The Ambiguous State: Gender and Citizenship in Algeria

by Boutheina Cheriet, Professor in Comparative Education and Research Methodology, University of Algiers;Former Deputy Minister in Charge of the Family & Women’s Affairs, Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria.

What is the best way to examine the problem of citizenship and gender in the emergence of civil society and its dialectical relationship with a monolithic state in Algeria? One way is to analyze the Algerian debates over personal status in order to capture the nature of the relationship that links the triad of state, civil society and citizenship. This allows us to investigate the ambivalence that characterizes the nature of the state and women’s access to citizenship.

The Ambiguous State: Gender and Citizenship in Algeria.

Algeria: Prospects for an Islamic or a Secular State

by Kada Akacem, Professor of Economics at the University of Algiers; President of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Economic Sciences.

What are the prospects for an Islamic state in Algeria nowadays? Before we can answer that question, we must first understand the political, economic, and social developments that have recently taken place in Algeria. These events will shed some light on the decline of the Islamist movements.

Algeria: Prospects for an Islamic or a Secular State.

Secularism, Women & the State: The Mediterranean World in the 21st Century

by Barry A. Kosmin, Research Professor in Public Policy and Law and founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College & Ariela Keysar, Associate Research Professor in Public Policy and Law and the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College

This volume grew out of a salon or conversazione on the theme of “The Prospects for the Secular State in the Mediterranean World in the 21st Century” hosted by ISSSC—the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. The event took place during June 2007 at Trinity College’s campus located on the historic and beautiful Aventine Hill in Rome, Italy. The purpose of this gathering was to assemble a diverse group of people from different Mediterranean nations, academic disciplines and professions for a relaxed, multi-cultural exchange of information and opinion on one of the key political and intellectual questions of the moment, one which is on the agenda today in one way or another in every country in the Mediterranean region. How should the state and government respond to diversity of beliefs and worldviews in today’s society?

Secularism, Women & the State: The Mediterranean World in the 21st Century