh identity movement has emerged in recent decades in North African states, demanding official recognition of linguistic and cultural rights and challenging the hegemonic narrative of ...history propagated by ruling elites who advocate the full Arabization of society and the reduction of Berber culture to folklore status. In recent years, the movement has gained a measure of linguistic and cultural recognition from North African states. This hard-won legitimization has in turn given the Amazigh movement new confidence to press its demands. The events of the "Arab Spring" have contained an important Amazigh dimension. With the needs of North African states now even more acute, and given the political and social discontent bubbling up from below, the Amazigh identity project is clearly entering a new era, one that poses both new opportunities and new challenges, particularly in the face of increasingly influential Islamist movements.
This article is an analytical overview of the history of Moroccan Jewry, from pre-Islamic times to the present day, exploring the themes of myth, memory and political interests in the multi-faceted, ...continuous interactions between the community and Moroccan society as a whole. In referring to seminal developments in Moroccan political history, it analyses the different ways in which the Jews of Morocco experienced them as an integral part of the larger societal mosaic. This survey of the 2,000-year Jewish presence in Morocco employs a variety of classical and modern sources in order to locate the place of Moroccan Jews within the ebbs and flows of Moroccan dynastic history, particularly following the establishment of the first Islamic dynasty in the eighth century, C.E. It also engages with current historiographical debates on the subject matter. Overall, it provides clarity and order to the subject of Jewish-Muslim inter-communal relations in Morocco over the longue durée, a matter too often shrouded in myths and half-truths.
Tunisia's "Revolution of Dignity" lit the spark for the tsunami of popular protests, the misnamed "Arab Spring" that engulfed the region in 2010-11. A central aspect of Tunisia's ongoing transition ...has been an alliance between the Islamist Ennahda party and two leading secular-left-of-center parties, which came together after the October 2011 Constituent Assembly elections to form a broad-based interim government until the completion of a new constitution and new elections in 2013. This alliance carries the potential for fashioning of the first genuinely democratic polity in the Arab world. Whether or not the alliance will manage to surmount the obstacles posed by the inherent tension between the Islamist and secular-modern currents remains to be seen.
Toward a Second Republic? BRUCE MADDY-WEITZMAN
Amazigh Politics in the Wake of the Arab Spring,
06/2022
Book Chapter
Unlike neighboring Tunisia and Libya and, of course, Egypt, Algeria did not experience a serious regime challenge during the tumultuous months of mass protest that swept through the region at the end ...of 2010 and early 2011. Even Morocco—its neighbor and rival to the west—witnessed more sustained and coordinated protests. A major challenge to the Algerian pouvoir would burst forth only at the very end of the decade, part of the renewed antigovernment activism across the region that included Sudan, Lebanon, and Iraq.
The absence of a major threat to the Algerian political status quo in 2011 requires explanation. The
Tunisia BRUCE MADDY-WEITZMAN
Amazigh Politics in the Wake of the Arab Spring,
06/2022
Book Chapter
Tunisia, where the spark for regionwide upheavals was lit (literally) by a despairing young man in December 2010, is the singular success story of the Arab Spring uprisings. It is the only country ...that transitioned from a strong authoritarian regime to a pluralist, democratic one, anchored in a new constitution.
Its success to this day can be ascribed to several underlying factors, all of which point to social cohesion and stateness, sharply contrasting with neighboring Libya. These include: (1) its long history as a distinct political entity within a defined territorial space, dating back to at least the seventeenth century;
