“Commercial Networks and Knowledge Transmission Between the Algerian Touat and West African Sahel ”
Dr. Judith Scheele, Magdalen College, Oxford University
March 11, 2008

As part its continuing lecture series, CEMA invited Dr. Judith Scheele (Department of Anthropology, Oxford University) to lecture on the findings of her most recent research on commercial networks and cultural links between Central and Southern Algeria and the West African Sahel. Dr. Scheele’s research took her from Oran, where she began her journey in October 2007, as far south as Bamako, Mali – overland. Her research details the remarkable economic and cultural linkages that span the Sahara, reminding the scholar that it is a region by itself, not just a barren waste-land traversed by the heartiest of traders.

The talk, Dr. Scheele’s second at CEMA, attracted 34 scholars and generated a lively debate. Most importantly, it underscored the importance of studies linking the Maghreb (AIMS) and West Africa (West African Research Association), and the major role CAORC can play in further promoting this genre of research. And in this sense, the lecture anticipated the 2009 AIMS Conference in Tangiers, which will focus on the Sahara.

 

“The Contemporary Algerian Mosque: Actors and Practices ”
Dr. Abderrahmane Moussaoui, Université de Provence Aix Marseille I
March 23, 2008

As part of its continuing lecture series, CEMA invited Dr. Abderrahmane Moussaoui (Department of Anthropology, Université de Provence) to lecture on the actors of and practices within the Algerian mosque. Dr. Moussaoui framed his discussion in the social sciences: modernization theory argued religion on the decline, whereas anthropological studies have taken the mosque as a fixed symbol. Dr. Moussaoui’s field research reveals a much more complicated story. While Algerians are more outwardly religious – the official number of mosques has doubled in the last fifteen years – contemporary Islam is marked by a diversification of religious practices at the individual-level. After presenting a number of empirically rich cases to make his argument, Dr. Moussaoui concluded by asking if outward signs of religiosity increasingly coupled with spiritual individualism, might be the precursor, if not indicator, of a society undergoing secularization. The conference was well received by the 43 participants, who themselves contributed to a lively debate.