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The contributors explore the ambiguities, failures and silences manufactured by colonial and nationalist scholarships, and to present alternative strategies and scholarship to the study of history, culture and state-society relations in the Maghrib during the 19th and 20th centuries.

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The contributors rethink the history of colonial and nationalist categories and analyses of the Maghrib. Their goal is to explore the ambiguities, failures, and silences manufactured by colonial and nationalist scholarships and present alternative strategies and scholarship to the study of history, culture, and state-society relations in the Maghrib during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite the fact that the contributors come from different disciplines and perspectives - whether political science, history, or sociology - they share a critical view of the history of the Maghrib, and they approach Maghribi societies not as a footnote to Europe and capitalism, but within its own dynamics.

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Introduction; A.A.Ahmida Theorizing the History of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Arab Maghrib; E.Burke, III Society, Colonialism and State Formation in Tunisia and Libya; A.A.Ahmida Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Invention of Ancient Egypt; E.Cola The Nation State and the Problem of Frontiers in the Maghrib; K.Benson Post-Colonialism and the Study of Arab Folklore; A.Ayoub Oral Traditions and the Reproduction of Colonial Ideology in Algeria Moroccan Soldiers: Between Selective Memory and Collective Memory; D. Maghraoui Islamism and the Recolonization of Algeria; M.Lazreg Economic Reform and Tunisia´s Hegemonic Party: The End of the Administrative Elite; S.J.King Political Science Without Clothes: The Politics of Dress or Contesting the Spatiality of the State in Egypt; M.Fandy Gendered Nationalism in the Maghrib; M.Fayad Identity, Cultural Encounter, and Alienation in the Trilogy of the Libyan Writer Ahmad Ibrahiim al-Faqih; A.A.Ahmida An Agenda for Future Research; A.A.Ahmida

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ALI ABDULLATIF AHMIDA is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New England, USA.

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