Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GROUPS, FEUDS AND POWER
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agnatic and affinal kinship, by share-cropping, by loans ad credits, by the generosity of the rich and the deference of the not-so-rich, by sharing shepherds, by common occupations, by employing or working for each other. Offensive conduct in one of these relationships may dislocate others. Any quarrel will not only affect the principals but will pull apart other people in other relationships; pairs of friends are always liable to be divided by new disputes among other friends or kin. Behind good behaviour lies the knowledge that to give offence, at least to those more powerful and intransigent than oneself, is to invite trouble. And no one who is tied for life to a small community by economic and social bonds of land-holding, family and kinship, wants to invite its scorn or ridicule.
Outside and above this local order stands the State, with its overwhelming superiority in force. The State should be able to intervene not only to put down major breaches of the peace but also to right the minor wrongs of the weak; to correct the defects of the village's own rough and ready system. As things stand, it does the first effectively, but it cannot do the second; in spite of a weakening of village coherence and of the strength of internal authority, the village still maintains its own order within itself more or less independently of the State.