Turath

This fifth issue of Turath, like the previous ones, brings together studies, materials, and documents. It reflects the research activity of the original team, which, since September 2004, has split into two groups: one focusing more specifically on popular poetry under the direction of Ahmed Amine Dellaï, and the other expanding its scope of interest to encompass aspects related to Algeria’s intangible cultural heritage. As a result, the team has grown with the inclusion of new researchers and has significantly multiplied its research projects (see the presentation of the team’s research framework in this issue). In this issue, we first present data on the website we launched just over a year ago (www.patrimoine-algerien.org). Thanks to this platform, we have been able to make our work known beyond the limited circle of Algerian researchers, but more importantly, it has enabled us to establish meaningful exchanges with all those concerned with and interested in cultural heritage in Algeria. For the coming year, we are introducing an English and Arabic interface for the website, which we hope will help us disseminate our work more widely. The studies featured in this issue are marked by a diversity of fields and analytical perspectives. Popular poetry, folktales, cinema, language, and traditional medicine may appear quite disparate at first glance; however, the analytical approach is relatively consistent, as it aims to identify forms of popular expression through their socio-anthropological and aesthetic dimensions. While the analytical methods may differ, they do not contradict one another. Here, the focus on the popular, as approached through the examined corpora, pertains more to discursive and symbolic legitimizations than to simple social taxonomy