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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.7, No.9
Publication Date: September 25, 2020
DOI:10.14738/assrj.79.8933.
Saadellaoui, W., Zafouri, A., & Elloumi, A. (2020). Periurban Housing: The Genesis Of A New Urban Identity: Case Of Two Suburbs Of
Sfax City In Tunisia. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(9) 109-118.
Periurban Housing: The Genesis Of A New Urban Identity: Case Of
Two Suburbs Of Sfax City In Tunisia
Wahiba Saadellaoui
Laboratory, Ecimus, University of Sfax, Tunisia.
Amor Zafouri
Laboratory Ecumus, University of Sfax
Ali Elloumi
Laboratory Tec, University Paris Descartes, France.
ABSTRACT
The spontaneous periurban, peripheral, non-communal or anarchic
spontaneous habitat in Tunisia is a recent phenomenon that began as
early as independence and has continued to increase to the present day.
This type of habitat is a new configuration of urban space in the sense
that it expresses a set of signs and symbols that refers to a specific
culture and a certain relationship that is established between social
actors and their space. In this context, the question could be asked: why
is this type of habitat perceived as peripheral, illegal and marginalized?
Couldn't it be the focus of a sensual daily life? The space of these outlying
neighbourhoods is the place of interaction through which each
inhabitant writes his scenario through his actions, values and daily
practices to forge an urban identity both individual and collective. This
is what we have seen from fieldwork in two suburbs of the city of Sfax:
Ben Saida and Erryadh district where poverty and marginality were
experienced as a creative experience. The interactionism and sociology
of everyday life thus constitute our theoretical framework through
which we will use observation and audiovisual recording as
investigative techniques to take a close look at the spontaneous
behaviours of social actors and to deeply analyze their daily
conversations of the populations of the outlying districts of Sfax. The
interactionism and sociology of everyday life thus constitute our
theoretical framework through which we will use observation and
audiovisual recording as investigative techniques to take a close look at
the spontaneous behaviours of social actors and to deeply analyze their
daily conversations of the populations of the outlying districts of Sfax.
We are trying to go beyond the classic theories that the State/Society
relationship could only be a vertical relationship, that is, a
determinant/determined report loaded with violence that can only be
revealed from the representations of these populations towards the
State in the form of attitudes and opinions because the decisions that the
State makes for the benefit of the populations push them to react by
opposing for the We are thus trying to go beyond the classic theories that
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the State/Society relationship could only be a vertical relationship, that
is, a determinant/determined report loaded with violence that can only
be revealed from the representations of these populations towards the
state in the form of attitudes and opinions because the decisions that the
State takes for the benefit of the populations push them to react by
opposing to assert, on the other hand, their attachments to the
peripheral space-neighbourhood itself if it was stigmatized and
excluded by state institutions. The daily experience is therefore rich in
meaning and symbols and it deserves a long time to make it the raw
material of our sociological analysis.
Keywords: suburban space, lived life, suburban interaction, urban identity.
INTRODUCTION
Periurbanization is not a new phenomenon because it has been treated by other disciplines such as
geography which sees that the appearance of peri-urban habitats attaches to internal mobility from
the countryside to the cities. In this respect, ample nominations to designate a form of clandestine
habitat such as periurban, peripheral, non-municipal or anarchic spontaneous habitat in
Tunisia. This type of habitat is a recent phenomenon that began with independence and has
continued to grow to the present day. This type of housing is a new configuration of urban space in
the sense that it expresses a set of signs and symbols that refer to a specific culture and a certain
relationship that is established between social actors and their space and between a globalized
culture. This report becomes incomprehensible if one deals in isolation with its urban setting which
indicates that this culture, which may be called rurban, is built by cultural and spatial social
representations.
Moreover, peri-urban housing is not limited to purely quantitative statistical analyses but to
qualitative analyses which open the door to everyday practices of the inhabitants of the peripheral
neighbourhoods which create another world of action charged with meaning and meanings. In this
regard, these practices are not isolated from the spatio-cultural framework, the neighbourhood,
because they express their daily representations towards themselves and others regardless of
individual or institutional (state and state institutions, etc.).
Our work has focused on peri-urban housing as a space that creates values and rural lifestyles
because the space of these outlying neighbourhoods is the place of interaction through which each
inhabitant writes his scenario through his actions, its values and daily practices for forging an urban
identity both individually and collectively. This is what we were able to notice from a field work
carried out in two suburbs of the city of Sfax: District Ben Saida and that of Erryadh where poverty
and marginality were lived as a creative experience.
To understand the phenomenon of peri-urban housing as a dynamic conversational framework, it
is necessary to resort to symbolic interactionism and the sociology of experience to analyze the
articulation between the daily scene, full of masks and rules to play, and its lived experiential
dimension.
In this context, the question could be asked: why is this type of habitat perceived as peripheral,
illegal and marginalized? Could it not be the home of a sensual daily life?
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Saadellaoui, W., Zafouri, A., & Elloumi, A. (2020). Periurban Housing: The Genesis Of A New Urban Identity: Case Of Two Suburbs Of Sfax City In Tunisia.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(9) 109-118.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.79.8933 111
PERIURBAN SPACE: FROM POLITICS TO SOCIAL
First of all, we have to start with a factor, which we think is essential, which is part of the emergence
of peri-urban housing in Tunisia, namely the rural exodus. This factor was the result of inadequate
development policies. These policies were sectoral, that is to say they are oriented towards sectors
rather than towards social demands. This sectorialization has given rise to a social category «left for
account» orphan of the public policies of the Tunisian State on the one hand and a social
differentiation between “urbanites versus «neo-urbanites» (or rural) on which Naciri, in Morocco, and
Benatya, in Algeria, have built a social reading of the city.”(Navez-Bouchanine , 2002, 171) on the
other hand. The urban/neo-city-dwellers who have marked the urban landscape of the city of Sfax
leads us to put the finger on a new social world in the process of constitution laden with conflict
betweenthem.
In this world, a specific image of peri-urban space is created in two different ways that can be drawn
from our field study. The first way focuses on the search for “bread of the day” as a necessary step
to settle in housing, rental or ownership, and it clearly explains “the relationship to the city
experienced by the inhabitants.” (Navez-Bouchanin , 2002, 173) , a relationship through which a field
of conflict is created between those who present themselves as the owners of urban space (city
dwellers) and those (rural people) who daily fight to snatch their rights from the city, in the words
of Henri Lefebvre.
The second way focuses on anchoring in urban space in general and in periurban space in
particular. For newcomers from the interior regions of Tunisia, this anchoring is an essential step
in accessing the urban lifestyle by buying a plot of land to build a house and live as a family or alone
in hiding, as the case of the two peri-urban neighbourhoods studied in thesis: Ben Saida and
Erryadh, Sidi Abid Sfax district. These two self-produced neighborhoods were the origin of farmland
before they became habitat neighborhoods in different historical periods.
For Ben Saida-7 November
“the first traces of the neighborhood date back to the 80s, but it is from the 2000s, that
the neighborhood received more than half of its current residents: 53.3%
Date of residence in the neighbourhood %
Before 1980 -
Between 1980 and 1990 9.3
Between 1990 and 2000 37.3
After 2000 53.3
Total 100.0”
In fact, this district of 3000 inhabitants is characterized by its proximity to the communal
environment of the delegation of Thyna “from which it is separated only by a railway representing
the boundary between the communal and not communal space of the delegation.” as shown in the
photo below taken by our phone:
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This separation is not only geographical, it is also socio-cultural between purely urban and rural
thinking. About the appointment of the Ben Saida district, she returns to the Saint Sidi Ben Saida,
the photo below marks her sanctuary.
As far as the 7 November neighbourhood is concerned, it was politically founded by Zinelabidine
Ben Ali on 7/11/1987 as part of the promotion of the disadvantaged social categories included in
the SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme) adopted by Tunisian Prime Minister Rachid Sfar in
1986. This program “is structured around 8 points:
1. The truth of prices and the progressive liquidation of the Caisse Générale de Compensation.
2. The disengagement of the State by giving the private sector the public enterprises in
difficulty.
3. Export promotion.
4. The gradual liberalization of imports and the easing of the protection of the economy,
considered too excessive.
5. The devaluation of the dinar currently stands at 57%.
6. Limiting public and private consumption.
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Saadellaoui, W., Zafouri, A., & Elloumi, A. (2020). Periurban Housing: The Genesis Of A New Urban Identity: Case Of Two Suburbs Of Sfax City In Tunisia.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(9) 109-118.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.79.8933 113
7. Cleaning up the management of public enterprises
8. Freezing wages and indexing them to productivity.”(Belhédi, 1992, 76)
These points are purely economic and there are no points concerning social problems. With BenAli,
this PAS will absorb social tensions by convincing disadvantaged groups by its political project that
it is interested in their economic (poverty) and social problems by the construction of social housing
(as the case of the neighborhood 7 November) on the one hand and by the launch of project 26-26
for social solidarity on the other. In appearance, BenAli’s policy has understood the social demands
of people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but basically it serves only to deepen the social
crisis, the proof is the foundation of the Destourian cells not to listen to the daily problems of the
inhabitants but to control them.
In this sense, the two neighborhoods are transformed into spaces of play between the inhabitants
and the institutions.
BEN SAIDA AND ERRYADH: SUBURBAN DAILY INTERACTION DISTRICTS:
“The reading of peri-urban life as a characteristic of a domestic retreat or the rise of
individualism likely to call into question the very foundations of “making society”. On
this second point, recent interpretations insist on the rise of the periurban self.”(Dodier,
2007, 31),
says Rodolphe Dodier, focusing on the relationship between one peri-urban mode and another
urban mode. We can approach the spatio-interactional question as the main point of our analysis
by using the testimonies of the inhabitants of the two precarious neighborhoods to better
understand their relationship to the inhabited space on the one hand and to the city on the other.
First, their relationship with inhabited space is part of
“a particular representation of an actor 3as proof of his or her ability to play his or her
role and to play it again in each of the occasions that call upon him or her.”(Goffman,
1973, 229),
this means that the success of the actor in his or her socio-interactional role remains the issue of an
evaluation carried out by the audience to whom he or she is addressing. Let us apply this idea to our
case study, the inhabitants of the neighborhoods of Ben Saida and Erryadh translate their
acceptances or refusal to enter into interaction with another especially neighbors if they are not
able to present themselves even in an intelligent way so that they are accepted within the interactive
circle. Through our field survey and audiovisual recording of 95 inhabitants, we discovered their
ways of defining the communicational situation. They told us that every inhabitant who wants to
interact with us must accept the language difference (dialect) and our social origins if not it will be
excluded.
In this way, the inhabited space (neighborhood/ Houma) is transformed into a theatrical space
where each inhabitant serves to possess it by writing his own scenario carrying emotions of social
evils because of a situation of poverty and common marginality. The latter influences their relations
with each other as neighbours and with other inhabitants of other neighborhoods and also with
communal institutions. Here we can cite the case of a resident of the Ben Saida neighborhood who
has been stigmatized by a social worker in the municipality of Thyna, which named Ben Saida a
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"dark neighborhood," it pushes the resident into conflict with this assistant by defending her
inhabited space on the one hand and filing a complaint against the assistant on the other. This
conflict is not limited to this case but is daily between residents and urban dwellers. In this case, we
are talking about the relationship of the inhabitants to the city. It is defined as
“a living environment, the place where men and women work, travel, meet, grow and
play.” (Tochtermann, 1991, 12).
In appearance, the city is a daily environment full of routine, place of work but in the background it
is represented differently by the inhabitants through their occupied places within this space, a
representation through which occurs a space transgressing the geomathematical vision and created
mentally and socially through daily interactions. Thus, it is a discursive space where
“social knowledge is built into the very process of interaction and interactants create
their own world by behaving as they do.” (Gumperz, 1989, 61).
It is in this shift of meaning, we speak of a conversational daily life flees from any logical calculation
and becomes a spokesperson evoked by the inhabitants in a common place: The street. It is not only
a place of passage of people or vehicles but it is a process of mobility loaded with experiences lived
by them (The inhabitants). Here, a processual anthropological dialectic is created between the
inside of the inhabitants, their homes, and the outside, the street, as being mental and cultural
perceptions that encourage them to invent their own images about their homes, as intimate internal
spaces, and about the street where things are located spatially(Sansot, 1996, 302) . To understand
better this dialectic, it should be noted that daily speaking makes the street a routine junk space and
repetitive activities c 'est-a path of liberation from the daily’s prison by spending time in language
exchanges in different political or economic objects. Moreover, this street as a sphere of being Self,
according to Vincent De Gaulejac, fed by internal dynamic messages that our respondents from the
two studied neighborhoods adopt to emerge the «I daily».
The latter is built by the daily interactions between the inhabitants on a land of common marginality
lived socially and through which emerges another conception of the city, it is the city-street hidden
from the eyes of public institutions and in this space is forged a memory of the collective spirit lived
(Bouchrara Zannad, 2006) on a vulnerable peripheral stage. Throughout our field study, we found
that the inhabited neighborhood is above all a point of sensual creation more than a lot of land
bought and built. This creation marked the circles of dialogue and the turn of speech between
neighbours, each of which serves to possess the interactive field in an acceptable way. In this way,
the daily discourse plays a primary role in the relationship of the inhabitants to the urban space
because this relationship is not only economic but also sociodiscursive.
Because the understanding of the representations of the inhabitants vis-à-vis the city focuses not
only on their mental perceptions but also on the impact of these perceptions on their ways of
speaking. From this point of view, we can say that daily life is an ordinary knowledge and all sensual
practices involve the ways in which each inhabitant expresses its belonging to its inhabited space
considered as urban village on the one hand and to its external world lived and experienced on the
other hand. The question here is the capacity of the inhabitants of the Ben Saida and Erryadh
neighbourhoods to constitute their urban identity.
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Saadellaoui, W., Zafouri, A., & Elloumi, A. (2020). Periurban Housing: The Genesis Of A New Urban Identity: Case Of Two Suburbs Of Sfax City In Tunisia.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(9) 109-118.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.79.8933 117
Fifth, the daily discourse of the inhabitants studied has created an intersubjective world charged
with meaning and symbols through which the interviewees sign their territorial and identity
affiliations.
Sixthly, the configuration of the Rurbain man attaches itself on the one hand to a crisis of a rural
identity and gives rise to a new identity called ambivalent Rurbain on the other hand.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, peri-urban housing, as a recent phenomenon, is seen as a form of advocacy against
policies that are incapable of understanding the specific characteristics of rural Tunisia. This
inadequacy has pushed the rural population of the interior regions of Tunisia to the exodus to lateral
cities where it will create its new way of life through the purchase of a plot of land to build a house
even if clandestinely on a peripheral territory of the center city, as is the case with Sfax.
Indeed, we must not see this type of housing as a portrait of disfigurement of the city but as a living
space produced by the inhabitants of the neighborhoods of Ben Saida and Erryadh where they seek
the hope of living in favourable conditions than those lived in their territories of rural origin. Our
empirical study conducted in these two neighborhoods led us to discover the representations of the
inhabitants vis-à-vis themselves and the city. These representations are not only mere mental
perceptions but also daily practices that the inhabitants charge with meaning and meanings through
their discourses and their encounters to create permanent or transient neighbourhood relations in
interacting with other residents.
In addition, daily contacts are not simply dialogues exchanged but also identities between
neighbours of different social and linguistic origins. These identity contacts have contributed to the
genesis of a new identity called ambivalent rurbaine that each inhabitant serves to keep in order to
continue to live as an actor has its peripheral lifestyle and culture able to integrate into the
constraints of urban space.
References
1. Belhedi (amor) (1992). Société, espace et développement en tunisie, tunisie : faculté des sciences humaine et
sociales de tunis.
2. Bouchrara zannad (traki) (2006). La mémoire du vécu : pour une sociologie du vécu, tunisie : serec.
3. De gaulejac (vincent)(2009). Qui est-je? Paris: seuil.
4. Goffman (erving) (1973). La mise en scène de la vie quotidienne, tomme1: la présentation de soi, paris : minuit.
5. Gumperz (john) (1989). Engager la conversation : introduction à la sociolinguistique interactionnelle, traduit de
l’anglais par michel dartevelle, martine gilbert et isaac joseph. Paris : minuit.
6. Navez-bouchanine (françoise) (2002). La fragmentation en question : des villes entre fragmentation spatiale et
fragmentation sociale ?, paris : l’harmattan.
7. Sansot(pierre) (1996). Poétique de la ville, paris : armand colin.
Articles
1. Dodier (rodolphe) (2007). « « les périurbains et la ville : entre individualisme et logiques collectives. Itinéraires
croisés en pays de la loire" ». Les annales de la recherche urbaine, no 102: 31-39.