The outstanding feature of Kabyle villages, as all anthropological and historical works on Kabylia seem to agree, is its village assembly, or tajmaɛt (see Chapter 1). According to all authors, and to many Kabyles themselves, in Kabylia, the tajmaɛt is what turns a mere agglomeration of houses and people into a village. It is what truly ‘makes’ a Kabyle village; and from a male point of view at least, ‘village’ and ‘tajmaɛt’ are practically synonymous – or at least they should be. Looking for the tajmaɛt in Ighil Oumsed, however, proved to be as difficult as looking for the village's spatial boundaries and for its history. All that seemed clear is that since the late 1980s, the village tajmaɛt has been ‘replaced’ by the various associations in the village. But by which one? Most villagers would point towards the association sociale. Others, however, flatly denied the latter any right to represent the village, and favoured one or several of the other political institutions in the village, which all claim, in one way or another, to be representative of the village community.