Tassadit Yacine


Tassadit Yacine-Titouh is an Algerian anthropologist specialising in Berber culture.

Early life

Yacine was born on 14 November 1949, in Boudjellil, in the wilaya Bejaia. Her mother was a housewife and her father an immigrant who was tortured and executed in 1956. She completed her primary, secondary and higher studies in Algeria, where she also worked before leaving for France in 1987.

Career

Yacine is Director of Study at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and is also a member of the department of social anthropology at the Collège de France. She directs Awal - a journal founded in 1985 in Paris with the Algerian anthropologist Mouloud Mammeri and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to explore Berber life.
Yacine's doctoral thesis was entitled Productions culturelles et agents de production en kabylie: anthropologie de la culture dans les groupes kabyles 16e-20e siecle, which she was awarded a PhD for in 1992 from Paris-Sorbonne University. Her first degree was in Spanish at the University of Algiers; she graduated for it in 1980.

Research

Yacine has written widely on Berber anthropology Her approach to social anthropology combines scientific assessment with oral literature. She is an expert on the work of Bourdieu, placing his experiences in Algeria as a central influence on his philosophy. She edited the diaries of Jean Amrouche, enabling greater understanding of his influence on literature. She led the colloquium following the death of Rabah Belamri, which re-examined, as well as playing tribute to, his role in literary culture in the Maghreb. She edited a collection of Bourdieu's writings, where Yacine placed his work in its Algerian political contexts.
She is an expert on the life of Berber peoples and has published and spoken widely on the subject, especially how Arabic culture and language has eroded Amazigh identities over the course of the twentieth century. Yacine has studied kabyle language and Berber literary cultures in particular. She is also an authority on how gender intersects with the erosion of cultural identities in Amazigh culture, using a Freudian framework for cultural analysis. This work was built on in a subsequent thesis by Terhi Lehtinen. Two of her most significant academic works are seen to be: Chacal ou la ruse des dominés and Si tu m'aimes, guéris-moi. In the latter book, Yacine places Berber culture in its wider Mediterranean context, as well as transcending the traditional distinction between oral and written cultures.

Monographs

A full bibliography of Yacine's publications can be found on the site.