Higher education and differentiation based on knowledge : Algeria’s aborted dream

Abstract

Following its independence from France, in 1962, Algeria’s society was characterized by a low level of economic, social and cultural differentiation. As a result, how the social space would be restructured, and which system of values the new structure would be based on, remained open questions. As a result of over a century of levelling down by the colonial system, the social structure, in which the social space is constituted of agents holding different types of capital (economic, academic), needed to be rebuilt. In the absence of other forms of capital, access to education and to scholastic knowledge imposed itself as the constitutive element of this value system and the only legitimate factor of social differentiation. In a context where the state controls all economic and social activities, higher education appears as the pathway to the highly distinctive positions of public administration. Higher education is thus a core social, cultural and political stake. Its social status reaches its peak, and academic degrees are almost assimilated to nobility titles. Higher education becomes a space that reflects the knowledge/ power relationship, in which the correlation between the social status of knowledge and its relationship to power are highlighted. In the present chapter I unpack this relationship. First, I outline the theoretical framework and define the concepts of knowledge and power. In the second part, I analyze the social and political conditions in which the knowledge/power relationship was established within universities following Algeria’s independence. In the third part, I examine the implications of this analysis for the relationship between knowledge and power in Algerian society.