HomeThe Maghreb of Anthropologists : Actors, Practices and Spaces

The Maghreb of Anthropologists : Actors, Practices and Spaces

Maghreb des anthropologues : acteurs, pratiques et espaces

مغرب علماء الأنثروبولوجيا الكبير : الفاعلون، الممارسات والفضاءات

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Published on Thursday, April 30, 2026

Abstract

The conference The Maghreb of Anthropologists : Actors, Practices and Spaces will focus on these shifts in the anthropology of the Maghreb. It will investigate the emergence of new actors, practices and spaces within and in relation to Maghreb anthropology, whether these are thematic, methodological, linguistic, bibliographical, conceptual, theoretical or epistemological in nature. It will also raise questions that are more institutional and that relate to issues of training, career trajectories and, more broadly, the power structures that shape higher education.

Announcement

Argument

The organizers of the conference The Maghreb of Anthropologists : Actors, Practices and Spaces invite participants to reflect on what it means to ‘practise anthropology’ in the Maghreb today, building on the line of inquiry that has shaped the discipline since the 1960s.

In a famous article published in 1962, Jacques Berque examined the uncertain future of the social sciences on the Maghreb during decolonization and the ‘restoration of national identities.’ Having asserted that “there are no underdeveloped countries, only ones that are under-analyzed,” he emphasises that knowledge cannot be taken for granted in places subjected to colonial domination has established multiple dependencies and impoverished knowledge production. In a journal published a few years earlier, Jacques Berque had, in fact, lamented the decline and archaism of the human sciences in the Maghreb. Initially in the service of conquest (…), blind to pluralistic ways of life and social disintegration, lagging behind the very field they claimed to describe and analyse, they could, in his view, only find themselves “helpless in the face of such problems, viewed in their bursting freshness and their threatening urgency” (p. 9). In *Les Indépendances*, he turns his attention to the future steps that would be taken for “these peoples to know themselves” since both “old ethnology” and “young sociology” …“are called into question by those concerned : ethnology because it humiliates them, sociology because it reifies them” (p. 3). While history would eventually prove him wrong regarding the latter—which was valued for its nationalist and development-oriented approach (Madoui, 2007 ; Melliti, 2026)—it would vindicate him regarding ethnology. It must indeed be noted that, in the three Maghreb countries, ethnology and, more broadly, anthropology – and indeed, depending on the era and political context, the humanities and social sciences as a whole – have been marginalised (or even disqualified), both in teaching and in research, due to their colonial origins and orientations (Moussaoui, 2005 ; Melliti, 2014 ; Madoui, 2015).

From the 1990s onwards, the restructuring of university education took place gradually and in different ways across the three countries, depending on how knowledge was institutionalized. This process depended on specific national timelines and intellectual networks. The case of Morocco and its links with US cultural anthropology is one such example (Addi, 2013). While ethnology was banned in Morocco, it had initially been championed by French-speaking researchers who had initially worked in related fields (sociology, history, law, heritage studies and Berber studies) and paid particular attention to the ‘field’ as an empirical site for expressing and understanding socio-cultural realities. The ‘field’ thus became the hallmark of a specific, and most often ‘implicit’ (Chaulet, 2008), research orientation within the humanities and social sciences, one that emanated from ‘national cultural experiences’ (Mammeri, 1989 : 21 ; Fawzi, 2002) and established the ‘home’ (Rachik, 2022) as a space of knowledge.

In the northern Mediterranean, the decline in Maghreb studies—and even more so in Algerian studies—characteristic of the colonial period (Berque, 1956) intensified in the wake of independence. With decolonisation came the marginalisation of research on (and in) the Maghreb, with the exception of Morocco, which was influenced by the functionalist (Gellner, 1969), interpretivist (Geertz, 1979) and postmodern (Crapanzano, 1985) strands of British and American anthropology from the 1960s onwards

In France, the uneven weakening of networks and frameworks for advising students was accompanied by the marginalization of anthropology and the academic institutions associated with this specialization. This lead to a focus on migratory dynamics (Sayad, 1991, 1999 ; Lacoste-Dujardin, 1992) and a gradual decline in doctoral research (Hmed, Perrier, 2023 ; Dakhlia, 2023). Over the past twenty years, there has been a partial return to fieldwork in the Maghreb, although this research has not always been integrated in more general scholarly discussions. The emergence of new questions was partly a consequence of the diversification of the profile of scholars and trans-Mediterranean academic mobility. A generation of anthropologists in multiple countries – sometimes linked to the Maghreb through various family and/or personal ties – is now taking an interest in contemporary changes, offering a critical re-examination of classic themes (tribe, honour, kinship, religion, etc.) as well as offering new perspectives (through the study of heritage, sporting practices, urban marginality, artistic creation, gender and sexuality, mobility).

The conference The Maghreb of Anthropologists : Actors, Practices and Spaces will focus on these shifts in the anthropology of the Maghreb. It will investigate the emergence of new actors, practices and spaces within and in relation to Maghreb anthropology, whether these are thematic, methodological, linguistic, bibliographical, conceptual, theoretical or epistemological in nature. It will also raise questions that are more institutional and that relate to issues of training, career trajectories and, more broadly, the power structures that shape higher education.

This conference therefore seeks to explore the significance of the ‘Anthropology of the Maghreb’ in North Africa and other regions over a long historical period that spans from the colonial era to the postcolonial present. It aims to provide a critical overview of the field, while remaining attentive to the conditions of knowledge production—both empirical and theoretical—and its modes of dissemination. It also seeks to examine the origins and relevance of a cultural sphere (Hannoum, 2021) that relates to other anthropological traditions, and more specifically to Mediterranean anthropology, as well as to neighbouring intellectual and geographical spaces (the Arab and Muslim worlds, the Amazigh world, the Saharan world, MENA, etc.).

The conference builds on the work initiated by the GIS Momm (Maghreb 3D), connections fostered by the Insaniyyat Forum in Tunis in 2022, by the Social Sciences Fair organised by the University of Oran in 2022, and the symposium ‘Algeria 70 Years On’ held at the CRASC in Oran in 2024, as well as exchanges conducted in 2025 within the network ‘The Maghreb of Anthropologists. Writings and Circulations since Independence’ at the MMSH of Aix-Marseille University. We have two main goals in organizing this conference :

On the one hand, we seek to better understand the sometimes blurred contours of a discipline considered to be ‘the sum of the social science disciplines ” (Moussaoui, 2005) and to track its local, national, regional and transnational development ; as well as the relationships it maintains, with disciplines such as history, sociology, geography, linguistics, law, Arabic studies and Amazigh studies.

Furthermore, we seek to strengthen the development of an international and interdisciplinary network for scientific reflection and collaboration, in dialogue with other cultural spheres and neighbouring geographical areas.

We will accept contributions from PhD students, early-career researchers and more senior scholars. Below are three broad research themes that will structure the conference.

Theme 1 : ‘Colonial knowledge’ : critical uses and legacies ?

  • This first theme aims to explore the legacy of the colonial library and the period of decolonisation on contemporary anthropology in the Maghreb, and more broadly on the humanities and social sciences, both in terms of approaches and critical interpretations.
  • What are the frameworks, theoretical approaches and authors drawn upon in current teaching and research ? What critical interpretations, including those of segmentarity, can be made of these today ?
  • What are the policies regarding the translation, re-publication and dissemination of the ‘classics’ of colonial anthropology and the leading figures of modern anthropology (Gellner, Bourdieu, Pascon, Tillion, etc.) ?

Theme 2 : The ‘unique paths’ of anthropology in/of the Maghreb

  • This theme emphasizes the reconfiguration of Maghreb anthropological studies in the postcolonial period, both north and south of the Mediterranean and on a global scale. The papers will take a reflective approach and the challenges of training and knowledge transmission.
  • What strategies did researchers in the Maghreb adopt to circumvent the political and institutional bans on anthropological practice in the first decades following independence ?
  • Which spaces of learning and knowledge transmission draw on the discipline of anthropology, both within and outside academic institutions in the humanities and social sciences ? How is the discipline practised and popularised in the Maghreb, in France and abroad ?
  • What new approaches have emerged while studying traditional topics such as oral traditions, tribal affiliations, religious practices, family structures ?
  • What are the new topics and approaches in anthropology, including within its diasporic and transnational geography ?
  • What are the main areas of research explored in relation to the transformations of Maghrebi societies ?
  • What role is accorded to languages as vehicles of knowledge, tools for accessing the field, and means of expression and analysis ?

Theme 3 : Academic trajectories and epistemological positions

  • The third theme explores the academic trajectories and epistemological positions of anthropologists working in Maghreb and on the Maghreb. These may shed light on the transnational transformations of the discipline as well as the tensions and challenges specific to the questions raised by contemporary, postcolonial and decolonial anthropology.
  • What are the intellectual, academic and institutional trajectories of anthropologists specialising on the Maghreb, both within the region and abroad ?
  • Can we locate points of tension, articulation or debate between the knowledge produced by exogenous anthropology (predominantly, though not exclusively, Francophone) and that produced by endogenous anthropology ? How does the latter tend to define itself (anthropology at home, anthropology of the near/the familiar, indigenous anthropology, etc.) and what challenges (contributions, limitations, biases) does it identify in the study of its own society and otherness from within ?
  • Is it possible to identify the persistence of domination by actors, institutions or epistemologies in the of a global North in terms of research programs, publications, networks, and translation policies ?
  • How do critical discourses in anthropology and, more broadly, in the social sciences and humanities, in the Global North resonate in the Maghreb ?
  • How, within the diasporic contexts specific to the Maghreb, are the boundaries of belonging negotiated and legitimised ? How should we make sense of the ethnographic experiences of anthropologists living abroad and/or those descended from emigrant families, whom Lila Abu-Lughod has termed halfies (2010) ?

Theme 4 : Disciplinary boundaries and circulations

  • Closely linked to the previous themes, this final theme will examine the disciplinary boundaries and the epistemological and geographical trajectories of anthropology within the field of the humanities and social sciences at regional, trans-regional and international levels.
  • How have the disciplinary divisions and interactions (primarily with history, sociology and law, but also with linguistics, Amazigh studies, urban studies, etc.) both within the humanities and social sciences and across cultural regions (the Maghreb, the Middle East, the Turkic world, the Arab and Muslim world, the Amazigh world, and Africa) ?
  • Does Maghreb anthropology constitute an epistemological field, a cultural area or simply an ethnographic domain ? What boundaries and what relationships does it maintain with the now-declining tradition of Mediterranean anthropology ?
  • What are the contributions and limitations of interdisciplinarity ?
  • In which national, regional, or international networks do anthropologists operate ? With whom and in which languages do they engage ? Where do they publish ?
  • Is there a Franco-Maghreb anthropological sphere, supported by the UMIFREs (French Research Institutes Abroad – in Maghreb : IRMC and CJB) or other bodies ? What are the local and/or regional specificities of these exchanges ? How do they interact with other international research institutions and centres of knowledge (whether located in the USA, UK, Germany, Lebanon, etc.) ?

Submission guidelines

Proposals for papers of approximately 200 words, accompanied by a short bio (in Arabic, French and English), are due by the end of June and should be sent to : assam_malika@yahoo.fr and giulia.fabbiano@univ-amu.fr

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Date(s)

  • Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Keywords

  • anthropologie, maghreb, décolonisation, terrains

Contact(s)

  • Giulia FABBIANO
    courriel : giulia [dot] fabbiano [at] univ-amu [dot] fr

Reference Urls

Information source

  • Carole LE CLOIEREC
    courriel : carole [dot] lecloierec [at] cnrs [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« The Maghreb of Anthropologists : Actors, Practices and Spaces », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, April 30, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/165qi

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