ABSTRACT
Hababsa is a rural zone in the southern part of Siliana governorate, Tunisia. This rural area appears relatively isolated from the main currents that have transformed local societies elsewhere in the Maghrib—it has no colonial or capitalistic farming, no major development projects, no notorious involvement in national political movements. This chapter is concerned with “local” societies in the rural areas and in the towns and small cities. These local societies are thus seen in silhouette against a background of the major cities of the Maghrib, the states that are centered in them, and the international order. The nature of local societies and their relations to wider ones has been changing in the past generation, with increasing national independence and international dependence. Local society and politics in the Maghrib from the 1970s into the 1990s must be situated in relation to state and national societies and a context of development.
