ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the theoretical framework and defines the concepts of knowledge and power. It analyses the social and political conditions in which the knowledge/power relationship was established within universities following Algeria's independence. The chapter examines the implications of this analysis for the relationship between knowledge and power in Algerian society. Despite avoiding borrowing from the colonial model, Algerian higher education adopts the main characteristics of the dominant "Western" model, more specifically its French variant. Following the independence of Algeria in 1962, higher education was called to contribute to the resolution of two major difficulties related to the legacy of colonization, which remain unresolved to this day. First, higher education had to provide the State with scientific and technical legitimacy. Second, it needed to reorganize society on the basis of knowledge, as the egalitarianism and the socialist orientation of the period excluded distinction on the basis of economic capital.
