Excellence scientifique transnationale et disqualification des sciences humaines et sociales nationales en Algérie

Abstract

This article aims at showing how the linguistic and political opposition between Arabic speakers and French speakers that had dominated the Algerian academic field from the 1970s to the 1990s was transformed during the ‘black decade’ (1990-2000) into a distinction between those with transnational scientific capital, who work and publish abroad, and those with national scientific capital, who are often monolingual, publish little and have just graduated and been recruited in Algeria. The confrontation between the military and armed Islamic groups, has replaced the old linguistic division with a new distinction, which no longer discriminates according to language or rank as it used to, nor even according to specialty or national scientific capital, but above all according to the scientific production and recognition garnered abroad by Algerian academics. This transnational prestige of has increased (since 2000) with the expansion of universities and the requirement that candidates publish pieces in in international journals before defending a doctoral thesis or moving up the ranks. This requirement, which has forced many Arabic-speaking professors and/or researchers to turn to foreign or French-language journals to get published, has generated many problems, detailed in this article.

Keywords

• social sciences
• Algeria
• Arabic language
• francophone
• university expansion
• transnational excellence