Representations of Work among Algerian Workers between Cultural Structure and the Logic of Industrial Organisation: A Critical Sociological Reading of Algerian Scholarship

Abstract

This study seeks to deconstruct Algerian workers’ representations of work within the industrial enterprise through a critical sociological approach grounded in an analysis of the most significant Algerian studies that have addressed the question of work and industrial organisations since the postindependence period. It proceeds from the central hypothesis that the industrial enterprise in Algeria has not succeeded in producing a complete rupture with traditional cultural structures; rather, it has become a space in which local social relations are reproduced within a modern organisational framework. This study adopts an analytical and interpretative method through a reading of the works of several Algerian scholars, including Gherid Djamel, Ali El Kenz, Morad Moulai Hadj, Ahmed Henni, Mohamed Mebtoul, and Djillali Liabès. It concludes that Algerian workers do not construct their relationship with work according to a purely economic logic but rather through an intricate system of social and cultural representations in which values of belonging, dignity, authority, and personal relations intersect with the requirements of modern industrial organisation. The study further shows that the failure of the Algerian industrialisation project to achieve the desired cultural transformation is primarily attributable to its neglect of the social and cultural specificity of Algerian society and to the attempt to import a ready-made rational model that does not accord with the local symbolic structure.