266 Mediated Publics
themselves as they are. To achieve this, we have to be aware of the com-
plexity of articulations, including contradictory ones that shed light on
actors’ paradoxical practices, as well as those that challenge the theoretical
presuppositions that guide us. This approach explains how public space is
shaped and reshaped phenomenologically, and helps rethink theory.
e emergence of satellite television in Algeria raises several ques-Th
tions: What type of modernity does it produce? What are its effects on
public space? What connections does it create between interior and exte-
rior spaces? How does it affect relations between the sexes? And how does
it inscribe viewer identification and identities? I intend to approach these
questions by analyzing the ways satellite television impinges on shared
spaces such as the neighborhood, and through a consideration of its var-
ied impacts on gendered actors in order to understand the effect of view-
ing practices on the meaning of the political in a society that has no tradi-
tion of a democratic past. The work of Hann and Dunn on civil society in
nonoccidental contexts provides an inspiring model; they show that the
notion of civil society needs to be rethought in light of local realities, such
as religion, that displace received notions of the political.^6 According to
Buchowski, anthropologists have contributed to the enlargement of the
notion of civil society, which now rests on considerations of groups that
are not “necessarily overtly political.”^7 Another evocative current flows
from research on what Lucas calls “citizenship from below.”^8 This research
was conducted in the context of democratic societies (notably France).
However, it was centered on the practices of marginalized actors such as
workers, the unemployed or immigrants. How is the political expressed
in contexts of loss of voice, “when it is deployed outside the moments and
instances and modalities considered as political [... ]”?^9 Lucas extends
this thinking further, claiming that “there is no longer any civil society,
there are civil stakes” and that stakeholders mediate between society and
political society. These areas of research and lines of questioning contrib-
ute an alternative perspective that challenges the vertical aspect of struc-
tures often assigned to the political. If the state is an important figure of
the political, it is not the only one, nor is it the “only source of rights.”^10
ese examples are relevant here in that the Algerian political sys-Th
tem is often depicted as an authoritarian patrimonial system that has
inserted its tentacles so deeply into society one is led to wonder if there is