Nothing about these villages surprised me more than their apparent amorphousness. People did not seem clearly to belong to distinct groups nor was there any clear hierarchy of power or authority. Village households are largely economically independent of each other, and none is dominant. Most adult men are proud and egalitarian, at least in theory, and unwilling to take orders. Competitive intriguing and manoeuvring in such a situation is complex, and since I did not know the full details of their own intimately shared past, and since the current moves are kept as secret as possible, unravelling is not easy. Because of the complexity, the discussion necessarily embraces a number of topics: formal and informal groups, violence and feuding, and village leaders and their followers.
Only two types of group in rural society are corporate, exhaustive and mutually exclusive, namely the household and the village itself. The tiny percentage of individuals whose membership is temporarily uncertain is insignificant. As I have already shown, the existence of a unilineal kinship ideology gives rise to a third set of groups which theoretically could be of this type, but in practice are neither corporate nor exhaustive.
The remaining types of group are few in number and all vague in their criteria
of membership; none provides an exhaustive or a mutually exclusive set. The two villages
contained only three types of voluntary associations. First, the religious orders,
the dervishes, had some members in the area. They had very little importance in one
village and none in the other. Secondly, in theory, every village had `hearths' (sing.
ocak) of the main political parties, but none of them had a fixed body
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of supporers, and membership had little influence on village organisation. Thirdly,
in the winter of 1951-2, Elbashï, in response to a special situation, produced
a Union of Youth which I will discuss below. More informally, a number of other groups
exist. All of them consist of a fairly distinct core, with a periphery of other people
attached with varying degree of tenuousness.
First, the villages are divided into quarters, and people use the physical layout of the village socially. Secondly, in the intervals between work, most of the time during the winter, the men sit and talk. In the summer they collect in the open air, roughly by neighbourhoods, but in the winter they foregather inside guest rooms where a stove is burning. Thirdly, even more vaguely, the poorer members of the village depend on the richer and more influential, and the village may be divided into one or more factions with a shifting and overlapping membership.
Sakaltutan had only two quarters, upper and lower, though sometimes the centre of the village was spoken of as the Mosque quarter. This vagueness extended to the boundary; it was not clear where one quarter ended and another began. But the two ends of the long thin village were sharply contrasted and expressed their rivalry in ceaseless jokes, in quasi-serious running down of each other to me, in the hiring of separate shepherds; they even spoke of fighting, though fighting between quarters is in fact fighting between lineages under another name.
Even in Sakaltutan, the distance from one end to another was sufficient to discourage casual visiting between people at opposite ends, and in Elbashï, kinship apart, people's close neighbourly relationships did not extend beyond a circle of nearby households.
Every household contains a living room but only the better off can afford a guest room. The full name of such rooms is misafir odasï, guest room, but in practice the villagers simply call them oda, in contrast to ev, the women's part of the house. Traditionally, a guest room was a fairly large room with a built in sedir or divan but nowadays many households are building smaller guest rooms.
To possess a guest room of any kind is a mark of wealth and standing. They are normally built by craftsmen and hired labour, and in Sakaltutan, in 1950, a new oda was said to cost at least T.L. 1,000 (£250, $700). Moreover, the owner must be able to provide fuel, either wood which is scarce and very expensive, or a plentiful supply of cakes of dung and straw, which depends on a fairly large household with surplus materials and female labour. The standard word for putting or keeping a guest room in use is yakmak, to burn or kindle.
A count of guest rooms is a little misleading because some of the better-off households had rooms built on the guest room pattern, that is with sedir and without tandir, but used them as a part of the ordinary household living space, as a room for a young married couple and their children, or for storage. Sakaltutan possessed roughly sixteen guest rooms in 1950, though several people wanted to build them, and by 1955 at least six new ones were in use. In 1949-50 the greatest number of these sixteen in use on one occasion was twelve. One large, old, guest room standing by itself was never used at all, and one or two of the others hardly ever. All were owned individually except the unused one which was owned by two brothers, and one other, an old one which was jointly owned by a lineage.
The guest rooms are used at any time of the year for special occasions such as
weddings, meetings, and for entertaining important guests, and some also serve as
the male part of the households to which they belong. But primarily, they are clubrooms
for the village men. In autumn, as the evenings get chilly, the men retire to the
guest rooms after their evening meal, which they take at sundown in the ev, or in
their own guest room. They normally sit till the time of the last prayers, formally
one and a half hours later. As winter draws in, work both in the
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village and in the towns grows less. More migrant labourers return to the village,
and the guest rooms are used more and more, even in the daytime. In January and February,
when conditions become really severe, men often sit all day, leaving only for meals,
for the essential routine of feeding the animals and for any special business of
their own.
Attendance at a guest room in mid-winter is the only alternative to sitting in one's own household with wife and children. Not only is this uncomfortable and undignified, it automatically cuts a man off from male company since his male kin and neighbours will not visit him at home. Men attend a guest room for warmth, company, and information, and they usually choose one close at hand. Most of them attend one particular guest room regularly. In Sakaltutan, a few used more than one according to daily inclination. Very few used none at all. Regular attendance has social implications, and for some, choosing a guest room may be a difficult matter.
I made no count of guest rooms in Elbashï. The overall situation was similar. The wealthier households possessed guest rooms, the humbler and poorer ones on the whole did not. Few guest rooms seemed to be very old. One household at least possessed a guest room for the women to entertain in as well as for the men, but it was not used much. Hayip (B) whose rapid rise to wealth I have described, built a guest room before he built a new house. The tax collector's guest room, though small, was more elegantly furnished, and contained tables and chairs. But on the whole the provision and use of guest rooms was, in proportion, similar to that in Sakaltutan.
All over the Middle East, the guest room, or guest tent, is an important institution;
attendance implies political submission to and support of its owner (Barth (1959)
pp. 52 ff; Salim (1962) pp. 76 ff; Musil (1928) p. 66,, etc.). To a lesser degree
in these villages too, to accept a man s warmth day after day is to put oneself in
his debt, and to admit his superiority in rank. The less a man is concerned about
his rank and reputation, the more freely he accepts comfort where he can find it,
and the more readily he switches allegiance. No one is ever barred from a guest room,
and scarcely anyone fails to receive a full-scale greeting on arrival. Men of position
or pride are more chary and may even prefer to attend nowhere rather than to accept
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regularly the hospitality, and implied superiority, of men they regard as equals
or inferiors. Certainly, no one would enter the guest room of a man he regarded as
an enemy except for specific and pressing business.
In the winter of 1949-50 in Sakaltutan, I went to the village guest rooms in rotation, and am able to give a fairly accurate analysis of the groups attached to particular guest rooms. Twelve were in use, though not all of them all the time. In all of them males from about nine or ten years of age and upwards came to sit, the young usually in silence; there is no strict lower limit and I have seen baby boys and occasionally small girls of the household left in their father's care in the guest room. Older children usually, but by no means invariably, go to the same guest rooms as their fathers or father's brothers.
One may divide the people to be found in any guest room on any given occasion roughly into four classes: the members of the household, regular attenders from other households, occasional attenders whose presence or absence does not call for remark, and those whose presence is unexpected. These last may be paying a social call or they may have special business with one or more of the regular members.
Of course these four classes grade into one another along a continuous scale. In the following analysis I am concerned with the regular attenders. I begin with guest rooms serving mainly the household to which they belong and work towards the larger groups.
The guest room of Haci Ismet (T), after the first rush of visitors in November on his return from Mecca, was used only by the household. His two sons, and their sons, were often to be seen in the other more sociable guest rooms. Their own guest room was always warm because the old man was sick and could not leave it, yet no neighbours ever came to sit there.
The guest room of Abdullah (M) was used up to a point by members of his lineage
though only occasionally. I have also seen his cross-cousin (mother's brother's son)
in it, who is also his sister's widower, a man I have never seen in any other guest
room except for strictly business reasons. There was no group
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centred on this guest room, and once when I visited it in midwinter I found the whole
household, women and girls as well, gathered in it, presumably in order to save heating.
Two neighbours wre also present.
Mehmet (M), Abdullah's father's brother's son's son, had his own small guest room and was a rare visitor to Abdullah's His own, situated in the lower quarter, drew more on neighbours than on kinsmen. One son of Ismet (T) visited occasionally - his sister was Mehmet's daughter-in-law. The members of K lineage also went there - Mehmet's recently deceased wife had been a member of K. The hostility between V lineage and M lineage barred members of V lineage. When, early in January, the guest room of K came into use, Mehmet's went out. One night I caused consternation by marching in to find it full of the women of the household. The sole revival of this guest room was during heavy rain in the spring thaw which flooded Nureddin's, making it suitable, as he remarked, `only for ducks'.
Haci Ömer's (D) guest room, after the period of open house during November to celebrate his return from Mecca, was at first used by a small clientele consisting of some members of D and F lineages. In January the large and ancient guest room, the common property of the D lineage, was opened and Haci Ömer's lost its outside following. Because, I suspect, their pride would not allow them to accept others' hospitality, neither he nor his brothers and their sons went to sit in the other guest room.
Hüseyn (F) kept a guest room for his own use. Here one always found his companion and immediate neighbour Yahya (p. 149); and sometimes another neighbour, a member of K through his mother (p. 164), and Hüseyn's wife's sister's son; and a lone old man, close neighbour but not kin. Hüseyn's own father's brothers' sons were often there.
Ziya (S) the carpenter, used his guest room as a work shop, and so it was always
open and warm. Early in the winter a few neighbours, besides his brother, and their
children would be found there. One was a cross-cousin, two others were unrelated;
Yakup z] (p. 129) an occasional visitor was brother to the deceased wife of Ziya's
deceased brother, whose orphan daughter lived with Ziya. The `kindling' of the guest
room next
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door by Ziya's father's brother's sons, Kemal and Süleyman, on their return
to the village from work in the town, attracted these visitors away from Ziya's.
The new company included also another young agnate, and one or two other occasional
visitors. I never saw Kemal or Süleyman in Ziya's guest room, nor he in theirs,
though his brother who more or less shared his household and his own sons were often
there.
Very near to this guest room was that of Haci Osman (H) Several neighbours were regular visitors, including two agnates, but of his sisters' sons (p. 163), only the one he had adopted as a member of his own household. Between this group and that cenring on the guest room of Kemal and Süleyman (S) there was some overlap. Moreover, besides these, many men of the upper quarter came casually, including Ziya the carpenter himself, though none of them were close kin. Haci Osman's old mother of about ninety, and sometimes his wife were to be found in this guest room. They said nothing when the men were talking, and no one took the least notice of them except occasionally during the day when it was almost empty.
All these guest rooms were used as part of the household living space; male members of the household ate in them and the old men and unmarried boys slept in them. This was also the case with Zeynel's (G), which I shall discuss last, but less so with the other three.
The four remaining guest rooms all had larger and more regular attendances. One, belonging to an elderly member of V lineage, was used mainly by members of that lineage. Small, airless and lit not by a proper oil lamp, but only by a small one-candle-power lamp made locally out of petrol cans, it was nevertheless always crowded. Those of the lineage living at some distance did not use it. The households on the spot, on the other hand, attended regularly almost to a man. One young and two old men, close neighbours, but not kinsmen, were regular visitors. Before Nureddin's guest room opened several of the men from the lower quarter also went there, especially members of K lineage. Ismet's son (T) was seen there, but on one occasion it was to play cards, on another to get advice from old Hamit (V) on his water buffaloes' constipation.
The communally owned D lineage guest room also had a very definitely lineage following.
Hither came all members of D and
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their children, except for Haci Ömer and his brothers; and also one entire branch
of F lineage, except for one man who lived ome way off in the Lower quarter. This
branch of F lineage was linked through maternal and marital ties to D. The only other
guest room in which I ever saw any of these men was Haci Ömer's before their
own opened. They explained that when they had done sufficient honour to the newly
returned Haci Ömer they had moved because they were ashamed to use his hospitality
night after night, because he was ill, and because they could not take their children
there. They seemed to have very few occasional visitors.
By far the most crowded guest room in the village was Nureddin's which lay beyond the main road. This did not open in the autumn, because, after a disastrous harvest, no one could afford fuel, and there was much complaining about this. In January, enough fuel was contributed from various sources, and the room was put into use both as a social centre and as a shop. Here again the core of the regular attendance was the lineage, none of whom, after it was opened, went anywhere else, except rarely to play cards; but almost the whole of the Lower quarter was to be found in this guest room. It was not a grand building, and the village leaders never came, but those who did included heads of households which were not on speaking terms with each other, and many who were not related to each other or the owner. Ömer (G) often came here in preference to sitting with his agnates in Zeynel's (G) guest room, and so did the adult sons of a pair of brothers who themselves preferred Zeynel's
Only four grown men in the village segment cut off by the road did not attend this guest room, apart from Hüseyn (F) who had his own. One never went to a guest room at all, though his own small guest room was not in use, and one went if at all to Hüseyn's. Two others went regularly to Zeynel's.
Only Zeynel's (G) guest room remains. His son was the headman during my stay,
but except on one or two special occasions this made no difference to the composition
of the group that met there. Only Ahmet (K), in his role as village scribe, went
there frequently on official business, because the headman himself could neither
read nor write. Only one of Zeynel's close agnates, Ömer (G), ever attended,
and then irregularly. Two
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pairs of brothers, neither of very high standing, were closely related, one pair
to Zeynel's wife, and the other to his son's wife. All were close neighbours. One
other apparently unrelated neighbour dropped in occasionally. The remaining regular
attenders consisted of three brothers from one end of the village and two men from
the other, none of whom had more than tenuous kin ties with Zeynel, and all of whom
had some distance to walk.
In some guest rooms the regular group is more sharply defined than in others. The D guest room for example was attended by three related lineage segments almost to a man. Any visitor would have been an outsider. In Haci Osman's guest room, or Nureddin's, people dropped in and out and a visitor was much less conspicuous. But all the guest room groups except Zeynel's were collections of people who were close kin or neighbours, or both. The Zeynel group puzzled me a good deal. Here the explanation seems to be negative. Some who were neither kin nor close neighbours went to this guest room because they felt even less welcome and less comfortable in any other, and the alternative, sitting evening after evening with the family, was grim. One guest room had to rank lowest and to collect the left-overs. The only guest room whose owner ranked lower in the village hierarchy was Nureddin, a less pretentious and more jovial character, whose guest room was organised in response to popular demand, and not on his private initiative for his own prestige or political purposes.
In the autumn of 1951 I attempted a similar enquiry in Elbashï, but the number of guest rooms and room groups was greater, the time shorter, and the season not properly begun. I myself was still an object of curiosity, so that my arrival in a guest room drew in neighbours who would not otherwise have come; and I was still unable to identify everybody readily by sight.
Nevertheless, it is plain that a similar system operated, though with a larger
margin of non-attenders, and a proportionately larger number of guest rooms in use,
making for smaller groups. Five guest rooms appeared to draw mainly on five main
lineages, but with varying degrees of completeness and varying numbers of other kin
and neighbours. Several of the better-off villagers used their own guest rooms, but
seldom
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had more than one or two visitors, some of them none. Some guest room affiliations
were surprising, as in Sakaltutan, and again are probably due to personal reasons
for avoiding hospitality in the guest rooms which they did not attend rather than
for seeking hospitality in those which they did.
In Elbashï some of the shops were rivals to the guest rooms. One or two shops were started in guest rooms. Conversely, a shop in a separate room of its own tended to draw a group of men together to chat, offering the advantages of warmth and shelter without the social implications of guest room hospitality.
In both villages similar groups met the whole year round. Once winter is over, everyone is busier, and the weather makes it possible and pleasant to sit out of doors. The guest rooms are left empty. People gather in the evenings, and even during the day, except at harvest time. But no hospitality is implied and it is easy to join or leave such a group. People choose a group near at hand. Moreover, whereas in the winter the young men and children attend in the guest rooms for the sake of warmth, and are expected to behave respectfully, as soon as the weather permits they prefer to form their own groups, according to distinctions of age.
In spite of the greater informality, the groups had recognised sites and a fairly steady membership. In Sakaltutan one such group formed in the Upper quarter, another in the central space by the headman's house, a third by the mosque, and a fourth at the roadside in the Lower quarter. I was not in Elbashï at the right season to observe the corresponding groups. I would guess that in a larger, more heterogeneous, village the meetings are more casual still; and that some of the wealthiest men would keep their guest rooms open and use them all through the year. In the heat of the summer at this altitude guest rooms are cool by day and keep off the evening chill.
It is impossible to sort out of this complex data any simple principles of attachment
to groups. The lowest and poorest were prepared to accept warmth and company more
or less anywhere they could find it; the nearer home the better. People who regularly
attended a guest room can be assumed to have friendly relations with the owner, and
where a person avoids the guest room of a close kinsman or neighbour some hostility
is probable. Large lineages normally congregate in the guest room
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of a senior member, and most of the larger guest room groups were built round a lineage
core, though often outnumbered by neighbours, affines and other kin. Household heads
of some pretension may prefer solitude in their own guest room, or even their living
room, to accepting regular hospitality. Personal inclination and convenience had
a lot to do with where people went; and only limited conclusions could be drawn from
their guest room affiliations about their loyalties in village politics.
People, particularly the men, are quick to anger, and quick to draw knives or guns. Even the boys carry knives, and hardly any adult villager goes unarmed. On one occasion a twelve-year-old lad was brought into us with a severe cut across his fingers. He had attempted, exactly like his elders, to intervene between two comrades who had drawn knives in anger, and had caught one knife by the blade. This incident provided the villagers with a peg on which to hang public denouncement of the folly of village violence. I was to grow accustomed to these self-accusations of wildness, barbarity and trouble making, but the harangues seemed to make little difference to the realities of village life.
My nine months in Sakaltutan were comparatively peaceful, and I assumed at first that the one or two acts of violence of which I heard were exceptional. But over the years of which I have evidence the total number of acts of violence is considerable, and enquiries in other parts of Turkey lead me to suppose that it is not in any way untypical.
Among the men of Sakaltutan, from 1948 to 1955, fighting or assault with knives or guns took place on at least six occasions. Five people were wounded and one killed; and in addition one elderly woman died two weeks after an assault by another woman, but the court exonerated her attacker from murder. In nearby villages I heard by chance gossip of four deaths and two woundings in the years 1947 to 1950, without making systematic enquiries. Two different men to whom I was introduced by friends from Sakaltutan boasted to me of occasions on which they had killed in a quarrel.
In Elbashï one killing and one wounding happened during the period of my
field work there; the killing while I was present
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in the village. Fighting had taken place on apparently three occasions in the recent
past, and one man had been knifed in the thigh. A boy was shot dead by his mother's
brother's son (who was also an agnate), apparently by accident when they were playing
with a rifle, but the family of the victim had refused to make peace and the killer's
father had moved away from his own house to a cave in another part of the village
to avoid vengeance.
No one regarded these events as abnormal, and the evidence I have supports the view that this rate of violence seems quite typical of the less suburban parts of rural Turkey.
In all these cases, except for the children's accident, people apparently used arms with the intent to kill. But of course quarrels of a less violent character happen constantly. The seriousness of a quarrel depends partly on the degree of violence which has been used, partly on the nature of the disagreement, and partly on the social distance between the two sides.
The primary function of lineage groups, defence in quarrels, is no minor matter. Normally it is regarded as the duty of a man to side with his agnates on all occasions, and to be prepared if necessary to fight for them. People said that the two causes of lineage hostility which can never be settled are homicide and insults to women.
This violent hostility between lineages exists only within villages. In no case did the killings I have listed take place between villages. Sakaltutan had, it is true, been involved with a village near by in fighting over land on the border about two years before my arrival, but there had been no casualties. I heard of another case of inter-village fighting in the area, but had no details. It is possible that in the past such clashes were more frequent and people were killed. On the other hand, so long as each village had a smaller population and enough arable land and pasture to meet its needs, it is equally possible that fighting between villages as such was rarer.
Whatever may have been the case in the past, in 1950 to 1952 effective and serious
long-term hostility was always between
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lineages of the same village, and on the rare occasions when men left their natal
village for their wife's village they seem, de facto, to have shed their duties to
their agnates and acquired quasiagnatic rights and duties towards their wife's kin.
When two persons quarrel they are said to be küs. This word is constantly heard. On one occasion a grandmother left to cook and to mind her baby granddaughter while the rest of the household went out to harvest in the fields, remarked jokingly at the end of the day that she and the baby were küs. The dictionary meaning for this word is `sulk', but this is too undignified a word. It implies the behaviour of Achilles in his tent, a formal breaking off of social relations, usually in the interests of honour. Its converse is the word for speaking together, konushmak.
This formal state of hostility often exists for longer or shorter periods between individuals or households. A man may be küs with his parents-in-law, or husband and wife may be küs with each other. But if it is established between two normal non-kin households then the agnates on each side are likely to be involved.
No recognised machinery exists in the village for the settlement of such quarrels. It is always possible for people to decide to resume social relations, and this may be done simply by a single formal visit. Sometimes third parties with ties to both sides may attempt to bring them together. But if the matter involves violence or interference with the honour of a woman, then in theory no reconciliation is possible. Revenge is necessary to satisfy honour and in turn leads to further revenge. Not even time was recognised as a palliative. Even after fifty years, people said vengeance may still be exacted. This absence of machinery for reconciliation or compensation I found astonishing, and I made persistent enquiries with no success. In the short run at least the evidence seemed to support the village theory of implacability.
It is always the duty of bystanders to intervene to prevent violence; once moved
to anger people will quickly resort to violence and must be prevented. On one occasion
I myself lost my temper with a young lad, chased him across the village and punched
him on the jaw. A large pack of villagers pursued me and laid hands on me for fear
we should injure each other.
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On another I was severely censured for not leaping to the defence of a wife who was
being physically threatened by an angry husband. This pattern I saw repeated many
times. It is the duty of everyone to prevent violence, even at considerable risk
and even in intimate relationships.
I was explicitly told that if fighting breaks out between two lineages, then other lineages should intervene to stop it. One informant in Elbashï denied this. As far as Elbashï went he was at least realistic since, in the fighting reported there in the recent past, the whole village was split into two factions. But many others confirmed the traditional duty of intervention in the interests of peace even during a major clash. Yet such intervention is always ad hoc, and no formal or recognised procedure exists. It is unlikely to achieve more than the immediate separation of the contestants. The state of küs persists.
Vengeance likewise seems to lack a formal or recognised procedure. No one lays down even in theory who is responsible for carrying it out, or who is a proper victim of vengeance. On four occasions, two in each village, one of the principals in a dispute was the object of an attack, twice by day and twice by night. On one occasion the attacker was said to be unknown, but it seemed to be generally assumed that it was the man with whose son's betrothed the victim had eloped a year or two earlier. In the other three cases, the aggressor was also definitely a principal. Premeditated attacks on close agnates of the principals are said to be within the rules, but in fact they did not happen to my knowledge. On the other hand, if two lineages are in a state of küs, any minor quarrels involving members of the two sides will easily lead to fresh violence.
Feuding between lineages is a matter of years; in theory, of generations. Acts of violence are often separated by long periods of uneventful küs. It is therefore impossible to unearth reliable details in a stay of a few months, particularly as people are very unwilling to discuss quarrels and fights, and when they do talk, they give highly tendentious accounts. Even in Sakaltutan, in spite of considerable knowledge of the village people, I found the complexity of quarrels and alliances baffling.
The largest lineage in Sakaltutan, V lineage, had two quarrels in progress, one
with S lineage, and another with M lineage (p. 162).
Both were of long standing, and both
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produced violence soon after my departure from the village
V and S were küs during my stay, and I heard a lot from each about the short-comings
of the other. Bektesh (V) told me that, the year before, S lineage `attempted to
kill us', but I did not establish any clear details. In the summer of 1951 a plumber
who was a member of S, was knifed on a building site in a city by a member of V.
A young man of S was accused of having approached the wife of a young man of V. Next,
according to his own account, the plumber advised an employer in Adana against employing
a plasterer, without knowing that the man in question was from V lineage. When V
lineage found out, they assumed the act was deliberate. They caught him on a site
and knifed him in the stomach. The youngest amongst them confessed and received a
light sentence because of his age. According to the story the blow was actually struck
by another young man of a different lineage, whose father had been wounded in a fight
with S in the village the year before. No further major violence had occurred between
these lineages by 1955. S declared themselves to be willing to make peace but I doubt
if this is to be taken seriously.
During my stay at the village V and M lineages were also küs. Both lineages
used the K guest room, but no member of V lineage ever used either of the M guest
rooms. Then at some point after I had left a young man of V `insulted' the wife of
a young man of M, perhaps in retaliation for some previous affront. Close young agnates
of the household of the aggrieved young man attacked the house of the young man of
V by night, and shot him in the jaw. Some time later, Durdu of V fell into a public
dispute with a member of the other main M household. He went and fetched a gun, and
was standing outside his opponent's house challenging him to come out, when another
villager (T), not concerned but an affine of M lineage, came along and urged him
to stop. Durdu, I was told, turned his gun on the newcomer but failed to release
the safety catch. This brief delay enabled the intervener to draw his own gun in
self-defence. He shot Durdu dead and duly went to prison for homicide. The day after
the shooting the victim's daughter, who was married within her own lineage, beat
up the mother of the man of M who had refused to come out. Two weeks later the woman
died, but her assailant was subsequently exonerated
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by the courts. People said vaguely that Durdu's son might wel take vengeance when
he grew up.
Two cases from Elbashï also illustrate lineage feuds; one of these involved the whole village and will be dealt with in the next section. The other was a purely limited lineage quarrel. The Z lineage were a well-knit and self-conscious group. But one household head, Melik, had quarrelled with the rest of the group at some time in the past and was küs with the lineage as a whole. He was next door neighbour to a poor member of B lineage, which figures in the major dispute described in the next section.
Melik made a window in a wall overlooking a patch of ground which belonged to his neighbour Hasan. Hasan allowed this to pass. Melik then made it into a door. Hasan objected, but Melik took no notice. Hasan collected his agnates, about a dozen young men, who `surrounded' Melik's house, presumably intending to block up the doorway by force. Melik and his three grown sons opened fire from inside and the attackers withdrew. Some days later, Hasan chased Melik's eldest son, and shot him in the back. The victim recovered, the door was blocked up, and there the matter rested, except that Hasan himself was worse off than ever, since he was now compelled to remain in hiding in the village caves to avoid arrest by the gendarmes. For a specific affront, Hasan was able to collect most if not all of the younger members of his lineage, whereas Melik forfeited the support of his, because he had previously quarrelled with them, and was küs. Once the mass action which followed ended inconclusively, one principal set out premeditatedly with his gun to attack a principal on the other side. Why he took so drastic a step I do not know. Possibly after being driven off, he felt himself both publicly humiliated and in danger of losing his case.
In this institution we find many of the typical ideas and customs of the feuding
situation the solidarity of close agnates, the duty to seek revenge, the notion of
honour, the importance of `insults' to women for whom the men are responsible. Yet
compared with many examples of feuding it is highly informal and unsystematic. In
practice, not all agnates feel themselves committed; revenge is not necessarily specific
or immediate; no system of compensation or reconciliation seems to exist and
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it is not precisely laid down who is and who is not involved. The system is similar
to that found by Barth among the Kurds, and unlike that of the Arabs or of some African
peoples. (Barth (1953) p. 74 f; Peters (1960) p. 31; Evans-Pritchard (1940 p. 150;
Colson (1962) p. 106.)
After an act of homicide the tension is notably great. Those involved in a hot feud walk in daily fear of their lives. People said that men at enmity normally avoid each other's part of the village, and that in fact it is not easy to kill a fellow villager. My own observations indicate the direct opposite. As far as I can see nothing could be simpler than to surprise a man and shoot him, given that one is a close neighbour and that time is on one's side. I have recorded four attacks of this kind although admittedly only one was fatal.
It has been commonly argued that the existence of unsettled blood debts within a small community of this kind is intolerable. Evans-Pritchard, for example, says of the Nuer, `a feud cannot be tolerated within a village', (Evans-Pritchard (1940) p. 159) and a similar argument is used by Colson (1962) p. 119f. The argument, a priori, would seem to have equal weight when applied to these small, tightly-knit Turkish communities. Why does it not fit the facts?
The disorganised and unsystematic nature of the feud may itself provide an answer.
Everyone fiercely insisted on the duty of revenge. But this may be indefinitely postponed.
In the course of years the implacable may become less implacable. There is some evidence
to show that after a time the offer of a woman in marriage to the victim's lineage
to provide heirs to replace him, and to establish a political alliance may end the
state of open hostility. Moreover, new quarrels are constantly happening. Each new
generation is likely to see new elopements, new arguments about land, and so on.
Old enemies may well find themselves on the same side. If every serious quarrel lasted
for ever no lineage would be on speaking terms with any other. In fact, therefore,
in time reconciliations must take place. In some cases a chain of killings may follow
a homicide, but in others the threats do not materialise, and after a number of years
social relations return to normal. People did not normally speak of wrongs done in
past generations. It does not follow that they were not remembered, but if they were
I am sure they would
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be selectively remembered, that is, they would be remembered if they reinforced existing
hostilities, and forgotten if they cut across existing aliances.
This argument assumes that the feuding situation has been steady for a long period. In fact the great extension of State interference and the recent improvement in police and judicial institutions can hardly have failed to alter the working of the feuds. The hypothesis that feuds such as I have described could not exist unresolved in small communities over long periods could be saved by arguing that in fact some more efficient means of settling village quarrels existed in the past but has disappeared. It would seem improbable that a highly formal machinery would be forgotten, but shifts in power could have some effect as I have myself suggested elsewhere (Stirling (1960) pp. 73, 74).
One fact undoubtedly favours this view. The increased efficiency of the government has greatly decreased the autonomy of the village communities, and has weakened the strength of their indigenous leaders. It is therefore conceivable that, in the past, it was more often possible to forestall serious quarrels, and also to bring more pressure for settlement on feuding lineages. But it is impossible to prove this, because no evidence exists which could provide an accurate measure of violence in the villages in the past, or a detailed analysis of political relations between villagers.
Instead of arguing that the present situation is a priori improbable and cannot
therefore represent a stable state, it is also possible to re-examine the a priori
argument itself. The argument as presented by Colson (1953), and expanded by Gluckman
(1956) Chap. I, is an economic one: the daily supply of food depends on co-operation,
and a state of hostility calling for homicide renders this co-operation impossible.
In the Turkish village, on the contrary, supplies of staple foods are stored in each
household behind stone walls and locked doors, and even animals can be cared for
for short periods without co-operation. In any case a feud between two lineages does
not prevent the member households on both sides sending their animals to the same
village herdsmen. Further, within a state armed with police and a system of justice,
however remote from the village, the village is not a political unit in the way Nuer
or
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Tonga villages were political units. Segments of a village can maintain hostility
over log periods without destroying the political system because this does not depend
on village unity. The danger that one's enemies will attempt murder makes life difficult,
but in practice even this applies only to the principals of the feud, and these usually
absent themselves, or are in gaol, or move to another part of the village and take
special precautions. A fresh quarrel is always possible, but in a quarrel everyone
is, or pretends to be, sure he can look after himself. Feuds therefore may be exceedingly
unpleasant to live with, but they do not render life impossible.
To sum up then, every village contains a number of active lineages involved in blood feuds with other lineages of the same village. In theory, vengeance is mandatory and the feud unresolvable. In practice some cases of feud are allowed to die out, and reconciliation is possible, often by giving a woman in marriage. Often a relationship of hostility depends on chance incidents for its continuance, though in fact it makes these incidents more probable. But an absence of incidents may in time permit social relationships to be re-established. Moreover, new quarrels are likely in time to set up new alignments in the village which may force people to make allies of their old enemies.
One of my surprises during my first visits to Turkish villages was the youth of the headmen I met. I had expected the headman to be the most senior and powerful man in the village, yet I met few headmen over forty and several much younger. The turnover in headmen was high. The term of office was four years before 1950, when it was reduced to two. Many failed to last it out; I only ever knew one man who took a second term. The reasons for all this became obvious. The headman was no longer the top of the village but the bottom of the official State hierarchy. It was not a pleasant position to hold.
The headman's immediate senior in the hierarchy was the District Officer, Nahiye
Müdürü, a high school graduate who shared the values and prejudices
of the educated governing class. The headman, who was often illiterate, belonged
himself
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to the taditional society of the village. His main concern was to keep out of trouble
both with his superiors and with his neighbours. Since some of his legally imposed
duties were complex, and some unpopular, this was very difficult.
The headman's duties were in theory very numerous; a few of them were either inescapable or important, or both. He was supposed to report any trouble in the village and any strangers who could not give a good account of themselves. He was also supposed to see that the Registrar was informed of all births, deaths and marriages. He was responsible for seeing that conscripts answered the call to the army. Any special jobs fell on his shoulders, for example, the preparing of the village register of voters for the 1950 election. The headman in Sakaltutan had on one occasion to renumber all the houses in the village, extracting 10 kurush, (about 3d.), from each unwilling household for a useless tin number plate.
He was expected to receive and assist all official visitors to the village - medical officers, court officials, veterinary officers, tax collectors, agricultural officials and so on. On these occasions he usually served food, and sometimes had to provide a bed. In return for this duty he received an allowance, decided by the village, towards the cost of entertaining. Perhaps his most unpopular task was the collection of dues to the village chest. This fund he was supposed to collect, supervise, spend and account for to higher authority. The collection was extremely difficult; he was invariably accused by the villagers of eating it himself; and even if not actually illiterate he was unlikely to be unable to keep accounts, and was thus in permanent danger of trouble from above.
The official policy was to recruit young men as headmen. Plainly a literate, sophisticated young man, if one could be found, would do the job better. The most suitable young men in the village were the migrant craftsmen, whose visits to town gave them the chance to use their literacy and learn something about townsmen. But they were unwilling, indeed unable, to bind themselves to stay permanently in the village as the headman was required to do.
The job was unpopular. Yet it did bestow advantages, particularly that of direct
contact with the authorities. Not only was the headman the official channel for his
neighbours but his
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privilege of receiving all officials in his guest room enabledhim to hear official
news first, and also to establish personal contacts which might be useful later,
even after his term of office.
Leading villagers did not want to be headmen; but they did want to be able to control the headman, and to entertain important guests. Thus one found that the headman was usually a young member of a substantial village household, or the nominee of the head of such a household. Without such support a young headman could not entertain. I knew a considerable number of headmen, and most of them fitted this pattern. In Sakaltutan there were three headmen during my field work. The first was the adopted son of Haci Osman (H) (p. 103); the second was the son of Zeynel (G) (p. 243); and the third belonged, by an accepted affiliation, to the lineage of Haci Omer (D), and used his guest room. His rival at the election, and others mentioned as possible candates in the village, all fitted into the same pattern. All were under forty.
The headman in Elbashï in 1951-52 was the youngest of four brothers who used a common guest room that formally belonged to the eldest. These four were the leaders of Ay lineage (p. 165), and also of one of the two village factions. All were comfortably off. The eldest ha had some experience as a building contractor, and the headman himself had had a share in a village lorry, and at the time had an interest in a hotel in Ankara, in common with a partner from a neighbouring village.
The headman in Sakaltutan never to my knowledge exercised authority except in so far as his neighbours recognised that he as headman had to take official responsibility. On one occasion a woman was struck with a piece of iron by a neighbour and kinsman. The headman was called but decided to do nothing. If a stranger arrived in the village the headman would automatically be sent for, or failing him, his deputy, to entertain the guest, though sometimes, if the guest was worth capturing, anyone with an adequate guest room might invite him in before the headman arrived on the scene.
The headman of Elbashï made rather more attempts to assert his authority.
Near the harvest time the village shepherds came to him daily for instructions on
pasturing their flocks, and he also supervised the activities of the field watchmen.
I came across him, on one occasion, in the middle of an altercation with
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a fairly wealthy agnate, a man on his own side in the village quarrels. Two of this
man's animals had been found among the crops and impounded, and the headman refused
to release them unless he paid a small fin for each beast. When he paid one fine
and received only one beast the man grew really angry but the headman stood his ground.
On another occasion I found him in his guest room trying to mediate in a disputed
case of inheritance (p. 129). I was complled to
admire his sagacity when I found him sitting in the headquarters of the Credit Co-operative,
beside the manager, collecting the village dues from each man as he received his
annual loan. With a bundle of notes in his hand, it was impossible even for a villager
to argue that he had not got the money.
In general the headman of a Turkish village exercises no more influence, outside his specific duties as headman, than he exercises before and after being headman. The exceptional efficiency of the Elbashï headman was due to his standing in the village as an individual. In any crisis the only advantage the headman has is the opportunity to act as government contact man, but in purely village matters his office lends him no extra weight.
In every village a few men have greater wealth, greater outside contacts, and greater internal influence than the rest. Generosity is expected of them. The less fortunate are bound to look to them for help and support, and to offer in return deference and perhaps political support. The terms patron and client hardly apply where an open etiquette of equality is carefully maintained, and where many households are self-sufficient and can cope with their emergencies by the exchange of reciprocal services with equals. No formality attaches to relationships of dependants, but nevertheless, openly or covertly, vaguely defined followings do attach to certain leading men.
Both Elbashï and Sakaltutan were divided in this way into two groups. In
both villages the rich helped the poor with special problems such as wedding hospitality
and loans of food or cash, presents at festivals and so on. In Sakaltutan however,
the violent lineage hostilities cut across these groups, which were
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centred on a mild rivalry between two leading men. In Elbshï on the other hand,
the split was sharper, more violent, and, with complicated exceptions, lineage quarrels
coincided with what may be fairly called the village factions which I shall discuss
in detail in the next section.
Two men stood out in Sakaltutan; Haci Ömer (D) and Haci Osman (H). They were openly on good terms, and had been companions on the journey to Mecca in the autumn of I949. But they very seldom visited each other. I had the impression that in 1950 Haci Ömer was more accepted as village leaded than Haci Osman, but he was a sick man. He did not normally give definite orders, although on one occasion, in the absence of the headman and against his wishes, he ordered the watchman to make a public announcement about the government distribution of seed.
Haci Osman was a fitter and wealthier man. He wisely made a point of saying that he was a man of peace, and was always gentle and pious as became a pilgrim to Mecca, a genuine Haci
He cultivated a collection of sisters' sons. He had two in the Upper quarter who had been away from the village for a Iong period, one for a year and the other for four years. He made the long journey to Izmir in person to find them and bring then back. Three other sisters' sons lived in the Lower quarter. When one of them lost his wife Haci Osman helped financially and personally in the attempts to find a replacement. When he was one of a syndicate which organised the building of diesel mill in the village, this man and his younger brother were employed first as building labourers; later as millhand and mechanic. Haci Osman's sister's daughter's husband was Ömer (G). Ömer and his six sons, three of them grown up, were on excellent terms with him and called him dayi, (mother' brother). In the winter of 1949-50 most of these sisters' sons went not to his guest room but to Nureddin's (K) in the Lower quarter. Although technically they all had rights to some of the land on which his wealth and influence was based, none of them showed any signs of raising this embarrassing subject publicly.
Plenty of people in the village belonged to neither following. Several men were
more or less their equals in standing, and others were prepared to befriend both
sides. They were not
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overtly hostile to each other, and very few issues arose to divde the village. Indeed,
only once during my stay was the village split, and then fairly peacefully and casually.
The occasion for this was the election for headman which took place in 1950. For the first time ever the headman was to be chosen, not by confabulation between the leading men, but by a formal democratic election. Two candidates stood, Nureddin (K) from the Lower and Ibrahim (D) from the Upper quarter. Neither had a close elder kinsman to provide entertainment and a guest room for official visitors and village business, and hence Nureddin was backed by Haci Osman, his father's brother's wife's brother, and Ibrahim by Haci Omer, a not very close pseudo-agnate. Both candidates repeatedly declared their unwillingness to stand at all, and no one involved regarded the matter as one of much importance. When Ibrahim resigned after a year in office, it was, by an electoral accident, Ömer (G), Haci Osman's sister's daughter's husband, who succeeded.
These two men then were no more than the most influential among their neighbours. They were not in sharp rivalry, and neither held any office nor exercised any sanctions which gave them power to coerce unwilling villagers. Sakaltutan was conspicuous for the absence of authority.
Elbashï resembled Sakaltutan in the absence of a single source of authority armed with coercive sanctions, and in the independence and neutrality of many households. Some of the leaders were further removed in wealth and power from the village poor and more inclined to issue orders. Instead of two leaders one could name some eight or nine, or more, according to the criteria used. The situation was more complex than that of Sakaltutan, and I had less time to unravel it.
In one way Elbashï was sharply different from Sakaltutan. The village was
seriously split, and fighting had taken place more than once in the years immediately
before my visit. I failed to realise fully the importance and nature of this split
at the time of the field work, and the account which follows is partly based on deduction
and interpretation. The detailed
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arguments to support it have already been published in a much fuller account (Stirling
(1960) pp. 63-9).
I have already (p. 145) spoken of the pre-eminence
in the village of Kara Osman (Ax). This man had taken over a great deal of fertile
irrigated land, belonging formerly to the next village, and had become pre-eminent
in the area, not merely in the vllage. I met him first in 1949 in Sakaltutan. Sometime
during or after the war others had begun taking over village pasture on a large scale.
The eldest son of Hayip (B) (p. 144) had been headman
about 1946: a fact undoubtedly related to the extent of his father's land at the
time of my field work. B lineage had been allied to Ax the lineage to which Kara
Osman belonged. Hayip's son was, it seems, deposed on charges of misuse of his office.
The two headmen who followed him were opponents of Ax, and during this period several
fights seem to have taken place. The main issue was the taking over of yet more village
pasture for private arable land. On this issue the faction opposed to Kara Osman
eventually won the day with the support of the government authorities. Kara Osman
himself died in 1950. When I reached the village it was divided into two camps, Ay
leading one and controlling the headmanship, and Ax backed by B leading the other.
There had been further fighting at the election of the headman in 1950.
While I was in the village two interesting events took place. A senior member
of Ax betrothed his daughter to the son of a senior but slightly marginal member
of Ay. At the same time the factional dispute became entwined with a personal quarrel.
Yusuf, a young man of Ax, had quarrelled with a young wife at the fountain, and struck
her. This girl was a sister of the four leading men of Ay, one of whom was headman.
Her husband Mehmet (C), away on military service, was the son of a leading member
of C lineage; his father had given him in infancy to a childless brother. Mehmet
had inherited a house and lands from his mother by adoption, and was a close neighbour
of his wife's four brothers (Ay). The quarrel on this occasion led to general fighting,
but no one was hurt. When the husband Mehmet returned from military service he is
said to have threatened dire action to avenge the insult to his wife. His opponent
Yusuf clearly took these threats seriously, as well he might.
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At this time the betrothal ceremony for the wedding between Ax and Ay was celebrated. Yusuf was father's brother's son to the bride, and though engaged himself to a daughter of Hayip (B), he took upon himself to intervene with the traditional and forceful protest; he fired shots over the heads of the departing guests (Salim, (1962) p. 50).
He declared that he would stop the wedding at all costs, but the parties showed no signs of being cowed. Three days later, close to sundown, in the centre of the village, he drew a gun and shot Mehmet at short range. Mehmet died a few minutes later. Yusuf fled, under fire, to be arrested in another village. This act separated the two sides again; or rather it created a new split, between C lineage and Ax. Up to this point C lineage had not been involved. People said that reconciliation was impossible, and revenge sooner or later certain. Yet by 1955 nothing further had happened; the two original sides Ay and Ax were more or less reconciled, and the wedding had taken place. But C lineage maintained an attitude of general nonco-operation, and remained hostile (küs) to Ax.
This case illustrates a number of points. First, it is perfectly normal for a village to have a definite split into two factions. In one other village I was told that one large lineage had the previous year, 1948, fought the whole of the rest of the village, again over the headmanship. One man was killed. But as far as I could judge from the outside, most other villages in the area were more like Sakaltutan in having a complex structure of rivalries and loyalties which did not easily break down into two sides.
Secondly, it illustrates the possibilities of settlement, and the much tougher problem presented once a death has taken place. Thirdly, it illustrates the way in which an incident between members of already hostile lineages can lead to serious trouble. And finally, it makes it clear how difficult it is to sort out personal fear and resentment, notions of personal and lineage honour, and factional struggles for power in the village.
The interweaving of village matters and personal quarrels in this story illustrates
some of the typical disputes that arise in a
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community of this kind. The stream is constant. Children fight, buffaloes fight,
young men are accused of showing intrest in, or insulting girls, debts are said to
have been unpaid, favours are unreasonably refused. The most lasting of these disputes
are those concerning women, and those concerning land.
The villages themselves say, and it seems to be a priori probable, that in the past the village was more able to deal with its own internal troubles. Though not generally held for life, the headmanship was traditionally an office of some power and importance, and the headman was able to bring pressure on disputants and to punish offenders.
Disputes over women stand apart. Interference with a man's womenfolk calls for violence, and arbitration or litigation are beside the point. Adultery may lead to murder but not to recognised claims for restitution or compensation. In a sense the word dispute itself is inappropriate. If people feel strongly enough they will act; otherwise the matter remains unsettled. In either case it is a possible source of future trouble.
Nowadays a young headman carries no weight as an arbitrator, still less as a judge.
He has no coercive sanctions at his command nor the necessary prestige or skill.
Among the senior men no one holds any recognised office, and no one normally stands
out as an acceptable arbiter. Thus the village lacks any internal machinery for the
settlement of disputes except the informal pressures of neighbours and the self-interest
of the parties, which sometimes lead to negotiation and a formal reconciliation.
On the one occasion on which I found the headman of Elbashï attempting to arrange
peace between the heirs of a recently deceased villager, he had no great success
(p. 129). His only weapon was the argument that
failure to reach agreement would be to the disadvantage of all.
Under the Village Law (p. 271) the headman has
the right to settle disputes up to a certain value (in 1950 T.L.50 equivalent to
about £6, $18) in collaboration with the Council of Elders (p.
31). In theory he could use the coercive sanctions the State to insist on this
right. In practice no headman in his short term of office is likely to be foolish
enough to call in State sanctions against kinsman and neighbours among whom he has
to live out his days; if he is already so powerful in the community that he can do
so with impunity, he would not need to.
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Above the headman the District Officer and the Kaymakam also have authority to settle disputes of a limited value ad hoc, subject to the right of the disputants to appeal to the courts. I have no record of an actual case in either of the villages but I am assured that such cases occur fairly frequently, and I did sit in on an informal hearing of such a case in another village. This procedure allows a wise official to make decisions on the basis of village public opinion, and to ignore strictly legal arguments which often do not coincide with equity. But on the whole, though many disputes do come to the authorities and even to the courts, a very much larger number of disputes simply remain unsettled.
Formerly land was freely available for cultivation (p. 134), and in those days disputes about land must have been far less frequent. But as soon as land becomes short and cash-cropping normal, it is plainly prudent to establish rights to land wenever possible. Claims were constantly made on a wide range of grounds. Traditionally sales of land took place between kin and even neighbours, but transfers were never registered and the village assumed that the vendor had the right to buy the land back for the purchase price whenever he chose. In an inflating economy people make frequent use of this right, usually demanding the land back, as a cover for obtaining a further payment to match the increased money value of the land. Others claimed that land was originally lent to kin as a favour, sometimes in return for an annual gift or on a share-cropping basis. Cultivators counter-claim that the original gift or sale was outright, or sometimes that since the dues paid on the land exceed its value they have acquired it by purchase. The varieties of argument are endless and the facts exceedingly difficult to establish.
This growth in the frequency of disputes has coincided with the weakening of the village's own political system brought about by increased governmental interference. A large number of grievances and disputes over land simply remain unresolved, and possession is usually ten-tenths of the law.
It does not follow that in the past the village authorities settled disputes efficiently
or finally. Although marginal land was once freely available it is highly probable
that the village has always been full of claims and counter-claims, and that
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what land a household has been able to control, at any given point, has depended
at least as much on the balance of village power as on recognised rights.
The village then is full of unresolved disputes. The strong are safe so long as they are strong. Now that violence is suppressed with ever increasing efficiency by the State, and straight filching or recovery of land by force is well-nigh impossible, most claims simply lie dormant. In the past disputes were settled by strength, either the relative strength of the contenders, or in some cases, the perhaps slightly less partial strength of the village leaders. Not, of course, that recognised rights had no moral weight. The ability to mobilise strength depends at least to some degree on public approval and acceptance. A reputation for impartiality and respect for others' rights is often one element in the strength of the leaders. But nevertheless the weak had no guarantee, and even nowadays strength and wealth carry their own moral justification, and usually have things their own way.
The village as I have described it is a collection of households of different degrees of strength, wealth and prestige, living together in close intimacy, and with enough co-operation and mutual tolerance not only to survive, but to form a strong and stable community. Yet it lacks any effective formal structure of authority, and any undisputed informal leadership. In spite of the truculent independence of most respectable household heads, the existence of innumerable unsettled disputes and quarrels, and constant jockeying for influence and prestige between the leading households, the village leads an orderly life; people are constantly visiting, helping, advising, co-operating and intermarrying.
This calls to mind the paradox, `ordered anarchy' (Evans- Pritchard (1940) p.
181), applied to a very different society. The order in fact depends on diffuse or
informal sanctions: reciprocity, self-help and public opinion. People can only enjoy
the help, social intercourse and friendliness they need if they offer help, social
intercourse and friendliness to others. They are tied to each other by all kinds
of relationship; by agnatic, non-
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agnatic and affinal kinship, by share-cropping, by loans and 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.
Updated Friday, October 23, 1998