Households and the production of public and private domains

Revolutionary changes in Western Sahara's liberation movement

Abstract

Saharawi refugees from Western Sahara have been leading a social revolution from the desert refugee camps in Algeria, where they have been living since the partial annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco in 1975. The households of these refugees have changed enormously over three decades of exile and revolution. This study, which draws on two years of ethnographic fieldwork with Saharawi refugees (2007-2009), analyses households across the preexile and revolutionary periods to highlight the changed and changing nature of 'domaining', or the production of public and private domains, in the revolutionary period. The article explores the role of households in different articulations of 'domaining' and in producing persons with different kinds of social dispositions, those suited, more or less, to the revolution, or its once selfproclaimed foe, the 'tribe' (qabila).