Browsing by Subject "Morocco"
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Item À qui le soleil : how Morocco’s developing solar capacities have altered urban infrastructural provisions(2015-12) Rowlinson, Thomas Edmond; Liedl, Petra, 1976-; Wilson, Patricia AnnThe creation of a sustainable, solar-based energy sector in Morocco involves changes to both its domestic energy infrastructure as well as the surrounding political and financial arrangements. This research shows that such changes affect Morocco’s most vulnerable urban citizens, specifically those without current grid service, or hacked grid service: those who live in bidonvilles, or shantytowns and slums. I trace such changes in Morocco’s solar energy to the perpetuation of neocolonial narratives of European energy and historical uses of infrastructure in urban manifestations of colonialism. With a focus on domestic large-scale solar energy generation systems like the publicly-operated MASEN, as well as international, public-private enterprises such as Desertec (a German-Moroccan partnership that is mega-regional in scope), this thesis assesses the level of access afforded to bidonville citizens in Morocco’s biggest city, Casablanca. I offer some ideas on how the flexibility and accessibility in the scale and operation of solar can provide generation capacities to urban citizens living in informal communities.Item Bourdieu’s linguistic market and the spread of French in protectorate Morocco(2012-05) Burnett, Elizabeth Ann; Walters, Keith, 1952-; Blyth, Carl S. (Carl Stewart), 1958-; Montreuil, Jean-Pierre; Bullock, Barbara E.; Wettlaufer, AlexandraThe French colonizer from 1912–1956 brought not only the French language to Morocco but also a colonial administration that reinforced divisions between various indigenous social groups. European, Jewish, Muslim, and Berber communities were segregated into separate schools providing different levels of French-language education. As a result, French linguistic dominance and economic opportunity were assured among some groups more thoroughly than others. Acquisition of the French language for European and Jewish communities through advanced educational opportunities at the European lycées and Jewish Alliance Israélite Universelle granted certain higher educational, economic, and administrative privileges within the colonial administration and workforce. Meanwhile, those attending schools created for Muslim and Berber Moroccans where curricula insisted on rudimentary French skills were unable to seek advanced educational or economic opportunity. This research describes the different types of access to the French language that were intended for the diverse European, Jewish, Berber, and Arab speech communities through the various educational institutions created by the French government during the French protectorate in Morocco. Through the application of Bourdieu’s language market theory, this dissertation examines the ways that access became linked to the job market and the attainment of symbolic, economic, and cultural capital. This research offers explanations of how language shift occurred among European and Jews in Morocco and how French continued to confer socioeconomic value long after independence, despite efforts to oust the “colonizer’s language” for all Moroccans. Furthermore, in contradiction to Bourdieu’s language market theory, this research exposes how multiple language markets in Morocco emerged for Muslim and Berber communities as a result of access to different kinds of instruction and how both French and Arabic became legitimate languages with very different social functions.Item Definiteness marking in Moroccan Arabic : contact, divergence, and semantic change(2013-08) Turner, Michael Lee; Brustad, KristenThe aim of the present study is to cast new light on the nature of definiteness marking in Moroccan Arabic (MA). Previous work on the dialect group has described its definiteness system as similar to that of other Arabic varieties, where indefinite entities are unmarked and a "definite article" /l-/ modifies nouns to convey a definite meaning. Such descriptions, however, do not fully account for the behavior of MA nouns in spontaneous natural speech, as found in the small self-collected corpus that informs the study: on one hand, /l-/ can and regularly does co-occur with indefinite meanings; on the other, a number of nouns can exhibit definiteness even in the absence of /l-/. In response to these challenges, the study puts forth an alternate synchronic description the system, arguing that the historical definite article */l-/ has in fact lost its association with definiteness and has instead become lexicalized into an unmarked form of the noun that can appear in any number of semantic contexts. Relatedly, the study argues that the historically indefinite form *Ø has come under heavy syntactic constraints and can best be described as derived from the new unmarked form via a process of phonologically conditioned disfixation, represented {- /l/}. At the same time, MA has also apparently retained an older particle ši and developed an article waħəd, both of which can be used to express different types of indefinite meanings. To support the plausibility of this new description, the study turns to the linguistic history of definiteness in MA, describing how a combination of internal and external impetuses for change likely pushed the dialect toward article loss, a development upon which semantic reanalysis and syntactic restructuring of other forms then followed. If the claim that MA no longer overtly marks definiteness is indeed correct, the study could have a significant impact on work that used previous MA descriptions to make grammaticality judgments, as well as be of value to future work on processes of grammaticalization and language contact.Item Ecstatic feedback : toward an ethics of audition in the contemporary literary arts of the Mediterranean(2014-12) Raizen, Michal; Grumberg, Karen; El-Ariss, Tarek; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Seeman, Sonia; Atwood, BlakeEcstatic Feedback explores narrative and thematic engagements with the concept of “audition” in works from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Morocco. My use of the term audition encompasses the act of listening, the trials and tribulations of hearing, and the performative aspects of lending an ear. The locale of Ecstatic Feedback is the contemporary Mediterranean, a designation that reflects both the geographical and linguistic orientation of the works discussed and the emergent disciplinary interest in Mediterranean Studies. The regional specificity of this project is framed by my discussion of ṭarab, a musical phenomenon akin to ecstasy. I argue that ṭarab, as a musical form with a culturally-specific contextual base and a sui generis communicative mode capable of producing context, points to an acoustic geography that predates current sociopolitical mappings of the Mediterranean. In its literary and cinematic iterations, ṭarab presents a challenge to compartmentalized geopolitical and cultural visions of a Mediterranean structured around divisions such as secular/sacred, premodern/modern, or Mashriq/Maghreb. The works discussed in Ecstatic Feedback use ṭarab as a narrative structure, casting it at the same time as a way of rethinking the historical traumas of the twentieth and twenty-first century Mediterranean. Emile Habibi’s vignettes The Sextet of the Six Days (1968); Hoda Barakat’s novel Disciples of Passion (1993) and her series of essays The Stranger’s Letters (2004); Eran Kolirin’s film The Band’s Visit (2007); and Elia Suleiman’s film The Time That Remains (2009) all make explicit references to the world of ṭarab and its practitioners. Edmond El Maleh’s A Thousand Years, One Day (1986) situates ṭarab more abstractly, as a concept with tremendous performative and communicative potential in both its popular and mystical iterations. With a focus on Arab Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and exiles of the Lebanese Civil War, my project attends to the processes that underwrite a literary and cinematic intervention into the regional soundscape, with its attendant silences and elisions. By foregrounding instances of ṭarab and exploring the intersubjectivity inherent in the dynamic between muṭrib (a performer who elicits ṭarab) and listener, these diverse texts combine to highlight a line of cultural-regional poetics based on audition.Item Linkage and the case of political deliberalization in Morocco(2013-05) Collins, Hope Ellen; Brownlee, Jason, 1974-; Suri, JeremiMany scholars of democratization posit that increased linkage between a hybrid regime and the West will lead to increased democratization. In Morocco during the past decade, however, authoritarianism continued to flourish despite increased linkage with both the United States and European Union. This project seeks to explain the source of this contradiction, arguing that increased linkage actually created a favorable environment for the deliberalization of Moroccan politics.Item The making of moderates : U.S. relations with Islamist movements in Morocco and Egypt(2010-05) Buehler, Matthew J.; Brownlee, Jason, 1974-; Henry, ClementThe academic literature on Islamist moderation offers several explanations for why some Islamist political movements are moderate and others radical. These theories focus on the movements' ideology, tactics, and internal democracy. Few accounts address, however, how an Islamist movement's relations with external powers influence this outcome. This paper finds that "moderation" reflects an Islamist movement's relationship of compliance or defiance with external powers rather than its essential organizational characteristics. In comparing the Moroccan Justice and Development Party (PJD) with the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, it explores why the United States has built good relations with the former but not with the latter. Employing approximately 20 interviews conducted with Islamists, U.S. diplomats, and Moroccan experts in 2009, I show that the PJD's compliance with U.S. foreign policy decisions and interests helps to shape perceptions that the movement is more moderate than its Egyptian counterpart, despite the two movements' similar ideology, tactics, and internal practices.Item Moroccan modern : race, aesthetics, and identity in a global culture market(2009-08) Rode Schaefer, John Philip; Kapchan, Deborah A. (Deborah Anne); Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This dissertation asks how conceptions of race have informed popular cultural expressions in post-independence Morocco. Further, how have these expressions helped shape Moroccan modernity? What does an analysis of the history of the Gnawa in Morocco tell us about changes in Moroccan society, including the religious landscape, and the relation of these changes to globalization? This dissertation tracks the often contradictory paths that modernity has taken in Morocco through a focus on one racialized subculture, the Gnawa, ritual musicians originally from sub-Saharan Africa who have lived in Morocco for centuries without losing a certain African identity. The first part of the dissertation assesses Blackness in Morocco, considering Moroccan history in light of its relations across the Sahara desert. I examine cultural patterns of the Niger River region to which the Gnawa trace their origins, as well as crucial elements in the Moroccan past that involve racial formation. The second part of the dissertation considers how newcomers come to take on these new spiritual and musical identities, whether through a kind of musical transposition or an economic conversion. I argue that mass media have been central in Gnawa conversion narratives in the past, while more recent Gnawa identities have revolved around the consumption of commodities. The third section details my own conversion through a series of engagements with the Essaouira Festival of world music and Gnawa music in Morocco. I attended the festival as an informed tourist and also behind the scenes as an interested participant, and I found that the festival serves multiple purposes in Morocco's cultural economy. I conclude that Morocco's aesthetic history is deeply influenced by conceptions of race. These conceptions have in turn influenced commercial media expressions of post-independence Moroccan identities. Finally, since the opening of Moroccan society in the 1990s, the clearest expression of the future of Moroccan expressive and popular culture has been the rise of music festivals.Item Multicultural solidarity : performances of Malḥūn poetry in Morocco(2013-08) Magidow, Melanie Autumn; Ali, Samer M.This dissertation investigates malḥūn poetry and its roles in contemporary Moroccan society. It challenges modernist approaches to malḥūn that focus on structures and overlook functions, contingencies and interdependencies. I propose an approach informed by performance studies and Bakhtinian dialogism. This study relies on three types of primary sources: printed collections, oral performances, and interviews. Oral and written examples of malḥūn range across the past five hundred years. However, this study places priority on the various actors involved in malḥūn today: poets, singers, musicians, editors, scholars, politicians and fans. This dissertation demonstrates how the heteroglossia of malḥūn performances affects Moroccans as they negotiate identities and re-imagine Moroccan society. Performers' poetic devices and interpretations of the genre facilitate a process of representing and "voicing" social groups within contemporary Moroccan public discourse. I specifically address voices of stability that reinforce social structures of authority ("centripetal") and voices of diversification ("centrifugal") that re-envision diversity in Moroccan society. Artistic innovations, such as theatrical productions of a narrative malḥūn poem, make space for rethinking Moroccan identity. I argue that malḥūn poetry functions dialogically in contemporary public discourse to provide a space for Moroccans to negotiate social identities. This dissertation demonstrates how one cultural genre forms social identity, engaging contemporary theory and debates of issues ranging from performance and identity to heritage and social effects of art and literature.Item Seismic geomorphology of the Safi Haute Mer exploration block, offshore Morocco’s Atlantic Margin(2013-12) Dunlap, Dallas Brogdon; Wood, Lesli J.The lower continental slope of Morocco’s west coast consists of Triassic-age salt manifested in the form of diapirs, tongues, sheets, and canopies, and both extensional and compressional structures that result from salt movements. Salt diapirism and regional tectonics greatly influenced a broad spectrum of depositional processes along the margin. Mapping of a 1064-km² (411-mi²) seismic survey acquired in the Safi Haute Mer area reveals that Jurassic to Holocene salt mobilization has induced sedimentation that manifests itself in gravity slumps and slides and debris flows. An east-west–trending structural anticline located downdip of the salt-influenced region, was activated during the Atlas uplift (latest Cretaceous) and shaped much of the lower continental slope morphology from Tertiary time until present. The largest of the mass transport deposits (MTC) is a 500-m (1640-ft)-thick Cretaceous-age unit that spans an area of up to 20,000 km2 (7722 mi2). Seismic facies composing the MTC are (1) chaotic, mounded reflectors; (2) imbricated continuous to discontinuous folded reflector packages interpreted to represent internal syn-depositional thrusts; and (3) isolated, thick packages of continuous reflectors interpreted to represent transported megablocks (3.3 km2 [1.3 mi2]). The latter show well preserved internal stratigraphy. The MTCs originated from an upslope collapse of a narrow shelf during the earliest phases of the Alpine orogeny. Seismic geomorphologic analysis of the non-salt-deformed sections reveal numerous linear features that are interpreted as migrating Mesozoic-age deepmarine sediment waves. Three styles of sediment waves have been identified. These include: (1) type J1—small (less than 17 m thick) and poorly imaged, Jurassic in age, ridges that have wavelengths of up to 12 km and crest-to-crest separations of less than 1 km; (2) type K1—early Aptian constructional sediment waves (~110 m thick) that appear to show some orientation and size variations which suggest an influence on currents by salt-influenced seafloor topography, and (3) type K2—latest Albian and earliest post-Albian sediment waves exhibiting wave heights of 40 m and crest-to-crest separations of 1 km, that are continuous across the entire study area and show evidence of up-slope migration.Item Testimonial narratives : Moroccan prison writing in the context of national reconciliation(2006-08) Sellman, Johanna Barbro; Harlow, Barbara, 1948-This thesis examines prison writing published in Morocco after 1999, the year that has come to mark the end of the "years of lead" and the beginning of national reconciliation. The prison memoirs participate in a broader project to revise the nation's collective memory to include human rights abuses at the hands of the state. However, many prison memoirs published during this period take issue with the state's version of reconciliation, challenging its very foundations, such as impunity enjoyed by perpetrators and continued occurrence of arbitrary imprisonment and disappearance. The thesis reviews the work of the Moroccan reconciliation commission, L'Instance Équité et Réconciliation [The Commission for Equity and Reconciliation] whose mandate extended from January, 2004 - November, 2005, and the political developments leading up to its establishment. The following sections of the thesis deal with two groups of prison memoirs: Writings by former Marxist political prisoners who were imprisoned in the 1960s and 1970s for their participation in underground Marxist organizations and writings by former inmates of Tazmamart, a secret military prison that held soldiers and officers implicated in the 1971 and 1972 coups against the monarchy. Both Marxist and Tazmamart memoirs grapple with one of the central questions of reconciliation - how to demarcate Morocco's modern history - questioning the delineation that would situate human rights abuses as occurring only in the past. Furthermore, the clear status as victims of state repression lends and authoritative voice to the authors of prison memoirs during a time of reconciliation.Item Urban Mediterranean dialects of Arabic : Tangier and Tunis(2015-05) Montes, Valerie Susana; Brustad, Kristen; Magidow, AlexanderThis thesis compares two urban Mediterranean dialects of Arabic in North Africa: the Arabic dialect of Tangier, Morocco and the Arabic dialect of Tunis, Tunisia. Both of these dialects have traditionally been classified as "pre-Hilalian" varieties, which originated with the first wave of Arab Muslim invasions of North Africa in the late 7th century CE. Tangier and Tunis not only underwent similar historical developments; the Arabic dialects of these two cities also underwent similar developments, in addition to sharing the features used as criteria for the pre-Hilalian dialect grouping. This thesis shows the similarities between the language contact situations in Tangier and Tunis historically in order to explain the parallel development of the morphosyntactic features--specifically the paradigms for the 2nd person category in pronominals as well as perfective, imperfective, and imperative verb inflections--shared by the Arabic dialects of these two cities today.Item Using GIS and the RUSLE model to create an index of potential soil erosion at the large basin scale and discussing the implications for water planning and land management in Morocco(2015-12) Clark, Madeline Lacy; Eaton, David J.; Hajji, MustaphaSevere erosion rates endanger the drinking water and agroforestry sectors in Morocco. To determine ways to improve erosion mitigation in Morocco, this study examined the political landscape underpinning research and policy implementation nation-wide. It also conducted a case study for erosion modeling in the most important river basin for drinking water in Morocco, the Bouregreg Basin. In this case study, 15 erosion scenarios were constructed in ArcMap according to the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), the most commonly used tool to predict erosion in Morocco, to determine the effect of variation in data inputs on the quantity and severity of sheet and rill erosion. Results indicate that average annual erosion rates in the Basin are minimal to moderate, with localized areas experiencing severe rates over 25 tons/hectares/year, indicating that channel and gully erosion rather than sheet or interill erosion dominate in the basin. Increased DEM resolution from 30 to 90 meters amplified predicted erosion rates by a factor of 10, and variation in precipitation between the highest and lowest agricultural years yielded a difference in maximum erosion rates of nearly 60,000 tons/hectares/year. These results indicate that the spatial resolution of datasets and variation in climatic factors produce substantial differences in model output and may bias policy-making in light of variation in data management practices and the potential effects of climate change. In order for Morocco to reach its goal of implementing Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), operators and researchers should collaborate at the basin level and establish best data management practices in the drinking water and agro-forestry sectors of Morocco. To achieve these changes, this study recommends that decision makers reexamine how they fund and support erosion research and mitigation, and that all stakeholders coordinate to both compile data to develop empirical and process-based erosion models fitted to Morocco and calibrate these models through investing in representative field studies.