Maghreb Spaces

The book "Maghreb Spaces: Practices and Challenges", edited by Nadir Marouf, is a collective work stemming from the international conference of Taghit, organized in 1987 by the University of Oran. It brings together several contributions across sociology, anthropology, urban planning, literature, and the semiotics of space to analyze how Maghrebi societies produce, experience, and represent space. The central thesis of the book is that space in the Maghreb is never neutral ; it constitutes a social, cultural, political, and symbolic arena. The authors demonstrate that urban, rural, or Saharan spaces reflect power dynamics, social hierarchies, and value systems inherited from history, religion, colonization, and local traditions. The volume is structured into two main parts : - Practices and Strategies : This section studies the social uses of space through housing patterns, borders, tribal territories, oases, nomadic spaces, cities, and the transformations linked to the modern state and urbanization. The authors analyze how individuals and social groups appropriate space according to economic, legal, or political logics. - Figures and Metaphors : This second section focuses on the symbolic representations of space in literature, popular narratives, religious practices, and collective imaginaries. Here, space emerges as a cultural language that reveals Maghrebi identity, alongside the relationships between interior and exterior, sacred and profane, male and female.