Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - From Poverty to Wretchedness
T2 - Albert Camus and the Psychology of the Pieds-noirs
AU - Strachan, John
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - This article uses the pieds-noirs (European settlers) of Algeria as a case study of how ‘poor whites’ have been constructed, and have constructed themselves, in colonial historiography. Beginning with a re-examination of terminology, and of the socio-economic status of the pieds-noirs, I argue that the poverty of this community is more often and more usefully understood as a form of psychological impoverishment. The work of Albert Camus represents a salient example of these discourses and offers the historian a productive means of re-thinking the conceptually liminal space of ‘poor whites’ between colony and metropole.
AB - This article uses the pieds-noirs (European settlers) of Algeria as a case study of how ‘poor whites’ have been constructed, and have constructed themselves, in colonial historiography. Beginning with a re-examination of terminology, and of the socio-economic status of the pieds-noirs, I argue that the poverty of this community is more often and more usefully understood as a form of psychological impoverishment. The work of Albert Camus represents a salient example of these discourses and offers the historian a productive means of re-thinking the conceptually liminal space of ‘poor whites’ between colony and metropole.
U2 - 10.1353/cch.2013.0027
DO - 10.1353/cch.2013.0027
M3 - Journal article
VL - 14
JO - Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
JF - Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
IS - 2
M1 - 4
ER -