Hadj-Moussa 279ohen and Arato maintain that the inclusion of the family in C
discourse on civil society is fundamental. However, they associate its
inclusion with a condition that can vitiate the thrust of their proposal.
According to them, the family serves civil society and contributes ulti-
mately to “the development of civic virtue and responsibility with respect
to the polity.” Furthermore, the family must be grounded in “egalitar-
ian terms.”^29 For Cohen and Arato, the family plays an important role in
instructing its members to be good citizens. But it is a limited political
entity, in their view, for it cannot truly maintain equality among all mem-
bers. Although cast in a priori terms, this proposition can be useful in
drawing attention to the importance of the links between the family and
other social groupings and does so without situating the family in a space
either before or after, but in between.
e second problem comes about with the connotations and Th
implicit meanings that attend the Algerian (and Maghribian) family when
dressed up with the adjective traditional. This is a move that engages the
larger debate surrounding the pairing of tradition and modernity. In a
recent study on nuptial arrangements, Kateb observes “the slow and inevi-
table evolution toward a matrimonial system based on the free choice of
partners encountered by chance,” although one’s family of origin remains
the determining factor in strategies for family building.^30 When one con-
siders the profound upheaval that the Maghribian family, and in particu-
lar the Algerian family, has experienced from colonialism and the direct-
action programs of the independent states, one is led to ask, just where is
this traditional family?^31 It seems more important to pay attention to the
complexity of actual practices than to question whether a practice’s status
is traditional or whether it conforms to norms of modernity, norms that
are themselves complex and fluid.
This longish digression sets the stage for a consideration of the pos-
sible conditions that have favored the adoption of satellite television by the
redefined family unit. As we have seen, one of the most important changes
has been the retreat of men into the household. It is worth noting that this
return is inflected by strategies that can appear to be quite disorienting in
all senses of the term for the foreign observer. Upon initial consideration,
it appears that the men’s retreat is a breach of custom; such is the strength
of the gendered division of space. Numerous arrangements are set up