Scientific event

The research team held an internal discussion seminar titled: "Updating Knowledge about Socialist Agricultural Villages: A Multidisciplinary Approach", as part of the research project : "Urban Policies in Algeria: Between Social Considerations and Spatial Organization. The Case of Socialist Villages and Social Housing". Below is a summary of the project:
<p>Algeria&#039;s history, divided into three main periods (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial), reflects the specificities and evolution of its political, economic and social context, giving rise to a highly complex urban and sociological reality that blends varieties of architectural production and spatial organization, in which Algerian society has repeatedly and in every period demonstrated its ability to change and transform itself, producing meaning (and nonsense!) by appropriating built space.</p>
<p>In 1962, the young, independent Algeria was faced with the challenge of consolidating its economy and reclaiming its vast territory. From 1965 onwards, the state made undeniable efforts to remedy this situation through capital-intensive investments, focused primarily on industrialization, urbanization and the modernization of Algerian society. However, Mostefa Lacheraf pointed out as early as 1972 that: “[the ruralization of towns] poses the great problem of the structures of Algerian life in its entirety, of their indispensable remodeling and extension” [1].</p>
<p>In response to this crisis, the agrarian revolution was launched in 1971 as a flagship project to promote the rural world and resolve the “agri-cultural” crisis, with the aim of bringing about a “radical” transformation of the spatial, productive and social situation in the country&#039;s agrarian and pastoral zones. However, this project for yet another revolution turned out to be a (relative) failure, and was abandoned without much thought.</p>
<p>In the 70s, the “villages of the future” and many other names and qualifiers were attributed by political players and/or the Algerian press, to designate a single major project, that of the 1000 socialist villages, carrying a political and economic ambition and aimed at the rural population. This project, which was to go beyond the simple regrouping of dwellings, embodied a major operation to restructure the Algerian countryside. In other words, a social project.</p>
<p>However, the results were contrary to expectations: agriculture remained in crisis, some inhabitants left the village and others who remained adopted an urban lifestyle. left the village, while those who remained adopted an urban lifestyle. This question of the hegemony of the urban lifestyle in the representations of both inhabitants and decision-makers can be explained if we consider Jean-Marc Kalflèche&#039;s conclusion in 1969 that economists made a mistake in thinking that socialism was the way to development for the Third World. Indeed, the socialist village project was a step in that direction. It aimed to impose strict discipline, transform mentalities through housing, pool the workforce and improve living and working conditions, by attempting to organize agriculture in the image of industrial labor and model the countryside in the image of the city.</p>
<p>Why didn&#039;t the socialist village project achieve the success it was destined to? Presumably, political intervention in the countryside had repercussions on the city and the urban environment that politicians either failed to see or were unwilling to express, out of a concern to protect the city while developing the countryside. In other words, to dissociate the rural from the urban, favoring the latter as the objective to be achieved through the project to modernize Algerian society. The instigators and decision-makers wanted a break with the past, whereas society was thinking in terms of continuity(s).</p>
<p>That said, and even if interest still exists in socialist villages and their constituent elements (N. Chabi , 2008 ; O. Bencheikh le Hocine, 2015 ; M. Souiah &amp; F. Marhoum, 2018,2019 ; A. Taieb Brahim, 2021; A. Meziani &amp; T. Otmane, 2022), we plan to revisit this “original experiment”, which has generated so much ink and provoked so much political and scientific debate in the past (1970-1980), and which still arouses interest. Since it&#039;s a question of historical continuity, and since the “urban/rural” pairing remains indispensable for understanding and analyzing the social question in Algeria, with all its attendant issues. Notwithstanding the fact that urban sociology has long been dominated by the culturalist paradigm born of P. Bourdieu and A. Sayad&#039;s famous “Déracinement” research findings.</p>
<p>For us, it&#039;s a question of critiquing a public policy, as the socialist villages are extended with rural (grouped) housing programs in the countryside and the social rental housing formula in the cities. Our project therefore aims, firstly, to revive the rural question by studying rural housing and habitat. Secondly, the urban question is addressed through the study of social housing (rehousing) in cities. We are led to believe that these public policies were aimed at solving a single problem: housing for Algerians. For us, however, the problem is multi-dimensional: firstly, there is a housing crisis, which is under-analyzed; secondly, there is a housing crisis, which intercepts a crisis of living.</p>
<p>To this end, we are interested in the “collision/collusion” between two main dimensions in the making/configuration of spaces: architectural design and social appropriation. This invites us to revisit two concepts: the concept of “rehousing” with its “natural” effects (Sayad, 1980); and the concept of “inhabiting”, which means “making a space habitable” (Hadjidj, 2002, p. 20).</p>
<p>Our initial question is about this kind of rejection and dissatisfaction with the form (architecture) of social housing. In the socialist villages, some have left their homes to return to their original habitat in the mountains (pre-survey in Bejaïa, 2023); others - for lack of means - have redeveloped or transformed (disfigured/reconfigured) their dwellings; a third category have - squarely - demolished them and rebuilt as detached houses. In the case of social (urban) housing, some have returned to live in their “Haouch” in their working-class (native) neighborhoods, while others have redeveloped or transformed their dwellings.</p>
<p> In a context where urban issues take precedence over rural ones, a question arises: isn&#039;t it possible to proceed with architecture in the opposite direction to previous policies: adapting (rural, social) housing to (rural, social) inhabitants, rather than trying to “force” them to adapt to a type of housing and a way of life that is not “frowned upon” but rather “frowned upon”? If so, how? If not, why not?</p>
<p>Part of the answer lies in the idea that a poorly posed problem becomes a false problem, to which only false solutions can be found. As Paul Ricoeur points out, man builds because he lives, not the other way around. Before any architectural project, we must start from the complex of inhabiting/constructing, redefining the latter through the “configuration” and then the “refiguration” of the project, for it is the act of inhabiting that architecture seeks to redraw (Ricoeur, 2016, p. 22).</p>
<p>Our reflection will be guided by three major hypotheses:</p>
<p>·         Since inhabiting precedes architecture, it is desirable to involve the inhabitant in the design of any architectural project. If architecture is the art of building, living is first and foremost the art of living;</p>
<p>·         For residents who are already different in at least two ways: culturally and socio-economically, living goes beyond simply finding a place to live or being rehoused. It is this inhabitation that gives meaning (or nonsense) to the architectural projects in question in this study;</p>
<p>·         More than a feeling of uprootedness, the problem in question is posed in terms of the difficulty of putting down roots, or rather of re-rooting oneself in a housing model and a way of life (however ideal it may be) imposed by the form and demands of “modern” housing. Inhabitants aspire to a change in their socio-economic conditions by changing their place of residence.</p>
<p>[1] Lacheraf, M., « Le sort lié des campagnes et des villes dans le développement de l’Algérie »,( Séminaire Révolution agraire, Institut de Technologie Agricole, Mostaganem, Avril 1972) in. El-Djeïch, Aout 1972.</p>