Waiting as a Social Experience and Strategies of Resistance in Algerian Public Spaces: A Socio-Anthropological Approach

Abstract

This article uses a socio-anthropological approach to study waiting as a social experience in everyday life, focusing on its relationship with time, power and symbolic resistance in Algerian public spaces. It considers waiting to be a social practice that goes beyond the temporal dimension associated with delays in obtaining services, revealing patterns of power organisation and relations of entitlement and status within institutional contexts. The study adopted an ethnographic approach, drawing on participant observation and interviews with social actors in various public waiting areas. The analysis focuses on the everyday practices of those waiting and their relationships with the institution and other actors. It highlights the forms of adaptation, negotiation and symbolic resistance that emerge within waiting spaces.