title: Autoethnography

text: In performance studies, autoethnography acknowledges the researcher and the audience having equal weight. Portraying the performed "self" through writing then becomes an aim to create an embodied experience for the writer and the reader. This area acknowledges the inward and outward experience of ethnography in experiencing the subjectivity of the author. Audience members may experience the work of ethnography through reading/hearing/feeling (inward) and then have a reaction to it (outward), maybe by emotion. Ethnography and performance work together to invoke emotion in the reader.


title: Autoethnography

text: Autoethnography is also used in film as a variant of the standard documentary film. It differs from the traditional documentary film in that its subject is the filmmaker. An autoethnographical film typically relates the life experiences and thoughts, views, and beliefs of the filmmaker, and as such, it is often considered to be rife with bias and image manipulation. Unlike other documentaries, autoethnographies do not usually make a claim of objectivity.


title: Autoethnography

text: In different academic disciplines (particularly communication studies and performance studies), the term autoethnography itself is contested and is sometimes used interchangeably with or referred to as personal narrative or autobiography. Autoethnographic methods include journaling, looking at archival records - whether institutional or personal, interviewing one's own self, and using writing to generate a self-cultural understandings. Reporting an autoethnography might take the form of a traditional journal article or scholarly book, performed on the stage, or be seen in the popular press. Autoethnography can include direct (and participant) observation of daily behavior; unearthing of local beliefs and perception and recording of life history (e.g. kinship, education, etc.); and in-depth interviewing: "The analysis of data involves interpretation on the part of the researcher" (Hammersley in Genzuk). However, rather than a portrait of the Other (person, group, culture), the difference is that the researcher is constructing a portrait of the self.


title: Autoethnography

text: Autoethnography can also be "associated with narrative inquiry and autobiography" in that it foregrounds experience and story as a meaning-making enterprise. Maréchal argues that "narrative inquiry can provoke identification, feelings, emotions, and dialogue." Furthermore, the increased focus on incorporating autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry into qualitative research indicates a growing concern for how the style of academic writing informs the types of claims made. As Laurel Richardson articulates "I consider writing as a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about a topic...form and content are inseparable." For many researchers, experimenting with alternative forms of writing and reporting, including autoethnography, personal narrative, performative writing, layered accounts and writing stories, provides a way to create multiple layered accounts of a research study, creating not only the opportunity to create new and provocative claims but also the ability to do so in a compelling manner. Ellis (2004) says that autoethnographers advocate "the conventions of literary writing and expression" in that "autoethnographic forms feature concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection portrayed in dialogue, scenes, characterization, and plot" (p. xix).


title: Autoethnography

text: According to Bochner and Ellis (2006), an autoethnographer is "first and foremost a communicator and a storyteller." In other words, autoethnography "depicts people struggling to overcome adversity" and shows "people in the process of figuring out what to do, how to live, and the meaning of their struggles" (p. 111). Therefore, according to them, autoethnography is "ethical practice" and "gifts" that has a caregiving function (p. 111). In essence autoethnography is a story that re-enacts an experience by which people find meaning and through that meaning are able to be okay with that experience.


title: Autoethnography

text: In Dr. Mayukh Dewan's opinion, this can be a problem because many readers may see us as being too self-indulgent but they have to realise that our stories and experiences we share are not solely ours, but rather that they also represent the group we are autoethnographically representing.


title: Autoethnography

text: In this storytelling process, the researcher seeks to make meaning of a disorienting experience. A life example in which autoethnography could be applied is the death of a family member or someone close by. In this painful experience people often wonder how they will go about living without this person and what it will be like. In this scenario, especially in religious homes, one often asks "Why God?" thinking that with an answer as to why the person died they can go about living. Others, wanting to be able to offer up an explanation to make the person feel better, generally say things such as "At least they are in a better place" or "God wanted him/her home." People, who are never really left with an explanation as to why, generally fall back on the reason that "it was their time to go" and through this somewhat "explanation" find themselves able to move on and keep living life. Over time when looking back at the experience of someone close to you dying, one may find that through this hardship they became a stronger more independent person, or that they grew closer to other family members. With these realizations, the person has actually made sense of and has become fine with the tragic experience that occurred. And through this autoethnography is performed.


title: Autoethnography

text: The main critique of autoethnography — and qualitative research in general — comes from the traditional social science methods that emphasize the objectivity of social research. In this critique, qualitative researchers are often called "journalists, or soft scientists," and their work, including autoethnography, is "termed unscientific, or only exploratory, or entirely personal and full of bias." Many quantitative researchers regard the materials produced by narrative as "the means by which a narrating subject, autonomous and independent...can achieve authenticity...This represents an almost total failure to use narrative to achieve serious social analysis."


title: Autoethnography

text: According to Maréchal, the early criticism of autobiographical methods in anthropology was about "their validity on grounds of being unrepresentative and lacking objectivity." She also points out that evocative and emotional genres of autoethnography have been criticized by mostly analytic proponents for their "lack of ethnographic relevance as a result of being too personal." As she writes, they are criticized "for being biased, navel-gazing, self-absorbed, or emotionally incontinent, and for hijacking traditional ethnographic purposes and scholarly contribution."


title: Autoethnography

text: The reluctance to accept narrative work as serious extends far beyond the realm of academia. In 1994, Arlene Croce refused to evaluate or even attend Bill T. Jones "Still/Here" performance. She echoed a quantitative stance towards narrative research by explaining


title: Autoethnography

text: I can't review someone I feel sorry or hopeless about...I'm "forced" to feel sorry because of the way they present themselves as: dissed blacks, abused women, or disenfranchised homosexuals - as performers, in short, who make victimhood victim art


title: Autoethnography

text: Croce illustrates what Adams, Jones, and Ellis refer to as "illusory boundaries and borders between scholarship and criticism." These "borders" are seen to hide or take away from the idea that autoethnographic evaluation and criticism present another personal story about the experience of an experience. Or as Craig Gingrich-Philbrook wrote, "any evaluation of autoethnography...is simply another story from a highly situated, privileged, empowered subject about something he or she experienced."


title: Autoethnography

text: Prominent philosopher of science, Karl Popper, when claiming that falsifiability was a basic criteria of a scientific theory said:A theory is falsifiable... if there exists at least one non-empty class of homotypic basic statements which are forbidden by itAs autoethnography makes no claims that can be verified, it is no longer falsifiable. Under this criterion, autoethnography becomes pseudoscience.


title: Autoethnography

text: In her book's tenth chapter, titled "Evaluating and Publishing Autoethnography" (pp. 252~255), Ellis (2004) discusses how to evaluate an autoethnographic project, based on other authors' ideas about evaluating alternative modes of qualitative research. (See the special section in "Qualitative Inquiry" on "Assessing Alternative Modes of Qualitative and Ethnographic Research: How Do We Judge? Who Judges?") She presents several criteria for "good autoethnography," and indicates how these ideas resonate with each other.


title: Autoethnography

text: First, Ellis mentions Richardson who described five factors she uses when reviewing personal narrative papers that includes analysis of both evaluative and constructive validity techniques. The criteria are:


title: Autoethnography

text: Autoethnographic manuscripts might include dramatic recall, unusual phrasing, and strong metaphors to invite the reader to "relive" events with the author. These guidelines may provide a framework for directing investigators and reviewers alike.


title: Autoethnography

text: Further, Ellis suggests how Richardson's criteria mesh with criteria mentioned by Bochner who describes what makes him understand and feel with a story. (Bochner, 2000, pp. 264~266) He looks for concrete details (similar to Richardson's expression of lived experience), structurally complex narratives (Richardson's aesthetic merit), author's attempt to dig under the superficial to get to vulnerability and honesty (Richardson's reflexivity), a standard of ethical self-consciousness (Richardson's substantive contribution), and a moving story (Richardson's impact) (Ellis, 2004, pp. 253~254).


title: Autoethnography

text: In 2015, Adams, Jones, and Ellis collaborated to bring about a similar list of Goals for Assessing Autoethnography. The list takes encompasses descriptive, prescriptive, practical, and theoretical goals for evaluating autoethnographic work (2015, pp. 102-104).


title: Autoethnography

text: Adams, Jones, and Ellis define the first goal of autoethnography as a conscious effort to "extend existing knowledge and research while recognizing that knowledge is both situated and contested." As Adams explains in his critique of his work "Narrating the Closet,"


title: Autoethnography

text: I knew I had to contribute to knowledge about coming out by saying something new about the experience...I also needed a new angle toward coming out; my experience, alone, of coming out was not sufficient to justify a narrative.


title: Autoethnography

text: With the critic's general decree of narrative as narcissism, Adams, Jones, and Ellis use the first goal of assessing autoethnography to explain the importance of striving to combine personal experience and existing theory while remaining mindful of the "insider insight that autoethnography offers researchers, participants, and readers/audiences." Ellis' "Maternal Connections" can be considered a successful incorporation of the first goal in that she "questions the idea of care-giving as a burden, instead of portraying caregiving as a loving and meaning-making relationship."


title: Autoethnography

text: Adams, Jones, and Ellis define the second goal for assessing autoethnography with four elements which include featuring the perspective of the self in context and culture, exploring experience as a means of insight about social life, embracing the risks of presenting vulnerable selves in research, and using emotions and bodily experience as means and modes of understanding. This goal fully recognizes and commends the "I" in academic writing and calls for analysis of the subjective experience. In Jones' "Lost and Found" essay she writes,


title: Autoethnography

text: I convey the sadness and the joy I feel about my relationships with my adopted child, the child I chose not to adopt, and my grandmother. I focus on the emotions and bodily experiences of both losing and memorializing my grandmother'


title: Autoethnography

text: The careful and deliberate incorporation of "auto" (the "I," the self) into research is considered one of the most crucial aspects of the autoethnography process. The exploration of the ethics and care of presenting vulnerable selves is addressed at length by Adams in "A Review of Narrative Ethics".


title: Autoethnography

text: Autoethnography showcases stories as the means in which sensemaking and researcher reflexivity create descriptions and critiques of culture. Adams, Jones, and Ellis write:


title: Autoethnography

text: Reflexivity includes both acknowledging and critiquing our place and privilege in society and using the stories we tell to "break long-held silences" on power, relationships, cultural taboos, and forgotten and/or suppressed experiences.


title: Autoethnography

text: A focus is placed a writer's ability to develop writing and representation skills alongside other analytic abilities. Adams switches between first-person and second-person narrationin "Living (In) the Closet: The Time of Being Closeted" as a way to "bring readers into my story, inviting them to live my experiences alongside me, feeling how I felt and suggesting how they might, under similar circumstances, act as I did." Similarly, Ellis in "Maternal Connections" chose to steer away from the inclusion of references to the research literature or theory instead opting to "call on sensory details, movements, emotions, dialogue, and scene setting to convey an experience of taking care of a parent."


title: Autoethnography

text: The examples included above are incomplete. Autoethnographers exploring different narrative structures can be seen in Andrew Herrmann's use of layered accounts, Ellis' use of haibun, and the use of autoethnographic film by Rebecca Long and Anne Harris.


title: Autoethnography

text: Addressing veracity and the art of story telling in his 2019 autoethnographic monograph "Going All City: Struggle and Survival in LA's Graffiti Subculture", Stefano Bloch writes "I do rely on artful rendering, but not artistic license."


title: Autoethnography

text: Among the concepts in qualitative research is "relational responsibility." Researchers should work to make research relationships as collaborative, committed, and reciprocal as possible while taking care to safeguard identities and privacy of participants. Included under this concept is the accessibility of the work to a variety of readers which allows for the "opportunity to engage and improve the lives of our selves, participants, and readers/audiences."


title: Autoethnography

text: Autoethnographers struggle with relational responsibility as in Adams' critique of his work on coming out and recognizing:


title: Autoethnography

text: ...how others can perceive my ideas as "relationally irresponsible" concessions to homophobic others and to insidious heteronormative cultural structures; by "not" being aggressively critical, my work does not do enough to "engage" and "improve" the lives of others.


title: Autoethnography

text: In the critique he also questions how relationally irresponsible he was by including several brief conversations in his work without consent and exploited other's experiences for his own benefit. Similar sentiments are echoed throughout Adams, Jones, and Ellis critiques of their own writing.


title: Autoethnography

text: As an idea that emerged from the tradition of social constructionism and interpretive paradigm, autoethnography challenges the traditional social scientific methodology that emphasizes the criteria for quality in social research developed in terms of validity. Carolyn Ellis writes, In autoethnographic work, I look at validity in terms of what happens to readers as well as to research participants and researchers. To me, validity means that our work seeks verisimilitude; it evokes in readers a feeling that the experience described is lifelike, believable, and possible. You also can judge validity by whether it helps readers communicate with others different from themselves or offers a way to improve the lives of participants and readers- or even your own. In this sense, Ellis emphasizes the "narrative truth" for autoethnographic writings.


title: Autoethnography

text: I believe you should try to construct the story as close to the experience as you can remember it, especially in the initial version. If you do, it will help you work through the meaning and purpose of the story. But it's not so important that narratives represent lives accurately – only, as Art(Arthur Bochner) argues, "that narrators believe they are doing so" (Bochner, 2002, p. 86). Art believes that we can judge one narrative interpretation of events against another, but we cannot measure a narrative against the events themselves because the meaning of the events comes clear only in their narrative expression.


title: Autoethnography

text: Instead, Ellis suggests to judge autoethnographic writings on the usefulness of the story, rather than only on accuracy. She quotes Art Bochner, who argues


title: Autoethnography

text: that the real questions is what narratives do, what consequences they have, to what uses they can be put. Narrative is the way we remember the past, turn life into language, and disclose to ourselves and others the truth of our experiences. In moving from concern with the inner veridicality to outer pragmatics of evaluating stories, Plummer [2001, p. 401] also looks at uses, functions, and roles of stories, and adds that they "need to have rhetorical power enhanced by aesthetic delight (Ellis, 2004, p. 126-127).


title: Autoethnography

text: Laurel Richardson [1997, p. 92] uses the metaphor of a crystal to deconstruct traditional validity. A crystal has an infinite number of shapes, dimensions and angles. It acts as a prism and changes shape, but still has structure. Another writer, Patti Lather [1993, p. 674], proposes counter-practices of authority that rupture validity as a "regime of truth" and lead to a critical political agenda [Cf. Olesen, 2000, p. 231]. She mentions the four subtypes [pp. 685-686]: "ironic validity, concerning the problems of representation; paralogical validity, which honors differences and uncertainties; rhizomatic validity, which seeks out multiplicity; and voluptuous validity, which seeks out ethics through practices of engagement and self-reflexivity (Ellis, 2004, pp. 124~125).


title: Autoethnography

text: With regard to the term of "generalizability," Ellis points out that autoethnographic research seeks generalizability not just from the respondents but also from the readers. Ellis says:


title: Autoethnography

text: I would argue that a story's generalizability is always being tested – not in the traditional way through random samples of respondents, but by readers as they determine if a story speaks to them about their experience or about the lives of others they know. Readers provide theoretical validation by comparing their lives to ours, by thinking about how our lives are similar and different and the reasons why. Some stories inform readers about unfamiliar people or lives. We can ask, after Stake [1994], "does the story have 'naturalistic generalization'?" meaning that it brings "felt" news from one world to another and provides opportunities for the reader to have vicarious experience of the things told. The focus of generalizability moves from respondents to readers.(p. 195)


title: Autoethnography

text: This generalizability through the resonance of readers' lives and "lived experience" (Richardson, 1997) in autoethnographic work, intends to open up rather than close down conversation (Ellis, 2004, p. 22).


title: Autoethnography

text: Denzin's criterion is whether the work has the possibility to change the world and make it a better place (Denzin, 2000, p. 256). This position fits with Clough, who argues that good autoethnographic writing should motivate cultural criticism. Autoethnographic writing should be closely aligned with theoretical reflection, says Clough, so that it can serve as a vehicle for thinking "new sociological subjects" and forming "new parameters of the social" (Clough, 2000, p. 290). Though Richardson and Bochner are less overtly political than Denzin and Clough, they indicate that good personal narratives should contribute to positive social change and move us to action (Bochner, 2000, p. 271).


title: Autoethnography

text: In addition to helping the researcher make sense of his or her individual experience, autoethnographies are political in nature as they engage their readers in political issues and often ask us to consider things, or do things differently. Chang argues that autoethnography offers a research method friendly to researchers and readers because autoethnographic texts are engaging and enable researchers to gain a cultural understanding of self in relation to others, on which cross-cultural coalition can be built between self and others.


title: Autoethnography

text: Also, autoethnography as a genre frees us to move beyond traditional methods of writing, promoting narrative and poetic forms, displays of artifacts, photographs, drawings, and live performances (Cons, p. 449). Denzin says autoethnography must be literary, present cultural and political issues, and articulate a politics of hope. The literary criteria he mentions are covered in what Richardson advocates: aesthetic value. Ellis elaborates her idea in autoethnography as good writing that through the plot, dramatic tension, coherence, and verisimilitude, the author shows rather than tells, develops characters and scenes fully, and paints vivid sensory experiences.


title: Autoethnography

text: While advocating autoethnography for its value, some researchers argue that there are also several concerns about autoethnography. Chang warns autoethnographers of pitfalls that they should avoid in doing autoethnography: (1) excessive focus on self in isolation from others; (2) overemphasis on narration rather than analysis and cultural interpretation; (3) exclusive reliance on personal memory and recalling as a data source; (4) negligence of ethical standards regarding others in self-narratives; and (5) inappropriate application of the label autoethnography.Also some qualitative researchers have expressed their concerns about the worth and validity of autoethnography. Robert Krizek (2003) contributed a chapter titled "Ethnography as the Excavation of Personal Narrative" (pp. 141–152) to the book of "Expressions of Ethnography" in which he expresses concern about the possibility for autoethnography to devolve into narcissism. Krizek goes on to suggest that autoethnography, no matter how personal, should always connect to some larger element of life.


title: Autoethnography

text: One of the main advantages of personal narratives is that they give us access into learners' private worlds and provide rich data (Pavlenko, 2002, 2007). Another advantage is the ease of access to data since the researcher calls on his or her own experiences as the source from which to investigate a particular phenomenon. It is this advantage that also entails a limitation as, by subscribing analysis to a personal narrative, the research is also limited in its conclusions. However, Bochner and Ellis (1996) consider that this limitation on the self is not valid, since, "If culture circulates through all of us, how can autoethnography be free of connection to a world beyond the self?."


title: Autoethnography

text: Similar to other forms of qualitative and art-based research, autoethnography has faced many criticisms. As Sparkes stated, "The emergence of autoethnography and narratives of self…has not been trouble-free, and their status as proper research remains problematic."


title: Autoethnography

text: The most recurrent criticism of autoethnography is of its strong emphasis on self, which is at the core of the resistance to accepting autoethnography as a valuable research method. Thus, autoethnographies have been criticised for being self-indulgent, narcissistic, introspective and individualised.


title: Autoethnography

text: Another criticism is of the reality personal narratives or autoethnographies represent. As Geoffrey Walford states, "If people wish to write fiction, they have every right to do so, but not every right to call it research." This criticism originates from a statement by Ellis and Bochner (2000), conceiving autoethnography as a narrative that "is always a story about the past and not the past itself." To this, Walford asserts that "the aim of research is surely to reduce the distortion as much as possible." Walford's concerns are focused on how much of the accounts presented as autoethnographies represent real conversations or events as they happened and how much they are just inventions of the authors.


title: Autoethnography

text: Several critiques exist regarding evaluating autoethnographical works grounded in interpretive paradigm.


title: Autoethnography

text: From within qualitative research, some researchers have posited that autoethnographers, along with others, fail to meet positivist standards of validity and reliability. Schwandt, for instance, argues that some social researchers have "come to equate being rational in social science with being procedural and criteriological." Building on quantitative foundations, Lincoln and Guba translate quantitative indicators into qualitative quality indicators, namely: credibility (parallels internal validity), transferability (parallels external validity), dependability (parallels reliability), and confirmability (parallels objectivity and seeks to critically examine whether the researcher has acted in good faith during the course of the research). Smith and Smith and Heshusius critique these qualitative translations and warn that the claim of compatibility (between qualitative and quantitative criteria) cannot be sustained, and by making such claims, researchers are in effect closing down the conversation. Smith points out that "the assumptions of interpretive inquiry are incompatible with the desire for foundational criteria. How we are to work out this problem, one way or another, would seem to merit serious attention.


title: Autoethnography

text: Secondly, some other researchers questions the need for specific criteria itself. Bochner and Clough both are concerned that too much emphasis on criteria will move us back to methodological policing and will takes us away from a focus on imagination, ethical issues in autographic work, and creating better ways of living. The autoethnographer internally judges its quality. Evidence is tacit, individualistic, and subjective. (see Ellis & Bochner, 2003). Practice-based quality is based in the lived research experience itself rather than in its formal evidencing per se. Bochner says:


title: Autoethnography

text: Self-narratives... are not so much academic as they are existential, reflecting a desire to grasp or seize the possibilities of meaning, which is what gives life its imaginative and poetic qualities... a poetic social science does not beg the question of how to separate good narrativization from bad... [but] the good ones help the reader or listener to understand and feel the phenomena under scrutiny.


title: Autoethnography

text: Finally, in addition to this anti-criteria stance of some researchers, some scholars have suggested that the criteria used to judge autoethnography should not necessarily be the same as traditional criteria used to judge other qualitative research investigations (Garratt & Hodkinson, 1999). They argue that autoethnography has been received with a significant degree of academic suspicion because it contravenes certain qualitative research traditions. The controversy surrounding autoethnography is in part related to the problematic exclusive use of the self to produce research (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). This use of self as the only data source in autoethnography has been questioned (see, for example, Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Sparkes, 2000). Accordingly, autoethnographies have been criticized for being too self-indulgent and narcissistic. Sparkes (2000) suggested that autoethnography is at the boundaries of academic research because such accounts do not sit comfortably with traditional criteria used to judge qualitative inquiries.


title: Autoethnography

text: Holt associates this problem with this problem as two crucial issues in "the fourth moment of qualitative research" Denzin and Lincoln (2000) presented; the dual crises of representation and legitimation. The crisis of representation refers to the writing practices (i.e., how researchers write and represent the social world). Additionally, verification issues relating to methods and representation are (re)considered as problematic (Marcus & Fischer, 1986). The crisis of legitimation questions traditional criteria used for evaluating and interpreting qualitative research, involving a rethinking of terms such as validity, reliability, and objectivity. Holt says:


title: Autoethnography

text: Much like the autoethnographic texts themselves, the boundaries of research and their maintenance are socially constructed (Sparkes, 2000). In justifying autoethnography as proper research... ethnographers have acted autobiographically before, but in the past they may not have been aware of doing so, and taken their genre for granted (Coffey, 1999). Autoethnographies may leave reviewers in a perilous position... the reviewers were not sure if the account was proper research (because of the style of representation), and the verification criteria they wished to judge this research by appeared to be inappropriate. Whereas the use of autoethnographic methods may be increasing, knowledge of how to evaluate and provide feedback to improve such accounts appears to be lagging. As reviewers begin to develop ways in which to judge autoethnography, they must resist the temptation to "seek universal foundational criteria lest one form of dogma simply replaces another" (Sparkes, 2002b, p. 223). However, criteria for evaluating personal writing have barely begun to develop.


title: Metastability

text: In chemistry and physics, metastability denotes an intermediate energetic state within a dynamical system other than the system's state of least energy.


title: Metastability

text: A ball resting in a hollow on a slope is a simple example of metastability. If the ball is only slightly pushed, it will settle back into its hollow, but a stronger push may start the ball rolling down the slope. Bowling pins show similar metastability by either merely wobbling for a moment or tipping over completely. A common example of metastability in science is isomerisation. Higher energy isomers are long lived because they are prevented from rearranging to their preferred ground state by (possibly large) barriers in the potential energy.


title: Metastability

text: During a metastable state of finite lifetime, all state-describing parameters reach and hold stationary values. In isolation:


title: Metastability

text: The metastability concept originated in the physics of first-order phase transitions. It then acquired new meaning in the study of aggregated subatomic particles (in atomic nuclei or in atoms) or in molecules, macromolecules or clusters of atoms and molecules. Later, it was borrowed for the study of decision-making and information transmission systems.


title: Metastability

text: Metastability is common in physics and chemistry – from an atom (many-body assembly) to statistical ensembles of molecules (viscous fluids, amorphous solids, liquid crystals, minerals, etc.) at molecular levels or as a whole (see Metastable states of matter and grain piles below). The abundance of states is more prevalent as the systems grow larger and/or if the forces of their mutual interaction are spatially less uniform or more diverse.


title: Metastability

text: In dynamic systems (with feedback) like electronic circuits, signal trafficking, decisional, neural and immune systems, – the time-invariance of the active or reactive patterns with respect to the external influences defines stability and metastability (see brain metastability below). In these systems, the equivalent of thermal fluctuations in molecular systems is the "white noise" that affects signal propagation and the decision-making.


title: Metastability

text: Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of physics that studies the dynamics of statistical ensembles of molecules via unstable states. Being "stuck" in a thermodynamic trough without being at the lowest energy state is known as having kinetic stability or being kinetically persistent. The particular motion or kinetics of the atoms involved has resulted in getting stuck, despite there being preferable (lower-energy) alternatives.


title: Metastability

text: Metastable states of matter (also referred as metastates) range from melting solids (or freezing liquids), boiling liquids (or condensing gases) and sublimating solids to supercooled liquids or superheated liquid-gas mixtures. Extremely pure, supercooled water stays liquid below 0 °C and remains so until applied vibrations or condensing seed doping initiates crystallization centers. This is a common situation for the droplets of atmospheric clouds.


title: Metastability

text: Metastable phases are common in condensed matter and crystallography. Notably, this is the case for anatase, a metastable polymorph of titanium dioxide, which despite commonly being the first phase to form in many synthesis processes due to its lower surface energy, is always metastable, with rutile being the most stable phase at all temperatures and pressures.


title: Metastability

text: As another example, diamond is a stable phase only at very high pressures, but is a metastable form of carbon at standard temperature and pressure. It can be converted to graphite (plus leftover kinetic energy), but only after overcoming an activation energy – an intervening hill. Martensite is a metastable phase used to control the hardness of most steel. Metastable polymorphs of silica are commonly observed. In some cases, such as in the allotropes of solid boron, acquiring a sample of the stable phase is difficult.


title: Metastability

text: The bonds between the building blocks of polymers such as DNA, RNA, and proteins are also metastable. Adenosine triphosphate is a highly metastable molecule, colloquially described as being "full of energy" that can be used in many ways in biology.


title: Metastability

text: Generally speaking, emulsions/colloidal systems and glasses are metastable. The metastability of silica glass, for example, is characterised by lifetimes on the order of 10 years (as compared with the lifetime of the universe, which is thought to be about years).


title: Metastability

text: Sandpiles are one system which can exhibit metastability if a steep slope or tunnel is present. Sand grains form a pile due to friction. It is possible for an entire large sand pile to reach a point where it is stable, but the addition of a single grain causes large parts of it to collapse.


title: Metastability

text: The avalanche is a well-known problem with large piles of snow and ice crystals on steep slopes. In dry conditions, snow slopes act similarly to sandpiles. An entire mountainside of snow can suddenly slide due to the presence of a skier, or even a loud noise or vibration.


title: Metastability

text: Aggregated systems of subatomic particles described by quantum mechanics (quarks inside nucleons, nucleons inside atomic nuclei, electrons inside atoms, molecules, or atomic clusters) are found to have many distinguishable states. Of these, one (or a small degenerate set) is indefinitely stable: the ground state or global minimum.


title: Metastability

text: All other states besides the ground state (or those degenerate with it) have higher energies. Of all these other states, the metastable states are the ones having lifetimes lasting at least 10 to 10 times longer than the shortest lived states of the set.


title: Metastability

text: A "metastable state" is then long-lived (locally stable with respect to configurations of 'neighbouring' energies) but not eternal (as the global minimum is). Being excited – of an energy above the ground state – it will eventually decay to a more stable state, releasing energy. Indeed, above absolute zero, all states of a system have a non-zero probability to decay; that is, to spontaneously fall into another state (usually lower in energy). One mechanism for this to happen is through tunnelling.


title: Metastability

text: Some energetic states of an atomic nucleus (having distinct spatial mass, charge, spin, isospin distributions) are much longer-lived than others (nuclear isomers of the same isotope), e.g. technetium-99m. The isotope tantalum-180m, although being a metastable excited state, is long-lived enough that it has never been observed to decay, with a half-life calculated to be least years, over 3 million times the current age of the universe.


title: Metastability

text: Some atomic energy levels are metastable. Rydberg atoms are an example of metastable excited atomic states. Transitions from metastable excited levels are typically those forbidden by electric dipole selection rules. This means that any transitions from this level are relatively unlikely to occur. In a sense, an electron that happens to find itself in a metastable configuration is trapped there. Of course, since transitions from a metastable state are not impossible (merely less likely), the electron will eventually decay to a less energetic state, typically by an electric quadrupole transition, or often by non-radiative de-excitation (e.g., collisional de-excitation).


title: Metastability

text: This slow-decay property of a metastable state is apparent in phosphorescence, the kind of photoluminescence seen in glow-in-the-dark toys that can be charged by first being exposed to bright light. Whereas spontaneous emission in atoms has a typical timescale on the order of 10 seconds, the decay of metastable states can typically take milliseconds to minutes, and so light emitted in phosphorescence is usually both weak and long-lasting.


title: Metastability

text: In chemical systems, a system of atoms or molecules involving a change in chemical bond can be in a metastable state, which lasts for a relatively long period of time. Molecular vibrations and thermal motion make chemical species at the energetic equivalent of the top of a round hill very short-lived. Metastable states that persist for many seconds (or years) are found in energetic "valleys" which are not the lowest possible valley (point 1 in illustration). A common type of metastability is isomerism.


title: Metastability

text: The stability or metastability of a given chemical system depends on its environment, particularly temperature and pressure. The difference between producing a stable vs. metastable entity can have important consequences. For instances, having the wrong crystal polymorph can result in failure of a drug while in storage between manufacture and administration. The map of which state is the most stable as a function of pressure, temperature and/or composition is known as a phase diagram. In regions where a particular state is not the most stable, it may still be metastable.


title: Metastability

text: Reaction intermediates are relatively short-lived, and are usually thermodynamically unstable rather than metastable. The IUPAC recommends referring to these as "transient" rather than metastable.


title: Metastability

text: Metastability is also used to refer to specific situations in mass spectrometry and spectrochemistry.


title: Metastability

text: A digital circuit is supposed to be found in a small number of stable digital states within a certain amount of time after an input change. However if an input changes at the wrong moment a digital circuit which employs feedback (even a simple circuit such as a flip-flop) can enter a metastable state and take an unbounded length of time to finally settle into a fully stable digital state.


title: Metastability

text: Metastability in the brain is a phenomenon studied in computational neuroscience to elucidate how the human brain recognizes patterns. Here, the term metastability is used rather loosely. There is no lower-energy state, but there are semi-transient signals in the brain that persist for a while and are different than the usual equilibrium state.


title: Data entry clerk

text: A data entry clerk, also known as data preparation and control operator, data registration and control operator, and data preparation and registration operator, is a member of staff employed to enter or update data into a computer system. Data is often entered into a computer from paper documents using a keyboard. The keyboards used can often have special keys and multiple colors to help in the task and speed up the work. Proper ergonomics at the workstation is a common topic considered.


title: Data entry clerk

text: The invention of punched card data processing in the 1890s created a demand for many workers, typically women, to run keypunch machines. To ensure accuracy, data was often entered twice; the second time a different keyboarding device, known as a verifier (such as the IBM 056) was used.


title: Data entry clerk

text: For a mailing company, data entry clerks might be required to type in reference numbers for items of mail which had failed to reach their destination, so that the relevant addresses could be deleted from the database used to send the mail out. If the company was compiling a database from addresses handwritten on a questionnaire, the person typing those into the database would be a data entry clerk. In a cash office, a data entry clerk might be required to type expenses into a database using numerical codes.


title: Data entry clerk

text: With to the advance of technology, many data entry clerks no longer work with hand-written documents. Instead, the documents are first scanned by a combined OCR/OMR system (optical character recognition and optical mark recognition,) which attempts to read the documents and process the data electronically. The accuracy of OCR varies widely based upon the quality of the original document as well as the scanned image; hence the ongoing need for data entry clerks. Although OCR technology is continually being developed, many tasks still require a data entry clerk to review the results afterward to check the accuracy of the data and to manually key in any missed or incorrect information.


title: Data entry clerk

text: An example of this system would be one commonly used to document health insurance claims, such as for Medicaid in the United States. In many systems, the hand-written forms are first scanned into digital images (JPEG, PNG, bitmap, etc.). These files are then processed by the optical character recognition system, where many fields are completed by the computerized optical scanner. When the OCR software has low confidence in a data field, it is flagged for review – not the entire record but just the single field. The data entry clerk then manually reviews the data already entered by OCR, corrects it if needed, and fills in any missing data by simultaneously viewing the image on-screen.


title: Data entry clerk

text: The accuracy of personal records, as well as billing or financial information, is usually very important to the general public as well as the healthcare provider. Sensitive or vital information such as this is often checked many times, by both clerk and machine, before being accepted.


title: Data entry clerk

text: Accuracy is usually more important than speed, because detection and correction of errors can be very time-consuming. Staying focused and speed are also required.


title: Data entry clerk

text: The job is usually low-skilled, so veteran staff are often employed on a temporary basis after a large survey or census has been completed. However, most companies handling large amounts of data on a regular basis will spread the contracts and workload across the year and will hire part-time.


title: Data entry clerk

text: The role of data entry clerks working with physical hand-written documents is on the decline in the developed world, because employees within a company frequently enter their own data, as it is collected now, instead of having a different employee do this task. An example of this is an operator working in a call center or a cashier in a shop. Cost is another reason for the decline. Data entry is labor-intensive for large batches and therefore expensive, so large companies will sometimes outsource the work, either locally or to third-world countries where there is no shortage of cheaper unskilled labor.


title: Data entry clerk

text: For the job as a data entry clerk, competent math and English skills may be necessary. The worker will need to be very familiar with office software such as word processors, databases, and spreadsheets. One must have quickness, focus, and customer service skills.


title: Data entry clerk

text: Education higher than a high school diploma is often not required, but some companies require a bachelor's degree. Companies also hope the worker will have one year of experience in a related field.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is based on Windows NT, Windows Embedded Compact uses a different hybrid kernel. Microsoft licenses it to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), who can modify and create their own user interfaces and experiences, with Windows Embedded Compact providing the technical foundation to do so. The current version of Windows Embedded Compact supports x86 and ARM processors with board support package (BSP) directly. The MIPS and SHx architectures had support prior to version 7.0. 7.0 still works on MIPSII architecture.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Originally, Windows CE was designed for minimalistic and small computers. However CE had its own kernel whereas those such as Windows XP Embedded are based on NT. Windows CE was a modular/componentized operating system that served as the foundation of several classes of devices such as Handheld PC, Pocket PC, Auto PC, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7 and more.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Official mainstream support for the current and final version of Windows CE, Windows Embedded Compact 2013 ended on October 9, 2018, and extended support will end on October 10, 2023.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Windows CE is optimized for devices that have minimal memory; a Windows CE kernel may run with one megabyte of memory. Devices are often configured without disk storage, and may be configured as a "closed" system that does not allow for end-user extension (for instance, it can be burned into ROM). Windows CE conforms to the definition of a real-time operating system, with a deterministic interrupt latency. From Version 3 and onward, the system supports 256 priority levels and uses priority inheritance for dealing with priority inversion. The fundamental unit of execution is the thread. This helps to simplify the interface and improve execution time.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: The first version known during development under the code name "Pegasus" featured a Windows-like GUI and a number of Microsoft's popular apps, all trimmed down for smaller storage, memory, and speed of the palmtops of the day. Since then, Windows CE has evolved into a component-based, embedded, real-time operating system. It is no longer targeted solely at hand-held computers. Many platforms have been based on the core Windows CE operating system, including Microsoft's AutoPC, Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003, Windows Mobile 2003 SE, Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6, Smartphone 2002, Smartphone 2003, Portable Media Center, Zune, Windows Phone 7 and many industrial devices and embedded systems. Windows CE even powered select games for the Sega Dreamcast and was the operating system of the Gizmondo handheld.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: A distinctive feature of Windows CE compared to other Microsoft operating systems is that large parts of it are offered in source code form. First, source code was offered to several vendors, so they could adjust it to their hardware. Then products like Platform Builder (an integrated environment for Windows CE OS image creation and integration, or customized operating system designs based on CE) offered several components in source code form to the general public. However, a number of core components that do not need adaptation to specific hardware environments (other than the CPU family) are still distributed in binary only form.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Windows CE 2.11 was the first embedded Windows release to support a console and a Windows CE version of .


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Windows Embedded Compact was formerly known as Windows CE. According to Microsoft, "CE" is not an explicit acronym for anything, although it implies a number of notions that Windows developers had in mind, such as "compact", "connectable", "compatible", "companion" and "efficient". The name changed once in 2006, with the release of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, and again in 2011, with the release of Windows Embedded Compact 7.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Windows CE was originally announced by Microsoft at the COMDEX expo in 1996 and was demonstrated on stage by Bill Gates and John McGill. Microsoft had been testing Pegasus in early 1995 and released a strict reference platform to several hardware partners. The devices had to have the following minimum hardware specifications:


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Devices of the time mainly had 480×240 pixel displays with the exception of the Hewlett-Packard 'Palmtop PC' which had a 640×240 display. Each window took over the full display. Navigation was done by tapping or double tapping on an item. A contextual menu was also available by the user pressing the ALT key and tapping on the screen. Windows CE 1.0 did not include a cascading Start menu, although Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 did. Microsoft released the Windows CE 1.0 Power Toys that included a cascading menu icon that appeared in the system tray. Also bundled were several other utilities, most notable were a sound applet for the system tray, enabling the user to quickly mute or unmute their device or adjust the volume and a 'pocket' version of Paint.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: The release of Windows CE 2.0 was well received. Microsoft learned its lessons from consumer feedback of Windows CE 1.0 and made many improvements to the operating system. The Start menu was a cascading menu, identical to those found on Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. Color screens were also supported and manufacturers raced to release the first color H/PC. The first to market however, was Hewlett Packard with the HP 620LX. Windows CE 2.0 also supported a broader range of CPU architectures. Programs could be also installed directly in the OS by double clicking on CAB files. Due to the nature of the ROMs that contained the operating system, users were not able to flash their devices with the newer operating system. Instead manufacturers released upgrade ROMs that users had to physically install in their devices, after removing the previous version. This would usually wipe the data on the device and present the user with the setup wizard upon first boot.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: In November 1999, it was reported that Microsoft was planning to rename Windows CE to Windows Powered. The name only appeared in brand in Handheld PC 2000 and a build of Windows 2000 Advanced Server for network-attached storage devices (which bears no relation to Windows CE). Various Windows CE 3.0 products announced at CES 2001 were marketed under a "Windows Powered" umbrella name.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Microsoft Visual Studio 2012, 2013, and 2015 support apps and Platform Builder development for Windows Embedded Compact 2013.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and earlier support projects for older releases of Windows CE/Windows Mobile, producing executable programs and platform images either as an emulator or attached by cable to an actual mobile device. A mobile device is not necessary to develop a CE program. The .NET Compact Framework supports a subset of the .NET Framework with projects in C#, and Visual Basic .NET, but not Managed C++. "Managed" apps employing the .NET Compact Framework also require devices with significantly larger memories (8 MB or more) while unmanaged apps can still run successfully on smaller devices. In Visual Studio 2010, the Windows Phone Developer Tools are used as an extension, allowing Windows Phone 7 apps to be designed and tested within Visual Studio.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Free Pascal introduced the Windows CE port in Version 2.2.0, targeting ARM and x86 architectures. Later, the Windows CE header files were translated for use with Lazarus, a rapid application development (RAD) software package based on Free Pascal. Windows CE apps are designed and coded in the Lazarus integrated development environment (IDE) and compiled with an appropriate cross compiler.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: This programming tool is used for building the platform (BSP + Kernel), device drivers (shared source or custom made) and also the apps. This is a one stop environment to get the system up and running. One can also use Platform Builder to export an SDK (software development kit) for the target microprocessor (SuperH, x86, MIPS, ARM etc.) to be used with another associated tool set named below.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: The Embedded Visual C++ (eVC) a tool for development of embedded apps for Windows CE. It can be used standalone using the SDK exported from Platform Builder or using the Platform Builder's Platform Manager connectivity setup.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: CeGcc project provides GNU development tools, such as GNU C, GNU C++ and binutils that targeting Windows CE; 2 SDKs are available to choose from a standard Windows CE platform SDK based on MinGW, and a newlib-based SDK which may be easier for porting programs from POSIX systems.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: CodeGear Delphi Prism runs in Visual Studio, also supports the .NET Compact Framework and thus can be used to develop mobile apps. It employs the Oxygene compiler created by RemObjects Software, which targets .NET, the .NET Compact Framework, and Mono. Its command-line compiler is available free of charge.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Basic4ppc a programming language similar to Visual Basic, targets the .NET Compact Framework and supports Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: GLBasic a very easy to learn and use BASIC dialect that compiles for many platforms, including Windows CE and Windows Mobile. It can be extended by writing inline C/C++ code.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: MortScript is the semi-standard, extremely lightweight, automation SDK popular with the GPS enthusiasts. Uses the scripts written in its own language, with the syntax being aside to VBScript or JScript.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: AutoHotkey a port of the open source macro-creation and automation software utility available for Windows CE. It allows the construction of macros and simple GUI apps developed by systems analyst Jonathan Maxian Timkang.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Often Windows CE, Windows Mobile, and Pocket PC are used interchangeably, in part due to their common origin. This practice is not entirely accurate. Windows CE is a modular/componentized operating system that serves as the foundation of several classes of devices. Some of these modules provide subsets of other components' features (e.g. varying levels of windowing support; DCOM vs COM), others which are separate (bitmap or TrueType font support), and others which add additional features to another component. One can buy a kit (the Platform Builder) which contains all these components and the tools with which to develop a custom platform. Apps such as Excel Mobile (formerly Pocket Excel) are not part of this kit. The older Handheld PC version of Pocket Word and several other older apps are included as samples, however.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Windows Mobile is best described as a subset of platforms based on a Windows CE underpinning. Currently, Pocket PC (now called Windows Mobile Classic), SmartPhone (Windows Mobile Standard), and Pocket PC Phone Edition (Windows Mobile Professional) are the three main platforms under the Windows Mobile umbrella. Each platform uses different components of Windows CE, plus supplemental features and apps suited for their respective devices.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: Pocket PC and Windows Mobile are Microsoft-defined custom platforms for general PDA use, consisting of a Microsoft-defined set of minimum profiles (Professional Edition, Premium Edition) of software and hardware that is supported. The rules for manufacturing a Pocket PC device are stricter than those for producing a custom Windows CE-based platform. The defining characteristics of the Pocket PC are the touchscreen as the primary human interface device and its extremely portable size.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: CE 3.0 is the basis for Pocket PC 2000 and Pocket PC 2002. A successor to CE 3.0 is CE.net. "PocketPC [is] a separate layer of code on top of the core Windows CE OS... Pocket PC is based on Windows CE, but it's a different offering." And licensees of Pocket PC are forbidden to modify the WinCE part.


title: Windows Embedded Compact

text: The SmartPhone platform is a feature-rich OS and interface for cellular phone handsets. SmartPhone offers productivity features to business users, such as email, and multimedia abilities for consumers. The SmartPhone interface relies heavily on joystick navigation and PhonePad input. Devices running SmartPhone do not include a touchscreen interface. SmartPhone devices generally resemble other cellular handset form factors, whereas most Phone Edition devices use a PDA form factor with a larger display.


title: History of Algeria

text: Much of the history of Algeria has taken place on the fertile coastal plain of North Africa, which is often called the Maghreb (or Maghreb). North Africa served as a transit region for people moving towards Europe or the Middle East, thus, the region's inhabitants have been influenced by populations from other areas, including the Carthaginians, Romans, and Vandals. The region was conquered by the Muslims in the early 8th century AD, but broke off from the Umayyad Caliphate after the Berber Revolt of 740. During the Ottoman period, Algeria became an important state in the Mediterranean sea which led to many naval conflicts. The last significant events in the country's recent history have been the Algerian War and Algerian Civil War.


title: History of Algeria

text: Evidence of the early human occupation of Algeria is demonstrated by the discovery of 1.8 million year old Oldowan stone tools found at Ain Hanech in 1992. In 1954 fossilised "Homo erectus" bones were discovered by C. Arambourg at Ternefine that are 700,000 years old. Neolithic civilization (marked by animal domestication and subsistence agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghrib between 6000 and 2000 BC. This type of economy, richly depicted in the Tassili n'Ajjer cave paintings in southeastern Algeria, predominated in the Maghrib until the classical period.


title: History of Algeria

text: Phoenician traders arrived on the North African coast around 900 BC and established Carthage (in present-day Tunisia) around 800 BC. During the classical period, Berber civilization was already at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing, trade, and political organization supported several states. Trade links between Carthage and the Berbers in the interior grew, but territorial expansion also resulted in the enslavement or military recruitment of some Berbers and in the extraction of tribute from others.


title: History of Algeria

text: The Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars, and in 146 BC, the city of Carthage was destroyed. As Carthaginian power waned, the influence of Berber leaders in the hinterland grew.


title: History of Algeria

text: By the 2nd century BC, several large but loosely administered Berber kingdoms had emerged. After that, king Masinissa managed to unify Numidia under his rule.


title: History of Algeria

text: Christianity arrived in the 2nd century. By the end of the 4th century, the settled areas had become Christianized, and some Berber tribes had converted en masse.


title: History of Algeria

text: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Algeria came under the control of the Vandal Kingdom. Later, the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire) conquered Algeria from the Vandals, incorporating it into the Praetorian prefecture of Africa and later the Exarchate of Africa.


title: History of Algeria

text: From the 8th century Umayyad conquest of North Africa led by Musa bin Nusayr, Arab colonization started. The 11th century invasion of migrants from the Arabian peninsula brought oriental tribal customs. The introduction of Islam and Arabic had a profound impact on North Africa. The new religion and language introduced changes in social and economic relations, and established links with the Arab world through acculturation and assimilation.


title: History of Algeria

text: According to historians of the Middle Ages, the Berbers were divided into two branches, both going back to their ancestors Mazigh. The two branches, called Botr and Barnès were divided into tribes, and each Maghreb region is made up of several tribes. The large Berber tribes or peoples are Sanhaja, Houara, Zenata, Masmuda, Kutama, Awarba, Barghawata ... etc. Each tribe is divided into sub tribes. All these tribes had independent and territorial decisions.


title: History of Algeria

text: Several Berber dynasties emerged during the Middle Ages: - In North and West Africa, in Spain (al-Andalus), Sicily, Egypt, as well as in the southern part of the Sahara, in modern-day Mali, Niger, and Senegal. The medieval historian Ibn Khaldun described the follying Berber dynasties: Zirid, Banu Ifran, Maghrawa, Almoravid, Hammadid, Almohad Caliphate, Marinid, Zayyanid, Wattasid, Meknes, Hafsid dynasty, Fatimids.


title: History of Algeria

text: The invasion of the Banu Hilal Arab tribes in the 11th century sacked Kairouan, and the area under Zirid control was reduced to the coastal region, and the Arab conquests fragmented into petty Bedouin emirates.


title: History of Algeria

text: The second Arab military expeditions into the Maghreb, between 642 and 669, resulted in the spread of Islam. The Umayyads (a Muslim dynasty based in Damascus from 661 to 750) recognised that the strategic necessity of dominating the Mediterranean dictated a concerted military effort on the North African front. By 711 Umayyad forces helped by Berber converts to Islam had conquered all of North Africa. In 750 the Abbasids succeeded the Umayyads as Muslim rulers and moved the caliphate to Baghdad. Under the Abbasids, Berber Kharijites Sufri Banu Ifran were opposed to Umayyad and Abbasids. After, the Rustumids (761–909) actually ruled most of the central Maghrib from Tahirt, southwest of Algiers. The imams gained a reputation for honesty, piety, and justice, and the court of Tahirt was noted for its support of scholarship. The Rustumid imams failed, however, to organise a reliable standing army, which opened the way for Tahirt's demise under the assault of the Fatimid dynasty.


title: History of Algeria

text: The Fatimids left the rule of most of Algeria to the Zirids and Hammadid (972–1148), a Berber dynasty that centered significant local power in Algeria for the first time, but who were still at war with Banu Ifran (kingdom of Tlemcen) and Maghraoua (942-1068). This period was marked by constant conflict, political instability, and economic decline. Following a large incursion of Arab Bedouin from Egypt beginning in the first half of the 11th century, the use of Arabic spread to the countryside, and sedentary Berbers were gradually Arabised.


title: History of Algeria

text: The Almoravid ("those who have made a religious retreat") movement developed early in the 11th century among the Sanhaja Berbers of southern Morocco. The movement's initial impetus was religious, an attempt by a tribal leader to impose moral discipline and strict adherence to Islamic principles on followers. But the Almoravid movement shifted to engaging in military conquest after 1054. By 1106, the Almoravids had conquered the Maghreb as far east as Algiers and Morocco, and Spain up to the Ebro River.


title: History of Algeria

text: Like the Almoravids, the Almohads ("unitarians") found their inspiration in Islamic reform. The Almohads took control of Morocco by 1146, captured Algiers around 1151, and by 1160 had completed the conquest of the central Maghrib. The zenith of Almohad power occurred between 1163 and 1199. For the first time, the Maghrib was united under a local regime, but the continuing wars in Spain overtaxed the resources of the Almohads, and in the Maghrib their position was compromised by factional strife and a renewal of tribal warfare.


title: History of Algeria

text: In the central Maghrib, the Abdalwadid founded a dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of Tlemcen in Algeria. For more than 300 years, until the region came under Ottoman suzerainty in the 16th century, the Zayanids kept a tenuous hold in the central Maghrib. Many coastal cities asserted their autonomy as municipal republics governed by merchant oligarchies, tribal chieftains from the surrounding countryside, or the privateers who operated out of their ports. Nonetheless, Tlemcen, the "pearl of the Maghrib," prospered as a commercial center.


title: History of Algeria

text: The final triumph of the 700-year Christian conquest of Spain was marked by the fall of Granada in 1492. Christian Spain imposed its influence on the Maghrib coast by constructing fortified outposts and collecting tribute. But Spain never sought to extend its North African conquests much beyond a few modest enclaves. Privateering was an age-old practice in the Mediterranean, and North African rulers engaged in it increasingly in the late 16th and early 17th centuries because it was so lucrative. Until the 17th century the Barbary pirates used galleys, but a Dutch renegade of the name of Zymen Danseker taught them the advantage of using sailing ships.


title: History of Algeria

text: Algeria became the privateering city-state par excellence, and two privateer brothers were instrumental in extending Ottoman influence in Algeria. At about the time Spain was establishing its presidios in the Maghrib, the Muslim privateer brothers Aruj and Khair ad Din—the latter known to Europeans as Barbarossa, or Red Beard—were operating successfully off Tunisia. In 1516 Aruj moved his base of operations to Algiers but was killed in 1518. Khair ad Din succeeded him as military commander of Algiers, and the Ottoman sultan gave him the title of beglerbey (provincial governor).


title: History of Algeria

text: The Spanish expansionist policy in North Africa began with the Catholic Monarchs and the regent Cisneros, once the "Reconquista" in the Iberian Peninsula was finished. That way, several towns and outposts in the Algerian coast were conquered and occupied: Mers El Kébir (1505), Oran (1509), Algiers (1510) and Bugia (1510). The Spanish conquest of Oran was won with much bloodshed: 4,000 Algerians were massacred, and up to 8,000 were taken prisoner. For about 200 years, Oran's inhabitants were virtually held captive in their fortress walls, ravaged by famine and plague; Spanish soldiers, too, were irregularly fed and paid.


title: History of Algeria

text: The Spaniards left Algiers in 1529, Bujia in 1554, Mers El Kébir and Oran in 1708. The Spanish returned in 1732 when the armada of the Duke of Montemar was victorious in the Battle of Aïn-el-Turk and retook Oran and Mers El Kébir; the Spanish massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1751, a Spanish adventurer, named John Gascon, obtained permission, and vessels and fireworks, to go against Algiers, and set fire, at night, to the Algerian fleet. The plan, however, miscarried. In 1775, Charles III of Spain sent a large force to attack Algiers, under the command of Alejandro O'Reilly (who had led Spanish forces in crushing French rebellion in Louisiana), resulting in a disastrous defeat. The Algerians suffered 5,000 casualties. The Spanish navy bombarded Algiers in 1784; over 20,000 cannonballs were fired, much of the city and its fortifications were destroyed and most of the Algerian fleet was sunk.


title: History of Algeria

text: Oran and Mers El Kébir were held until 1792, when they were sold by the king Charles IV to the Bey of Algiers.


title: History of Algeria

text: Under Khair ad Din's regency, Algiers became the center of Ottoman authority in the Maghrib. For 300 years, Algeria was a Vassal state of the Ottoman Empire under a regency that had Algiers as its capital (see Dey). Subsequently, with the institution of a regular Ottoman administration, governors with the title of pasha ruled. Turkish was the official language. In 1671 a new leader took power, adopting the title of dey. In 1710 the dey persuaded the sultan to recognize him and his successors as regent, replacing the pasha in that role.


title: History of Algeria

text: Although Algiers remained a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman government ceased to have effective influence there. European maritime powers paid the tribute demanded by the rulers of the privateering states of North Africa (Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco) to prevent attacks on their shipping. The Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century diverted the attention of the maritime powers from suppressing piracy. But when peace was restored to Europe in 1815, Algiers found itself at war with Spain, the Netherlands, Prussia, Denmark, Russia, and Naples. Algeria and surrounding areas, collectively known as the Barbary States, were responsible for piracy in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the enslaving of Christians, actions which brought them into the First and Second Barbary War with the United States of America.


title: History of Algeria

text: North African boundaries have shifted during various stages of the conquests. The borders of modern Algeria were expanded by the French, whose colonization began in 1830 (French invasion began on July 5). To benefit French colonists (many of whom were not in fact of French origin but Italian, Maltese, and Spanish) and nearly the entirety of whom lived in urban areas, northern Algeria was eventually organized into overseas departments of France, with representatives in the French National Assembly. France controlled the entire country, but the traditional Muslim population in the rural areas remained separated from the modern economic infrastructure of the European community.


title: History of Algeria

text: As a result of what the French considered an insult to the French consul in Algiers by the Day in 1827, France blockaded Algiers for three years. In 1830, France invaded and occupied the coastal areas of Algeria, citing a diplomatic incident as casus belli. Hussein Dey went into exile. French colonization then gradually penetrated southwards, and came to have a profound impact on the area and its populations. The European conquest, initially accepted in the Algiers region, was soon met by a rebellion, led by Abdel Kadir, which took roughly a decade for the French troops to put down. By 1848 nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control, and the new government of the French Second Republic declared the occupied lands an integral part of France. Three "civil territories"—Algiers, Oran, and Constantine—were organized as French départements (local administrative units) under a civilian government. During the "Pacification of Algeria", which lasted until 1903, the French perpetrated atrocities which included mass executions of civilians and prisoners and the use of concentration camps; many estimates indicates that the native Algerian population fell by one-third in the years between the French invasion and the end of fighting in the mid-1870s due to warfare, disease and starvation.


title: History of Algeria

text: In addition to enduring the affront of being ruled by a foreign, non-Muslim power, many Algerians lost their lands to the new government or to colonists. Traditional leaders were eliminated, coopted, or made irrelevant, and the traditional educational system was largely dismantled; social structures were stressed to the breaking point. From 1856, native Muslims and Jews were viewed as French subjects not citizens.


title: History of Algeria

text: However, in 1865, Napoleon III allowed them to apply for full French citizenship, a measure that few took, since it involved renouncing the right to be governed by "sharia" law in personal matters, and was considered a kind of apostasy; in 1870, the Crémieux Decree made French citizenship automatic for Jewish natives, a move which largely angered many Muslims, which resulted in the Jews being seen as the accomplices of the colonial power by anti-colonial Algerians. Nonetheless, this period saw progress in health, some infrastructures, and the overall expansion of the economy of Algeria, as well as the formation of new social classes, which, after exposure to ideas of equality and political liberty, would help propel the country to independence.


title: History of Algeria

text: During the colonization France focused on eradicating the local culture by destroying hundreds years old palaces and important buildings. It is estimated that around half of Algiers, a city founded in the 10th century, was destroyed. Many segregatory laws were levied against the Algerians and their culture.


title: History of Algeria

text: A new generation of Islamic leadership emerged in Algeria at the time of World War I and grew to maturity during the 1920s and 1930s. Various groups were formed in opposition to French rule, most notable the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the National Algerian Movement.


title: History of Algeria

text: "Colons" (colonists), or, more popularly, "pieds noirs" (literally, black feet) dominated the government and controlled the bulk of Algeria's wealth. Throughout the colonial era, they continued to block or delay all attempts to implement even the most modest reforms. But from 1933 to 1936, mounting social, political, and economic crises in Algeria induced the indigenous population to engage in numerous acts of political protest. The government responded with more restrictive laws governing public order and security. Algerian Muslims rallied to the French side at the start of World War II as they had done in World War I. But the colons were generally sympathetic to the collaborationist Vichy regime established following France's defeat by Nazi Germany. After the fall of the Vichy regime in Algeria (November 11, 1942) as a result of Operation Torch, the Free French commander in chief in North Africa slowly rescinded repressive Vichy laws, despite opposition by colon extremists.


title: History of Algeria

text: In March 1943, Muslim leader Ferhat Abbas presented the French administration with the Manifesto of the Algerian People, signed by 56 Algerian nationalist and international leaders. The manifesto demanded an Algerian constitution that would guarantee immediate and effective political participation and legal equality for Muslims. Instead, the French administration in 1944 instituted a reform package, based on the 1936 Viollette Plan, that granted full French citizenship only to certain categories of "meritorious" Algerian Muslims, who numbered about 60,000. In April 1945 the French had arrested the Algerian nationalist leader Messali Hadj. On May 1 the followers of his Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA) participated in demonstrations which were violently put down by the police. Several Algerians were killed. The tensions between the Muslim and colon communities exploded on May 8, 1945, V-E Day, causing the Sétif and Guelma massacre. When a Muslim march was met with violence, marchers rampaged. The army and police responded by conducting a prolonged and systematic ratissage (literally, raking over) of suspected centers of dissidence. According to official French figures, 1,500 Muslims died as a result of these countermeasures. Other estimates vary from 6,000 to as high as 45,000 killed. Many nationalists drew the conclusion that independence could not be won by peaceful means, and so started organizing for violent rebellion.


title: History of Algeria

text: In August 1947, the French National Assembly approved the government-proposed Organic Statute of Algeria. This law called for the creation of an Algerian Assembly with one house representing Europeans and "meritorious" Muslims and the other representing the remaining 8 million or more Muslims. Muslim and colon deputies alike abstained or voted against the statute but for diametrically opposed reasons: the Muslims because it fell short of their expectations and the colons because it went too far.


title: History of Algeria

text: The Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), brutal and long, was the most recent major turning point in the country's history. Although often fratricidal, it ultimately united Algerians and seared the value of independence and the philosophy of anticolonialism into the national consciousness.


title: History of Algeria

text: In the early morning hours of November 1, 1954, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale—FLN) launched attacks throughout Algeria in the opening salvo of a war of independence. An important watershed in this war was the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians by the FLN near the town of Philippeville in August 1955. Which prompted Jacques Soustelle into calling for more repressive measures against the rebels. The French authorities claimed that 1,273 "guerrillas" died in what Soustelle admitted were "severe" reprisals. The FLN subsequently, giving names and addresses, claimed that 12,000 Muslims were killed. After Philippeville, all-out war began in Algeria. The FLN fought largely using guerrilla tactics whilst the French counter-insurgency tactics often included severe reprisals and repression.


title: History of Algeria

text: Eventually, protracted negotiations led to a cease-fire signed by France and the FLN on March 18, 1962, at Evian, France. The Evian accords also provided for continuing economic, financial, technical, and cultural relations, along with interim administrative arrangements until a referendum on self-determination could be held. The Evian accords guaranteed the religious and property rights of French settlers, but the perception that they would not be respected led to the exodus of one million "pieds-noirs" and "harkis".


title: History of Algeria

text: Abusive tactics of the French Army remains a controversial subject in France to this day. Deliberate illegal methods were used, such as beatings, mutilations, hanging by the feet or hands, torture by electroshock, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual assaults, among others. French war crimes against Algerian civilians were also committed, including indiscriminate shootings of civilians, bombings of villages suspected of helping the ALN, rape, disembowelment of pregnant women, imprisonment without food in small cells (some of which were small enough to impede lying down), throwing prisoners out of helicopters to their death or into the sea with concrete on their feet, and burying people alive.


title: History of Algeria

text: The FLN also committed many atrocities, both against French pieds-noirs and against fellow Algerians whom they deemed as supporting the French. These crimes included killing unarmed men, women and children, rape and disembowelment or decapitation of women and murdering children by slitting their throats or banging their heads against walls.


title: History of Algeria

text: Between 350,000 and 1 million Algerians are estimated to have died during the war, and more than 2 million, out of a total Muslim population of 9 or 10 million, were made into refugees or forcibly relocated into government-controlled camps. Much of the countryside and agriculture was devastated, along with the modern economy, which had been dominated by urban European settlers (the "pied-noirs"). French sources estimated that at least 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the Algerian War. Nearly one million people of mostly French, Spanish and Italian descent left the country at independence due to the privileges that they lost as settlers and their unwillingness to be on equal footing with indigenous Algerians along with them left most Algerians of Jewish descent and those Muslim Algerians who had supported a French Algeria ("harkis"). 30–150,000 pro-French Muslims were also killed in Algeria by FLN in post-war reprisals.


title: History of Algeria

text: The Algerian independence referendum was held in French Algeria on 1 July 1962, passing with 99.72% of the vote. As a result, France declared Algeria independent on 3 July. On 8 September 1963, the first Algerian constitution was adopted by nationwide referendum under close supervision by the National Liberation Front (FLN). Later that month, Ahmed Ben Bella was formally elected the first president of Algeria for a five-year term after receiving support from the FLN and the military, led by Colonel Houari Boumédiène.


title: History of Algeria

text: However, the war for independence and its aftermath had severely disrupted Algeria's society and economy. In addition to the destruction of much of Algeria's infrastructure, an exodus of the upper-class French and European "colons" from Algeria deprived the country of most of its managers, civil servants, engineers, teachers, physicians, and skilled workers. The homeless and displaced numbered in the hundreds of thousands, many suffering from illness, and some 70 percent of the workforce was unemployed. The months immediately following independence witnessed the pell-mell rush of Algerians and government officials to claim the property and jobs left behind by the European "colons". For example in the 1963 March Decrees, President Ben Bella declared all agricultural, industrial, and commercial properties previously owned and operated by Europeans vacant, thereby legalizing confiscation by the state.


title: History of Algeria

text: The military played an important role in Ben Bella's administration. Since the president recognized the role that the military played in bringing him to power, he appointed senior military officers as ministers and other important positions within the new state, including naming Colonel Boumédiène as defence minister. These military officials played a core role into implementing the country's security and foreign policy.


title: History of Algeria

text: Under the new constitution, Ben Bella's presidency combined the functions of chief of state and head of government with those of supreme commander of the armed forces. He formed his government without needing legislative approval and was responsible for the definition and direction of its policies. There was no effective institutional check on the president's powers. As a result, opposition leader Hocine Aït-Ahmed quit the National Assembly in 1963 to protest the increasingly dictatorial tendencies of the regime and formed a clandestine resistance movement, the Socialist Forces Front ("Front des Forces Socialistes"—FFS), dedicated to overthrowing the Ben Bella regime by force.


title: History of Algeria

text: Late summer 1963 saw sporadic incidents attributed to the FFS, but more serious fighting broke out a year later, and the army moved quickly and in force to crush a rebellion. Minister of Defense Boumédiène had no qualms about sending the army to put down regional uprisings because he felt they posed a threat to the state. However, President Ben Bella attempted to co-opt allies from among these regional leaders in order to undermine the ability of military commanders to influence foreign and security policy. Tensions consequently built between Boumédiène and Ben Bella, and in 1965 the military removed Ben Bella in a coup d'état, replacing him with Boumédiène as head of state.


title: History of Algeria

text: On 19 June 1965, Houari Boumédiène deposed Ahmed Ben Bella in a military coup d'état that was both swift and bloodless. Ben Bella "disappeared", and would not be seen again until he was released from house arrest in 1980 by Boumédiène's successor, Colonel Chadli Bendjedid. Boumédiène immediately dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the 1963 constitution. Political power resided in the Nation Council of the Algerian Revolution ("Conseil National de la Révolution Algérienne"—CNRA), a predominantly military body intended to foster cooperation among various factions in the army and the party.


title: History of Algeria

text: Houari Boumédiène's position as head of government and of state was initially insecure, partly because of his lack of a significant power base outside of the armed forces. He relied strongly on a network of former associates known as the Oujda group, named after Boumédiène's posting as National Liberation Army ("Armée de Libération Nationale"—ALN) leader in the Moroccan border town of Oujda during the war years, but he could not fully dominate his fractious regime. This situation may have accounted for his deference to collegial rule.


title: History of Algeria

text: Over Boumédiène's 11-year reign as Chairman of the CNRA, the council introduced two formal mechanisms: the People's Municipal Assembly ("Assemblée Populaires Communales") and the People's Provincial Assembly ("Assemblée Populaires de Wilaya") for popular participation in politics. Under Boumédiène's rule, leftist and socialist concepts were merged with Islam.


title: History of Algeria

text: Boumédiène also used Islam to opportunistically consolidate his power. On one hand, he made token concessions and cosmetic changes to the government to appear more Islamic, such as putting Islamist Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi in charge of national education in 1965 and adopting policies criminalizing gambling, establishing Friday as the national holiday, and dropping plans to introduce birth control to paint an Islamic image of the new government. But on the other hand, Boumédiène's government also progressively repressed Islamic groups, such as by ordering the dissolution of Al Qiyam.


title: History of Algeria

text: Following attempted coups—most notably that of chief-of-staff Col. in December 1967—and a failed assassination attempt on 25 April, 1968, Boumédiène consolidated power and forced military and political factions to submit. He took a systematic, authoritarian approach to state building, arguing that Algeria needed stability and an economic base before building any political institutions.


title: History of Algeria

text: Eleven years after Boumédiène took power, after much public debate, a long-promised new constitution was promulgated in November 1976. The constitution restored the National Assembly and gave it legislative, consent, and oversight functions. Boumédiène was later elected president with 95 percent of the cast votes.


title: History of Algeria

text: Boumédiène's death on 27 December, 1978 set off a struggle within the FLN to choose a successor. A deadlock occurred between two candidates was broken when Colonel Chadli Bendjedid, a moderate who had collaborated with Boumédiène in deposing Ahmed Ben Bella, was sworn in on February 9, 1979. He was re-elected in 1984 and 1988. After the violent 1988 October Riots, a new constitution was adopted in 1989 that eradicated the Algerian one-party state by allowing the formation of political associations in addition to the FLN. It also removed the armed forces, which had run the government since the days of Boumédiène, from a role in the operation of the government.


title: History of Algeria

text: Among the scores of parties that sprang up under the new constitution, the militant Islamic Salvation Front ("Front Islamique du Salut"—FIS) was the most successful, winning a majority of votes in the June 1990 municipal elections, as well as the first stage of the December national legislative elections.


title: History of Algeria

text: The surprising first round of success for the fundamentalist FIS party in the December 1991 balloting caused the army to discuss options to intervene in the election. Officers feared that an Islamist government would interfere with their positions and core interests in economic, national security, and foreign policy, since the FIS has promised to make a fundamental re-haul of the social, political, and economic structure to achieve a radical Islamist agenda. Senior military figures, such as Defence Minister Khaled Nezzar, Chief of the General Staff , and other leaders of the navy, Gendarmerie, and security services, all agreed that the FIS should be stopped from gaining power at the polling box. They also agreed that Bendjedid would need to be removed from office due to his determination to uphold the country's new constitution by continuing with the second round of ballots.


title: History of Algeria

text: On 11 January 1992, Bendjedid announced his resignation on national television, saying it was necessary to "protect the unity of the people and the security of the country". Later that same day, the High Council of State ("Haut Comité d'Etat"—HCE), which was composed of five people (including Khaled Nezzar, , Ali Kafi, Mohamed Boudiaf and Ali Haroun), was appointed to carry out the duties of the president.


title: History of Algeria

text: The new government, led by Sid Ahmed Ghozali, banned all political activity at mosques and began stopping people from attending prayers at popular mosques. The FIS was legally dissolved by Interior Minister Larbi Belkheir on 9 February for attempting "insurrections against the state". A state of emergency was also declared and extraordinary powers, such as curtailing the right to associate, were granted to the regime.


title: History of Algeria

text: Between January and March, a growing number of FIS militants were arrested by the military, including Abdelkader Hachani and his successors, Othman Aissani and Rabah Kebir. Following the announcement to dissolve the FIS and implement a state of emergency on 9 February, the Algerian security forces used their new emergency powers to conduct large scale arrests of FIS members and housed them in 5 "detention centers" in the Sahara. Between 5,000 (official number) and 30,000 (FIS number) people were detained.


title: History of Algeria

text: This crackdown led to a fundamental Islamic insurgency, resulting in the continuous and brutal 10 year-long Algerian Civil War. During the civil war, the secular state apparatus nonetheless allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties. The civil war lasted from 1991 to 2002.


title: History of Algeria

text: After Chadli Bendjedid resigned from the presidency in the military coup of 1992, a series of figureheads were selected by the military to assume the presidency, as officers were reluctant to assume public political power even though they had manifested control over the government. Additionally, the military's senior leaders felt a need to give a civilian face to the new political regime they had hastily constructed in the aftermath of Benjedid's ousting and the termination of elections, preferring a friendlier non-military face to front the regime.


title: History of Algeria

text: The first such head of state was Mohamed Boudiaf, who was appointed president of the High Council of State (HCE) in February 1992 after a 27-year exile in Morocco. However, Boudiaf quickly came to odds with the military when attempts by Boudiaf to appoint his own staff or form a political party were viewed with suspicion by officers. Boudiaf also launched political initiatives, such as a rigorous anti-corruption campaign in April 1992 and the sacking of Khaled Nezzar from his post as Defence Minister, which were seen by the military as an attempt to remove their influence in the government. The former of these initiatives was especially hazardous to the many senior military officials who had benefited massively and illegally from the political system for years. In the end, Boudiaf was assassinated in June 1992 by one of his bodyguards with Islamist sympathies.


title: History of Algeria

text: Ali Kafi briefly assumed the HCE presidency after Boudiaf's death, before Liamine Zéroual was appointed as a long-term replacement in 1994. However, Zéroual only remained in office for four years before he announced his retirement, as he quickly became embroiled in a clan warfare within the upper classes of the military and fell out with groups of the more senior generals. After this Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Boumédiène's foreign minister, succeeded as the president.


title: History of Algeria

text: As the Algerian civil war wound to a close, presidential elections were held again in April 1999. Although seven candidates qualified for election, all but Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had the support of the military as well as the National Liberation Front (FLN), withdrew on the eve of the election amid charges of electoral fraud and interference from the military. Bouteflika went on to win with 70 percent of the cast votes.


title: History of Algeria

text: Despite the purportedly democratic elections, the civilian government immediately after the 1999 elections only acted as a sort of 'hijab' over the true government, mostly running day-to-day businesses, while the military still largely ran the country behind the scenes. For example, ministerial mandates to individuals were only granted with the military's approval, and different factions of the military invested in various political parties and the press, using them as pawns to gain influence.


title: History of Algeria

text: However, the military's influence over politics decreased gradually, leaving Bouteflika with more authority on deciding policy. One reason for this was that the senior commanders who had dominated the political scene during the 1960s and 1970s started to retire. Bouteflika's former experience as Boumédiène's foreign minister earned him connections that rejuvenated Algeria's international reputation, which had been tarnished in the early 1990s due to the civil war. On the domestic front, Bouteflika's policy of "national reconciliation" to bring a close to civilian violence earned him a popular mandate that helped him to win further presidential terms in 2004, 2009 and 2014.


title: History of Algeria

text: In 2010, journalists gathered to demonstrate for press freedom and against Bouteflika's self-appointed role as editor-in-chief of Algeria's state television station. In February 2011, the government rescinded the state of emergency that had been in place since 1992 but still banned all protest gatherings and demonstrations. However, in April 2011, over 2,000 protesters defied the official ban and took to the streets of Algiers, clashing with police forces. These protests can be seen as a part of the Arab Spring, with protesters noting that they were inspired by the recent Egyptian revolution, and that Algeria was a police state that was "corrupt to the bone".


title: History of Algeria

text: In 2019, after 20 years in office, Bouteflika announced in February that he would seek a fifth term of office. This sparked widespread discontent around Algeria and protests in Algiers. Despite later attempts at saying he would resign after his term finished in late April, Bouteflika resigned on 2 April, after the chief of the army, Ahmed Gaid Salah, made a declaration that he was "unfit for office". Despite Gaid Salah being loyal to Bouteflika, many in the military identified with civilians, as nearly 70 percent of the army are civilian conscripts who are required to serve for 18 months. Also, since demonstrators demanded a change to the whole governmental system, many army officers aligned themselves with demonstrators in the hopes of surviving an anticipated revolution and retaining their positions.


title: History of Algeria

text: After the resignation of Abdelaziz Bouteflika on 9 April 2019, the President of the Council of the Nation Abdelkader Bensalah became acting president of Algeria.


title: History of Algeria

text: Following the presidential election on 12 December 2019, Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected president after taking 58% of the votes, beating the candidates from both main parties, the National Liberation Front and the Democratic National Rally.


title: History of Algeria

text: On the eve of the first anniversary of the Hirak Movement, which led to the resignation of former president Bouteflika, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced in a statement to the Algerian national media that 22 February would be declared the Algerian "National Day of Fraternity and Cohesion between the People and Its Army for Democracy." In the same statement, Tebboune spoke in favor of the Hirak Movement, saying that "the blessed Hirak has preserved the country from a total collapse", and that he had "made a personal commitment to carry out all of the [movement's] demands." On 21 and 22 February 2020, masses of demonstrators (with turnout comparable to well-established Algerian holidays like the Algerian Day of Independence) gathered to honor the anniversary of the Hirak Movement and the newly established national day.