“The Coffin of the Living.” An Algerian Habitat Bordering on the Unbearable
The dynamic formation of new rural territori-alities and the way in which rural territorialities are inhabited today, more precisely the relationship between the morphology of the habitat and the dynamics of the territory in which it is located, are the focal issues of this article. In the valley of Saf-Saf (wilaya of Skikda), rural territories are currently experiencing problems of territorial recomposition largely related to the state of insecurity marking the decade of the 1990s. Forced to leave their home ground and residences to approach more secure axes of development, the rural populations were particularly victimized by this insecurity, both as regards their habitat and their way of life. The harmonious diversity of rural Algeria has been replaced by a confused diversity of territories whose reflections of the urban crisis interpenetrate in the countryside and reflect the human and spatial disorders of the “national tragedy.”