RGP Cycle Two Grantees and Projects
Abderrezak Amokrane: تناقضات السياسات التنموية في البلدان العربية الريعية: توزيع الريع كآلية لإنتاج وإعادة إنتاج اللامساواة الاجتماعية، حالة الجزائر
Research project’s title: the contradictions of development policies in Algeria: rentierism as a mechanism for the production and reproduction of social inequality.
The centrality of rentierism reality within the system of policies and economic and political practices in Algeria started gaining prominence and importance from the seventies of the last century, until its striking presence became dominant on the main economic indicators in the country. Indeed, the revenues that proceeded annually from oil and gas exports respectively represent: 53% of the GDP, 0.98% of the value of exports and 67% of the tax revenues of the state, against an absence/ near-total obliteration of the productive economic activities apart from hydrocarbons. So far, rentierism has risen to the point where it is seen as a main pillar of the social tissue, and it is on the edges of its acquisition, distribution, exploitation and looting process that the project of the national state, the formulas of the community project and the idea of co-existence developed.
Based on the abovementioned and in the purpose of directing the research and establishing a team to read it and analyze it, we decided to adopt the following hypothesis: The rentier structure/ system of the state and the economy tends to keep the various social components-individuals and communities- captive of the customer status (patronage as the dominant political relationship) and stamp out any endeavor- whether systematic or not- by the individual to rise up and realize his potential as free and independent person (= citizen); it further contributes to imposing a controversial and conflictual context that tends to harm social relations by introducing the practices of opportunism, expediency, spoliation and ravening within the social tissue; On the other hand, the rentier nature of the economy and the state contributes to supporting the survival and legitimization of authoritarian regimes: in the case of Algeria, for instance, we note that the post-independence state building-process was coupled with attempts to fully dominate the rentier system and its material and symbolic resources that were turned into a tool to grant legitimacy to the regime and extend its control over the society.
Rents have contributed to transforming the reality and the purpose of the field of production and work, from the production and creation of wealth to plunder and predation. As a matter of fact, economic activity and state-funded projects became mere channels where public money was pumped to the private sector and the clients of the regime to take possession of their shares of profits with little control and oversight.
The methods of use by the regime of rent-derived resources betrays its intention to control the society and crush any independent economic initiative that is likely to trigger a process that would generate a civil/ economic society that is independent and separate from the political society and presents itself as a counter-regime authority. This approach of the economy always tries to strip it from its political and social content, thus turning economic transactions into a mere mechanism of distribution of rent-derived revenues and pie sharing. The situation is such, since the wager is not of an economic nature, but purely political, so as to prevent the emergence of independent actors and the rise of new socio-economic dynamics that could bring about social change and a new social structure for the distribution and exercise of power and put an end to rentierism (= the ruling system).
Dr. Abderrezak Amokrane is currently a lecturer in cultural sociology and a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Setif 2 in Algeria. He received a PhD in Development Sociology from the Université Constantine in Algeria in 2012 with a very honourable mention for his thesis entitled: The cultural renewal strategy in the Arab communities in the context of globalization. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Algiers where his successful itinerary owed him a scholarship that enabled him to continue his studies in England, where he was awarded a BA in English language, in 1985, then a Master's degree in the culture of contemporary societies in 1987 from the Department of Sociology at the University of York. He started teaching at the University of Algiers since his return in 1987 and is still active to this day. He headed the Department of Sociology for two years and supervised many end-of-studies dissertations in different faculties, and adhered to the membership of several research teams. He has published seven books, some individually written and others collective works, in addition to 16 articles the most important of which being the ones that addressed the end of ideology and the thoughts of Amin Maalouf and Jacques Attali. He was recently awarded a research grant from the Arab Council of Social Sciences for a research project studying "Rent as a mechanism for the production and reproduction of social inequality in Algeria". He currently takes interest in participating in international conferences organized in Western universities such as Toronto, Vienna, Split and Chicago.
