anthropologists-from-algeria

"I was first deputy director, then director. But in fact, that’s not at all what I wanted to do."

"I was never drawn to management. Since there aren’t enough executives, researchers in our countries are called on to take on various responsibilities."

"When there are only five or six prehistorians for all of Algeria, for example, there is everything to do at once."

"The Park’s headquarters had just been moved to Djanet, and the officials who had been running the Park did not want to go there."

"That’s how I accepted to be the Park’s director, a position that was far from easy."

"life was very difficult. We worked under extremely harsh conditions in a territory the size of a country."

"Without resources, no budget, no vehicles."

"Everything had to be done. As a result, the task and responsibility were enormous."

"My greatest joy was being out in the field all the time."

"From a manager’s perspective, because when you are responsible for a territory of 114,000 km², you have to be everywhere."

"There are regulations governing the park, the headquarters is in Djanet, and you have to go check whether the brigades are functioning."

"What problems they face, how tourist traffic is going, set up infrastructure ensure that it doesn’t disrupt the environment."

"I was shown the door! There’s nothing unusual about that ."

"How many victims of the system are there? I’m neither the first nor the last."

"When you are faced with certain situations, your conscience tells you to leave, that’s all."

"I’m nowhere."

"I really would have liked to stay in Djanet, in the Tassili, and then make the necessary trips for research, documentation."

"That wasn’t possible, so I’m a bit of a nomad."

"Here, I stay; there, I have a job, I try to make a living then I travel for the publication of a book, for its promotion."

"I leave again, because I have to take on a small job, wherever it may be, I go, even if it’s in Australia."

"And for me, these are essential points of reference."

"When I move away a little that is, when I’m in Paris I walk with my head up"

"I need to see the sky. Even if there’s no sun and it’s winter"

"The first thing I do is look up."

"It’s my way of returning to the desert. Because I know that this dose of sky will be beneficial for me throughout the day."

"If I pass through a park, I’ll stop."

"I’ll eat my sandwich in the cold, at 2 degrees."

"I need to see a tree, greenery around me."

"Researchers spend a large part of their time objectifying others without ever questioning their own objectification."

"For how can one objectify others if one does not attempt to objectify one's own history, one's own subjectivity."

"Anthropology must therefore go beyond the divide between objectivism and subjectivism."

"Just as it must also go beyond the determinism of structures."

"Structures exist, of course; they are structured and structuring, of course, but they cannot make explicit all the behaviors and attitudes of social agents."

"Social agents cannot be a pure product of a single structural determinism without taking into account historical and political contingencies, emotions, and free will."

"Being precisely subject and object, this return to reflexivity has opened up avenues for me to understand a generation of men and women with similar dispositions."

"Who have managed to achieve important positions in the scientific, cultural."

"They are said to be "miracle survivors, but the sociological miracle has a history, a social and political genesis that must be re-examined."

"The miracle has to be paid for, it has a price, a price that must be evaluated, put a price on the price."

"After having left the tribe as a child through the violence of war."

"I only found it again thanks to anthropological research."

"After several events, the war, the regroupings, the deaths around 300 out of a population of around 2,000 inhabitants, the imprisonments, the burning of the hamlets, the occupation of the village by the army, the exodus."

"Then came national independence in 1962."

"Its share of hopes and its procession of disappointments."

"In this dizzying transformation of ways of life, of thought, could one claim a return to familiar places."

"This six year old child knew of the tribe only the two maternal and paternal families who embodied, on a local scale, the national turmoil."

"Everything else is discovered, a reconstruction of the facts after investigation."

"The village where I was born comes from a so called religious lineage, in the sense that it seems even more conservative than the surrounding villages."

"The inhabitants claim to be descended from a common ancestor."

"Like all holy groups, it is characterized by a distinctive feature."

"Women are in principle kept away from the outside life of the village."