Challenging the State,Redefining the Nation: The Contemporary Amazigh Movement in Turbulent Times

This article examines the efforts of the Amazigh (Berber) identity movement during the last 7 years to redefine the content of North African states’ collective national identities, and the responses of state and other societal actors during a period of renewed political contestation. In highlighting the increasingly charged and contested political environment in North Africa, it argues that (a) the Berber-Amazigh identity movement has registered important symbolic achievements, (b) translating these symbolic achievements into concrete ones remains enormously difficult, and (c) the discourse and praxis of the Amazigh current has become increasingly militant, and even ethnonational.