A Place on the Terrace

Café Culture and the Public Sphere in Morocco

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3978648
AutoresSaid Graiouid (0000-0001-7273-7827, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen12
Número4
Páginas531-550
Fecha de publicación2007-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of North African Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1362-9387 • E-ISSN: 1743-9345
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13629380701480568
OpenAlexW2083989844
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas11

This paper analyses processes through which informal association and unstructured co-mingling in Moroccan cafés mediate the emergence of group solidarity and subversive practices. The paper approaches the café not as a site of Habermasian 'ideal speech situations', but as a set of spatial practices shot through with conflicts and contradictions. The point is made that café mediated communities are imagined in the space in between the public and the private, performance and spectatorship, the explicit and the implicit, and the dominant and the subversive. The paper builds on findings of a qualitative ethnographic research to map the position of the café within the general cultural, spatial and gender politics which regulate Moroccan society. In particular, the paper explores the interface between the café and the street and examines the interaction between café communities and media texts. Cutting across these arguments, the point is made that the café institution is better viewed as a nexus where solidarities are built but also where social contradictions are played out

Ethnography · Ideal (ethics · Institution · Linguistics · Media studies · Nexus (standard · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · Solidarity · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · North African History and Literature