2006/10/31 by Judith Scheele · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #North African History and Literature #African Studies and Geopolitics
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00367.x
openalex publication_date 2006/10/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/19
Issues surrounding the ways in which people deal with severe political disruption and violence are sometimes obscure, as it is in the nature of both to defy verbal expression and collective attempts to produce sense. Ethnography of Algeria suggests that to look at local graveyards, their layout, and the practices and conflicts associated with them is a way of understanding not only how people deal with death and violence, but also how they construe social order, political legitimacy, and historical continuity, in an environment where all of these have been severely disrupted. Through the social and spatial practices associated with local graveyards, images of upheaval and martyrdom are thus made part of an ongoing process of renegotiation of social hierarchies; these processes, however, can also be seen to break down at times of overwhelming distress.