Performing the nation in anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco

This article applies a process approach to the study of nationalism, analysing anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco to address how and why elite‐constructed national identity resonates for larger audiences. Using Alexander's social performance model to study nationalist contention, it examines how a Muslim prayer ritual was re‐purposed by Moroccan nationalists to galvanise mass protest against a French divide‐and‐rule colonial policy towards Moroccan Berbers that they believed threatened Morocco's ethno‐religious national unity. By looking at how national identity was forged in the context of contentious performances and why certain religious (Islam) and ethnic (Arab) components were drawn on to define the Moroccan nation, this study offers a model for answering why national identity gets defined in specific ways and how the nation gains salience for broader publics as a category of collective identity.     

Masticatory and non‐masticatory dental modifications in the epipalaeolithic necropolis of Taforalt (Morocco)

In this study, we used standardized methods to investigate masticatory and non‐masticatory dental alterations (chipping, notches, interproximal grooves) in teeth from the epipalaeolithic necropolis of Taforalt (Morocco, about 12,000–11,000 BP). The particular distribution of some of the alterations could be related to avulsion of the upper central incisors, a systematic ritual characterizing all adult individuals of the necropolis. Because of this practice, the functions of the anterior teeth (cutting and tearing portions of food while eating, holding objects, etc.) likely shifted to the posterior teeth. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MEGA‐IRRIGATION AND NEOLIBERALISM IN POSTCOLONIAL STATES: EVOLUTION AND CRISIS IN THE GHARB PLAIN,MOROCCO

This article explores the development, evolution and impacts of large‐scale irrigation schemes in the formation of the postcolonial state of Morocco and in more recent neoliberal decades. In particular, the article focuses on the Gharb Plain in the Sebou River basin, which was targeted by huge investments to become the core region for national development. In this area, three stages of development – colonial, early independent, and the aggressive politique des grandes barrages post‐1970 – have created two clearly different and successive landscapes. The traditional landscape has been overlain, and largely obliterated, by colonial and postcolonial governmental landscapes, reflected through different spatial, economic, cultural, and political patterns over time. In the present, a fourth stage of neoliberal development is occurring in the landscape, in which diffused poverty and ecosystem collapse coincide with greater concentrated wealth and the building of technological infrastructures. The article aims to complement critical studies on neoliberal environments, by focusing in particular on the manipulation, dispossession and commodification of water and land resources in irrigated agriculture in Morocco. These emerging rationalities are closely related to the changing policies of the contemporary Moroccan state.     

Colonial Emulation,Competition and Opportunism: A Twentieth-Century Spanish Perspective on the British and French ‘Empire Projects’

ABSTRACT

Through the views of Francisco Franco’s major adviser on African Affairs, this paper reveals a hitherto neglected aspect of the long-standing interaction between competing ‘imperial projects’ in the twentieth century. Tomás García Figueras’s (1892–1981) speeches, writings and personal archive provide a long-term and well-informed Spanish perspective on the British and French colonial systems, offering us a model to make sense of three major aspects of inter-imperial relations: emulation, competition, and opportunism. Through this insight into the dynamics of imperial interaction, and the ever-evolving dialogues and exchanges between ‘empire projects’ from around the European peninsula, this article provides some key elements to answer the long-standing question of what motivates empires to expand, adapt, or contract. It illuminates the ways in which officials engaged in the day-to-day running of European empires looked at each other, in search for examples and counter-examples, emulation or, simply, opportunities. Crucially, it illustrates how ‘empire projects’ of varying clout interacted with each other, within the limits of realpolitik but well beyond linguistic obstacles, as the multilingual material assembled in the García Figueras archive clearly attests. It also charts, among national and socio-cultural circles hitherto neglected, the evolution in thinking about colonialism and decolonisation throughout the twentieth century.     

In‐Between Places: Trans‐Saharan Transit Migrants in Morocco and the Fragmented Journey to Europe

Abstract: As undocumented migration becomes more difficult, migrants' journeys become longer and more fragmented. This is a response to new spatialities of migration control which are continually reconfigured in an effort to eliminate clandestine movement. In the trans‐Saharan region, this pattern of fragmented journeys also arises from a network of transnational social organisations that depend upon newly available technologies. Migrants' social networks provide both the means and the motivation for continued movement, even as destinations become more elusive. This paper investigates the imbalanced conflict between the social organisation of Sahara transit migrants and the developing spatial logic of control. It is based on recent research with undocumented migrants in Morocco.