The Battle of the Kaftan: Cultural Heritage and Identity Negotiation in Algerian and Moroccan Women’s Online Responses to a BBC Arabic Video

The kaftan, a historical garment within Maghrebi culture, has become a prominent site of symbolic contestation between Morocco and Algeria. This article examines how Algerian and Moroccan women construct, negotiate and defend cultural and national identities through online discourse surrounding this heritage dispute. Drawing on cultural identity theory ( Hall, 1990 , Identity: Community, Culture, Difference , 222–237), social identity theory ( Tajfel & Turner, 1979 , The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations , 33–47), soft power theory ( Nye, 2004 , Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics ) and cultural heritage theory ( Smith, 2006 , Uses of Heritage ), the study adopts a qualitative approach to analyse the 200 highest-rated user comments on a BBC Arabic YouTube video entitled Morocco and Algeria: The Caftan Reignites the Heritage Battle Between the Two Countries , which attracted over 256,000 views and more than 6,100 comments. The findings show that women mobilise historical narratives, emotional rhetoric and experiential knowledge to legitimise claims to cultural ownership and affirm national distinctiveness. Discursive strategies of pride and nostalgia, as well as rivalry and moralised accusations of appropriation, reveal how digital platforms function as arenas for identity negotiation and symbolic boundary-making. The article also demonstrates that online discourse serves both as a mechanism of cultural continuity and as a space of identity-based struggle, positioning the kaftan as a dynamic, gendered signifier of national identity in postcolonial North Africa. By foregrounding women’s everyday media practices, the study contributes to debates in digital nationalism and heritage politics, highlighting how YouTube comment sections reconfigure who can speak for culture beyond state-centred institutions.