Monday, October 22, 2007

You Can't get There from Here

It has been a frustrating few days around here. My Arabic class welcomed a whole cohort of Algerians who need to bone up on their FusHa, so now about half the class actually speaks Arabic and demands we spend time debating obscure grammatical rules. Meanwhile I don’t understand a single word, let alone the different ways to structure Idaafaa…but I guess I’ll just keep plugging away and continue to be the idiot American, and maybe I’ll pick something up in the next month or so. To be positive: I get to witness a new culture’s (terrible) pedagogy. At least I have Al-Kitab and Maha to help me through.



I also spent about an entire day walking around trying to find the correct offices for the carte de residence. I don’t want to overplay the Kafka “Castle” angle here, but c’mon. One office tells me to go the Bureau des Etrangers. The Bureau is often closed. I get there the other day and it is finally open. I wait in a line to talk to reception. The nice woman tells me that, well, duh, this is only the place to prolong visas, not to apply for a residence card. For the card I have to go to my local police commissariat, wherever that may be.



I then asked around the Glycines, got directions to the commissariat, and started out. There are police on every corner of this city, so as I’m walking I ask the way. I get new directions. I get directions conflicting those I just received a block ago. I start an argument among a group of cops about how to get to the commissariat. I finally find some guys who figure it out among themselves and give me working directions.



This is the afternoon now, and I’ve been walking for hours. I find my way to the commissariat, wait while the reception ladies have a lengthy personal chat with their buddy who has come in to say hi, and then ask to be directed to the bureau that handles residence cards. “Oh my” they say “that office is only open for a few hours in the morning.” Of course it is.



There is something about the ineffectual administration of this country that has to do with colonialism and oil, I think. The French colonial regime (and most importantly the settlers who had political power by the 20th century) never allowed an indigenous educated elite to develop, frightened as they were by any pretenders to their power.



So when a conglomerate of violent factions managed to kick the French out, there was no “organic intellectuals,” no middle class, no civil society to speak of. After independence the FLN turned itself into a new military elite, stifling any new competition and consolidating its power. National myths built around a few popular warlords helped legitimize the military dictatorship masquerading itself as a socialist state. Its tough to have a socialist state with no society.



This state was not beholden to the population, however, because nearly the entire income of Algeria came from oil, and it still does. The state doesn’t have to tax the population, and therefore has little incentive to provide anything for the population (like, say, an operable administrative apparatus). 97% of Algeria’s revenue currently comes from oil, while the sector only employs 2% of the population. The state continues to be run by a virtual oligarchy of families the patriarch of which were top FLN officials 40 years ago, and “private industry” (which might otherwise put pressure on the state to better administer the country) is the province of the sons of those men.



So we have a situation where a military/political elite has maintained itself through oil revenues while at the same time abstracting itself further and further from the administration of the country and the concerns of the population. Throw in the threat of “terrorism” to help the state maintain its military stranglehold on the country in lieu of providing the population with any other services (“we would build you better schools, but, you know, we have to spend all our money on security”) and you have the makings of one terribly run country. But hey, at least the DVDs are cheap.



If anyone wants to read further about the travails of dealing with an ineffectual bureaucratic hierarchy as it pertains to the administration of a country, just wait a few years and I'll send you a copy of my dissertation.

P.S. As far as I can tell Irvine isn't burning to the ground right now. Everybody get a bucket and let's keep it that way, huh? I can't believe I don't want Irvine razed...its YOUR fault, you know.

5 comments:

Jessica said...

Interspecies snorgling!!

Err Bloc Tuck said...

I think that is "strangling" not "snorgling." Way different. (Cats HATE otters...or muskrats...or minks...or whatever the hell that thing is.)

Jessica said...

Apparently someone hasn't been keeping up with his cuteoverload. Tsk tsk.

Err Bloc Tuck said...

I refuse to let the "cute-anistas" over at cuteoverload dictate how I read images of animal-on-animal violence. So there.

Anonymous said...

i dunno but it looks ferret-like