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Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER THREE
VILLAGES AND HOUSEHOLDS
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Page 26
A Summary of the Social Structure
One. major problem in giving or following any ethnographic description is the order of presentation, since an adequate understanding of any one institution presumes a knowledge of other institutions in the same society.' I hope I have overcome this difficulty by offering my summary here instead of at the end. The village itself is the most striking social group. No village forms part of any larger indigenous organisation. All the villages in the area, and indeed in most of Turkey, are self-contained clusters of buildings, separated from each other by stretches of unfenced land. To walk from one to the next may take half an hour to two or more hours. There were two villages within half an hour of Sakaltutan, and another nine within one and a half hours.
Each village is. composed of distinct patrilineal, patrilocal households. Although several households often occupy one block of buildings, the physical and social boundaries between them are never vague. Village and household are the main social units. Newly married women apart, everyone must belong at one time to one and only one village, and to one and only one household.
Every village is divided into a number of quarters or wards (mahalle). These have no clear boundaries and are not corporate People acknowledge loyalty to their quarters, and may speak of fights in the village as fights between quarters. Because close neighbours often intermarry, and close agnates and sometimes other close kin live near each other, these quarters often have some kinship unity as well. In Elbashï, several quarters were actually called after lineages. Close neighbours, whether kin or
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