| subsistence economy. Larger cash needs are most easily met by working regularly at a trade, especially since the cash earnings of these ustalar are relatively high in proportion to the general standard of wages and salaries. Of course, these cash earning also themselves hasten the development of a taste for luxuries and that coming of a money economy. In terms of whole villages, there is a correlation, though not an exact one, between the extent of village lands and the among of skilled migrant labour. But within the village, this correlation does not hold. Such evidence as I have would seem rather to suggest the reverse - that the very poor either stay in the village to perform the tasks of herdsmen or to share-crop, or if they do go to town, remain unskilled while the better off households often send a member to learn a skilled trade. Thus, of the fourteen households with five donum or less, only three men are plasterers and two work in the factory. The three |
| XII.3 | 198 |
| plasterers are the brothers VA7, 8 and 9, who have separated from their father prematurely , and though short of land, belong to a family of moderate wealth, since their father is one of the few senior ustalar in the village. Of the two factory workers, Huseyn (VA 3), an orphan, had recently married and set up house on his own, and had not received land from his grandfather, Hasan (VA 1). Thus only Osman (C 3), whose father the shepherd of CK village, is genuinely a very poor man turned to a skilled profession. His emme, Mustafa (C 1), has one son who is a painter and a second in the factory, and the son of another is said to be an unskilled labourer in Ankara, but as he did not return from Ankara during the whole of my stay he probably has a regular job there. The remaining eight households, with five donum or less, have no regular or skilled source of income. Equally in eight households with between five and fifteen donum we find only one plasterer, BA 4, Ibrahim (SI 2), the plumber, and a young man (son of FA 1), who is unskilled but sells vegetables in Ankara. On the other hand, among the twenty-one to forty donum group, twenty-three, or more than half, and among ten households with seventy-five or more donum, six, again more than half, contain one or more ustalar. In Sakaltutan the very poor provide the unskilled migrant labour and also the herdsmen and pedlars, the moderate and richer households the skilled craftsmen. The lowest stratum does, it is true, contain those who are incapable, like the watchman or Ali (C 2), of higher earning power. But it is also partly a matter of level or expectation. The moderate households being prouder and more respectable, desire better houses to live in, better hospitality for their guest, and more expensive and resplendent weddings. The earnings |
| of an unskilled labourer are not sufficient to make any serious contribution to theses ends. The lowest stratum are content to get wives as they can, to live in caves so long only as they can earn enough to feed themselves. Thus, it is not the very poor, but those with some degree of well being and prestige which they are anxious not to lose, who tend to become ustalar. Informants in Al village and in Kb |
| XII.3 | 199 |
| village, stated that the same would hold in their villages, though detailed confirmation of this was not possible. All this perhaps amounts to little more than to say that every human society contains some people who are feckless and content to do no more than make a bare minimum living. But at least this much is clear, that migrant labour does not function as an alternative to agriculture, but as a supplement, and that the higher the social and economic status in agriculture of a household, the higher in social prestige and in reward are the occupations by which it seeks to supplement. |
| XIII | |
| HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS |
| 1. | Economic Organisation of Households. |
| The normal agricultural household forms a simple economic unit. All wealth is derived from the household land, and all able bodied members of the household contribute by their labour to the resources which they consume together. The head of the household controls the use and distribution of these resources. If he has grown sons at home, he may well not himself work,. Except at times of great pressure. The place for the old man is the oda, receiving guests, directing the household affairs, and advising neighbours and kinsmen. He will, for example, undertake himself the sale of livestock, especially cattle or horses, since this is serious matter. His is also responsible for negotiations regarding marriage. His sons are dependent on him so long as they remain farmers, since he owns the only land to which they have any rights. The women of the household normally leave all finance to the men. For example, at betrothal ceremonies, the women throw a small coin at the betrothed girl. This coin they have to beg from their husbands, and it is he who earns prestige or shame according to the size of the gift, not his wife. Some of the women do not even know how to reckon money. Women never go to town to sell or to shop; even the trousseau is purchased by the men. Even widows, if they can, get a kinsman to do their business for them. This |
| dependence does not mean that women exert no influence in the conduct of family affairs. Where a woman does so, it seems usually to be due to her ownership of land. Thus Mustafa’s (BA 1) wife, and Niyazi’s (BT) mother, who both exercised more influence in the family than most women, owned the household land. Ownership of land gives a woman a hold over her husband. Ali Osman’s (BK 1) wife’s sister, who is also his paternal cousin, married to Ck village. Her husband, being a poor man, farms a plot of land which she brought him, although it is close to Sakaltutan. Recently, under pressure of debt, he spoke of mortgaging it to Ali Osman, who did not wish to accept, although he would thus acquire a valuable plot of his grandfather’s land cheaply. He was afraid that his bacanak would divorce his cousin, because her rheumatism prevented her from pulling her |
| XIII.1 | 201 |
| weight in the home, and replace her by a more efficient worker, in which case her upkeep would fall on him, Ali Osman, as her cousin and sister’s husband. Ownership of the land gave her a hold on her husband but she was not in a position to prevent him mortgaging it. Legally, a man cannot sell his wife’s land without her consent, but in practice her only refuge would be either to leave him and take the land with her, or to appeal to her father or brothers to bring pressure to bear on him. In the majority of cases most, if not all, the land, belongs to the man, and the woman is thus completely dependent. The immediate reaction of a group of women in Gn village to learning that my wife had a profession and earning power, was to ask in astonishment what on earth she had married me fore. They thought of the economic dependence as the main sanction constraining them to submit to a system of marriage which they regarded as imposed on them by men to serve the purposes of men. A man’s grown sons have, of course, much more power in the house than the women. They can do business, and the dependence of the father on their labour gives them some power to resist him. Thus Mustafa, the muhtar, a man of about thirty, did nearly all the work on seventy year old Abdil’s (AM) hundred donum, and in practice had much of the running of the household affairs. Nevertheless, such matters as marriage of Mustafa’s younger sisters remained firmly in the hands of the old man. Abdurrahman was a practical head, in spite of showing due filial respect for his father, Haci Mehmet (T 1) since the old man was sick and bordering on senility. The growth of earning outside the village on a large scale has to some extent |
| complicated the household economy. Traditionally a man of mature years should remain at home to look after his home while his sons go away to work. Some of these are young, for example VA 7, 8 and 9, who have separated from their father (VA 5), but others, like Ibrahim (SI 3) the plumber and Mehmet (SI 2), his brother, a carpenter, are mature men with growing children. In such a case, the household is left to the women, who may then have to do all the work on the land besides |
| XIII.1 | 202 |
| their own tasks. If there are adolescent sons, these may be responsible for the ploughing. Mustafa (VA 5) was away in Adana with all his sons all the winter, leaving the group of four households with no responsible male in charge. A household head is responsible to no one for the money he earns in the town, and is free to spend or save it as he wishes. One young man was away from his wife and children for four years, during which time he ceased to send either news or money. His brother went to bring him back and stayed with him for a year. The two wives worked the land, thus making a living, and were helped in he management of their affairs by Haci Ahmet, their husband’s mother’s brother. Haci Ahmet recently fetched back the elder brother and hi is to do his military service. A household head my send money through the post office to his wife, in which case she has to be able to manage money for herself, and to be a reliable partner. In the villages near Kayseri this has become the regular pattern, but the women in these villages are more educated, and where the habit is almost universal, they constantly find advice and assistance from other women. In Sakaltutan a man more often keeps his savings and brings them home in his own pocket. Sons who earn money in the town in theory hand it over to a common pool, over which their father has control. The father may encourage them to go, in order that they may so contribute. (1) I was seldom given a straight and reliable answer to questions about precise amounts of many earned or sent home. In general I was told that if an usta was in work he would send about 100 T.L. a month, but they often sent less. Osman’s (AG 1) son Mahmut (2), told me he could earn by hard wok on piece rates 12 T.L. a day, but that as he went every evening to a cafe with the “engineer”, he soon spent it. His father complained about his morals and the little money he had brought home, when he visited the village at the harvest. Fathers have a recognised and accepted right to the earnings of their sons, and in most cases receive a reasonable proportion of them. |
| XIII.1 | 203 |
| For households with two or more adult males, the division of labour is a |
| simple matter, making it possible even for the landless to maintain a reasonable degree of comfort. Thus Mustafa ( C 1), who is landless, had one son away as a skilled painter, and another in the Kayseri factory. He did little himself, staying in the village doing odd jobs, especially harvesting for his neighbours, and working occasionally on three donum of land he had recently purchased to make a vineyard. Where there is land, one son may stay to farm while the rest learn a trade. Thus the elder brother of Mahmut (son of AG 1), mentioned above, has no trade, and does not go away to work. At present he is doing his military service. A man profits from a large family of sons, and the immediate advantage is to him a much more important fact than concern for the poverty which will face a number of sons when they divide the land between them. Small families, on the other hand, unless they have adequate land, being unable to split their labour force in this way are bound to have a difficult time. In some cases, where a man feels he can safely leave his wife to look after the home he simply goes away to earn money himself. But unless he has a mother alive to share the work and the responsibility, it is very hard for his wife, and many men refuse to leave the village in such circumstances. Bilal often spoke of going away, “but”, he said, “how can I leave Nazife with all the work? If she is ill or the children are ill, she will not be able to go to the doctor, Who will take care of her?”. His neighbour Mehmet (BA 2) did go away for the winter as an unskilled labourer, and came home to find his wife dying. The problem is sometimes met by co-operation with kinsfolk. In the simplest form of co-operation, brothers do not separate on the death of the father but remain one household. Purely agricultural families may delay separation, but it is the poorer household, where one brother works the land while the others go to town for cash earnings, that is a really strong economic move for this arrangement. In Sakaltutan, at present, three sets of brothers share a |
| XIII.1 | 204 |
| house. One case is not typical. Mustafa (0), the elder brother failed to come home and even gave up sending money, so the younger brother went to find him - and also stayed. Mustafa has now been fetched home by Haci Ahmet (SA 2) as I related above. Of the three brothers Mehmet, Ismail and Duran, (DS 2 and 3), Duran has separated, but the elder two remain together. Ismail stays in |