14 Time Perspectives of the

Kabyle
Pierre Bourdieu

(From P. Bourdieu, 'The attitude of the Algerian Peasant Towards

Time', Mediterranean Countryman, 6, 1963, pp. 55-72).

An old Kabyle once said 'The French act as if they would never die'.
Nothing is more foreign to the indigenous civilisation of Algeria than
the attempt to secure a hold over the future, and nothing more
strange to it than the idea of an immense and open future as a broad
field of innumerable possibilities which man is able to explore and
dominate. Is it necessary then to conclude, as one too often does, that
the fellah, a sort of mens momentanea, bound up in immediate
attachment to the directly perceived present, would be incapable of
envisaging a remote future? Is it necessary to see in his attitude of
submission to the passage of time a simple abandonment to the
hazards of climate, the whims of nature, and the decisions of the
divinity? To avoid false problems, perhaps one must analyse only the
actual modality of his consciousness of the future. Awareness of time
is not simply one of the dimensions of his life experience, but rather
the form in terms of which that experience is organised.
The Kabyle peasant lives his life at a rhythm determined by the
divisions of the ritual calendar which exhibit a whole mythical system.
This is not the place to analyse this system in detail, but only to try to
show how it shapes the world outlook of the peasant, and for this it
will suffice to point up its broad outlines. Natural phenomena are not
perceived only as such in a naturalistic descriptive vision. Everyday
experience isolates certain particular significant aspects which are
treated as the functional signs of a complex symbolism. The mythico-
ritual system appears to be built about a cluster of contrasts between
complementary principles. In opposition to ploughing and sowing
there is the harvest; to weaving, the seasonal counterpart of
ploughing, the firing of pottery is opposed. Spring is opposed to
autumn, summer to winter, all aspects of a larger and clearer contrast
between the dry season (spring and summer) and the wet season
(autumn and winter). In opposition as well are night and day, light
and shadow, the rising and the setting sun, East and West. All of

219
J. Hassard (ed.), The Sociology of Time
© John Hassard 1990
220 Time Perspectives of the Kabyle

these pairs of opposing notions, which define the calendar of

agricultural labour and crafts, also underlie the principle of the
division of labour between the sexes, and the distinction between the
moist foods of autumn and winter and the dry foods of the spring and
summer. The same logic determines the rhythm of social life, the
season of feasts and the cycle of pastimes for example, and it lies at
the foundation of certain structural features of the community such as
the opposing moieties (coff-s); it defines the organisation of space
within the house; it furnishes the pair of oppositions which is the basis
of the system of values (nif 'point d'honneur' and horma 'honour').
Thus the contrast between the wet season associated with fertility and
germination and the dry season associated with the death of culti-
vated nature parallels the opposition between the planting and
weaving associated with sexuality on the one hand and the harvest
associated with death on the other hand; and finally, the opposition
of the ploughshare which activates and the sickle which destroys life.
All are integrated into a broader system wherein life is opposed to
death, water to fire, the powers of nature which must be placated to
the man-made techniques of culture which must be handled with
precaution.
The technical and liturgical acts of the peasant, performed as they
are in a universe crowded with symbols, are integrated into a system
which might be termed a mythology-in-action. The annual cycle of
tasks and rites appears to be oriented towards resolving the contra-
diction that is at the very heart of agriculture: nature, left to itself, lies
fallow and becomes sterile. But the fertilising action of man and his
techniques, while necessary and indispensable, is criminal because it
is a violation, and also because it uses instruments whose handling is
itself guilty and terrible, that is, those made by using fire: the
ploughshare, the loom, and the sickle. The great moments of the
agricultural year, the ploughing and the harvest, are the climaxes of a
tragedy played between two characters, man and nature. In this
drama, the peasant is constrained to do violence to the nourishing
earth in order to fecundate her and to wrest her riches from her.
The attitude of the Kabyle peasant toward nature and time co-
incides with the profound 'intention' and meaning of the mythology
which he acts out implicitly in his daily life. Far from placing himself
face to face with nature as an effective agent, the Kabyle peasant is
part of nature, immersed within it. This feeling of solidarity and
dependence is expressed in numerous rites: at the winter solstice, for
example, the women go to the stables and make a great noise by