ABSTRACT
What are the links between recent modes of appropriation of 'arch (tribal) lands and the process of economic liberalisation that started in the 1990s in Algeria? The ambiguous status of 'arch lands means that although they are state lands from a legal perspective, they are also formally tied to particular tribes. The complexity of their status remains influenced by customary law exerted by traditional social structures that identify each part of the territory to a tribe seeking to exercise a property right. More recently, this property right has taken on new forms that mask collective property and promote individual property by charting a path through the loopholes of modern legislation. The agricultural use of steppe areas for development purposes is strongly encouraged by the state, but contested by pastoralists who see it as a degradation of a zone historically reserved for pastoralism. In this peculiar dynamic in which numerous actors often express diverging interests, the appropriation of tribal lands by individuals often foreign to the tribe suggests a rupture with an age-old model of managing and protecting territory. The trend towards individual appropriation of tribal lands transgresses age-old norms and thus symbolises a new way of being within communal territories, part of an important process of social changes within a global context of liberalisation and globalisation. This study relies on recent sociological surveys aimed at analysing land tenure within steppe zones in Algeria.
