Paper short abstract:

The study of the socio-spatial representations of the city of Setif (highlands of eastern Algeria) based on a socio-cognitive approach reveals a spatial french colonization strategy. It's an edifying example of the superposition of a traditional mental map on a modern physical structure.

Paper long abstract:

The city presents as a mosaic where old and new meet, engaged in a permanent conflict between an urban past "city of the other" and this incessant need to renew itself. In its civilizing mission, France applied a spatial colonization strategy by opposing the traditional indigenous cultural model based on the principle of introversion to an imported, imposed model which is the extraversion. Some authors speak, moreover, of "colonial rap". The natives have been transposed into a new space-time framework in order to disorient them. This will later generate ambiguous territory practices. Like the city of Sétif (highlands of eastern Algeria), where the superposition of a traditional mental map on a modern physical structure. A study of the socio-spatial representations of Sétif based on a socio-cognitive approach allows to reveal the colonial territories, on which urban identities are built today. These same urban identities which refer to constitutive systems of representations of an exogenous cultural system. The place of the fountain "ain el fouara" is an edifying example of the superposition of these two models: The first one is the traditionnal indigenous one (el Attik mosque).The second one is the new imported modern model (the place of the representation of the colonizing power : the place of fountain « aîn el fouara). There is an antithetical dialogue on the same territory between spirituality (place of cult) and sensuality ( naked nymph statue). Sometimes "the city of the other", the colonial city, remains today in the collective memory a privileged territory.