Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER SIX
HOUSEHOLD AND FAMILY STRUCTURE
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Page 107
In Sakaltutan, Hasan (V) the plasterer and his two full brothers had left their father's household, leaving their half-brother behind. In Elbashï, a pair of full brothers had left their father's household and their stepmother and set up a joint household together, while another pair of younger full brothers, half-brothers of the first pair, remained and shared the paternal household after the father's death. In each pair, one brother went away to work as a migrant, while the other worked the land. By I951, both pairs had split, but all seemed on good terms. In both these cases, the father, exceptionally, allowed the separating sons to take a share of the land, which I understood to be a final settlement.
People are equally emphatic about the mutual love and cooperation due between maternal half-brothers. But in fact the circumstances are much more variable (p. 96) . The common interests and intense intimacy which bind paternal brothers are lackng. Maternal half-brothers are often not members of a single household, and even if they are, their interests in inheritance are different. Although they are spoken of as brothers, in fact the relationship is more like that of specially close non-agnatic cousins.
Relations among Women
The men are the owners and the core of the household, yet they work and talk and amuse themselves as far as possible outside it. The grown women of a household are strangers brought in as wives from some other household, except, rarely, for daughters or sisters due to marry out, or to return to their husbands. They are all, in one way or another, appendages of the core of male agnates. Adult women have rights and interests in more than one household, yet they belong unequivocally to none. In spite of this marginal position, they work and talk and amuse themselves largely within the household in which they reside, and their presence is indispensable to its daily routine.
Because it is the women who come to their husbands, the types of relationship between the women which are commonly found within households are more numerous than those among the men. For men we had only to consider father-son, and
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