ABSTRACT
The architectural historian, David Watkin, was amongst the first to note an 'increasingly determined attempt to relate buildings to the society in which they were produced'. For decades, scholars have tried to discern the exact relationship between architecture and society. Explorations of specific shapes, fabrics and material arrangements could show how the built environment either reflects or produces social life. Through the 1970s and 1980s, a number of studies emerged following a social constructivist agenda. The suggestion is that architecture and society are related in a mirror-fashion. Bourdieu was an expert on Algerian society and a connoisseur of the mythico-ritual system and societal habits of the Kabyle people. As a microcosm organized according to the same oppositions which govern the entire universe, the house maintains a relation with the rest of the universe which is that of a homology. Social, religious and political life is played out on the 'projection screen' of the built environment.
