| knowledge of culturally different behaviour, they are growing used to thinking in terms of money rather than of wealth in kind, their horizon has expanded enormously to take in such matters as the war in Korea |
| XV.5 | p. 253 |
| and the distinction between Europe and America. They know, for example, that love matches are already becoming the rule among the city people of Ankara and Istanbul, and even compare their own customs with these new and strange ones. It is obvious that these cultural contacts must lead to some questioning of the customary values of the society, but the difficulty arises in attempting to refine this platitude, and specify to what extent and in what ways they will do so. What will be the effect on the social order of the village when the present younger generation who are growing up with interests in motor cars and pin up girls from American magazines, become the village elders? I do not see how the question can easily be answered, because whatever changes take place in village society, there can be no precise allotting of the factors which bring about these changes. 6. Conclusion Although as I have said at the beginning of this chapter, no overall change or pattern within the village is detectable, the relations between the town and the rest of the nation are changing, in two opposing directions at once. Village contact with and dependence on the towns, economically, politically and culturally, is increasing rapidly. I have already said enough to illustrate this process. But it is important not to confuse contact and dependence with assimilation. It does not follow that because the village is drawn more and more into relations with the towns that village life therefore becomes like town life. In fact, the westernisation of town life has in some ways, increased, not lessened, the gap between the villages and the upper classes in the towns. The world of knives and forks, cinemas and electric lights, newspapers and love marriages is more remote socially from the villages than the urban life of harems and medressehs of a generation ago. While the towns have been moving towards a European way of life, the villages have remained more or less as they were, insulated both by physical and social isolation, and by their religious |
| XV.6 | p. 254 |
| loyalty. The villagers do not think of their way of life as changing, in spite of the |
| conspicuous material changes, and the social changes which I have just listed, and which, taken one by one, they readily admit. Consistently in discussion and in casual remarks, they expressed confidence in the stability and permanence of village society, and repudiated the idea of change. Although such expressions of confidence so mean that there is no social change, they do mean there is no rapid change, nothing one could call disintegration. One does not find such symptoms of rapid social change as a sense of insecurity and doubt, agitation for reform, or sentimental regret for a golden past. Even it it is being modified, the internal social order of the village is very definitely intact. The refusal to admit change is at least in part religious. As I tried to make plain in the last chapter, not only the patterns of behaviour, but the whole universe as the village sees it, is accounted for and guaranteed by Islam. Their beliefs lead them to resist and ignore as far as possible government orders or cultural influences which they regard as impious, and in a society where so much detail of behaviour is believed to rest directly on religious revelation, such resistance covers all the important institutions of the society. It is also impossible for them to admit that these institutions are changing without some surrender of faith. The village is protected against the influences and conscious intentions working to reform their social order by a religious umbrella. Yet already there are holes in the umbrella, even if the village does not notice them. The natural laws of science are beginning to replace Allah as the direct controller of the universe; the villagers turn for settlement of disputes to secular courts dispensing a secular system of law; they look for the appointing of their religious officials to a secular government; some of them enter employment where the performance of namaz is difficult because of time keeping. It would seems that these and other innovations are bound in the end to disturb |
| XV.6 | p. 255 |
| the pious faith of the village, and to weaken the resistance of the present social order to influences tending to change it But we are back at guesses. For the present the village welcomes material changes and technical improvements, in the confidence that their village social organisation is unchanging. If this is not true, at least that social organisation is still very much alive, and there is no evidence to show that it will not succeed in adapting to the changing environment without disaster of disintegration. |
| XVI. | p. 256 |
| THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE 1. Social Structure. As I have said in the preface, I do not regard “social structure” as a precisely defined technical term, but as an analogy, the significance of which varies with the context. I take it roughly to refer to the pattern of units and groups, and to the divisions within the village. The groups and units are not elements in the structure, like bricks in a building, because they overlap and cut across each other, and are often ill defined and vague. The analogy of bricks in a building applies most happily to the visible physical units, the households and the villages. Besides these, the village may be divided from other points of view, in ways which, using another metaphor, we commonly call vertical and horizontal. In brief, considering the structure of the society, I aim only at a recapitulation of some of the main points I have made in this thesis. 2. Social Units Two institutions stand out as recognisable and precisely defined units in the social structure, the village and the household. The are both stable residential groups, clearly visible on the ground, with spatial boundaries which are known to everyone. They are both recognised in the political and legal systems of the Republic. The are both property owning groups, and both have corporate economic and social responsibilities. Membership of them places the member in a special relationship with other members of the unit. It is not merely that recognition of common membership by itself constitutes a relationship, s for example, with nationality, but that the physical consequences of membership automatically create a number of close personal ties between a member and the rest of the group. These generalisations apply in different degrees, with different implications, to households and to villages. The households are the basic social units, the procreative family |
| XVI.2 | p. 257 |
| groups headed invariably by parents, and containing their children and patrilineal grandchildren. this unit holds almost all property in common, and is defined in the village by the economic criterion of joint consumption. The |
| people of one household work and eat together, and usually sleep under one roof. The only close personal ties between men and women occur, or at least originate, within the household. It is built on the union of a man and a woman in marriage, and the kin ties mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister arise from this union. The personal relationships within the household are characterised , not only by mutual duties, and by subordination and superordinatlion, but to a greater degree than any others in the society by spontaneity and mutual affection. The village is a much larger unit. Its definition is spatial - it consists of the people permanently living in its dwelling area. The bonds lining its members are still based on physical proximity, which, in a group as highly stable as Sakaltutan, means an intimate knowledge of each others affairs, and a life long acquaintance. But it does not preclude socially organised hostility, or personal indifference. Internally, the village contains a complex social structure; facing outwards, the village is a clear social unit, whose members are grouped together, as against the outside world, by the fact of long residence within it. Communal affairs are treated generally with a shrug of the shoulders, and there is little sense of joint responsibility. In fact, the economic co-operation of the village, though not comparable to that between members of a household, is nevertheless essential to survival. The common pasturage and the service of communal herdsman are an indispensable part of the agricultural organisation of each household. But this matter does not call for deliberation, or joint activities. The herdsman are appointed by a simple customary method, the rights in the common pasture are not in danger of being denied, and pasture does not require maintenance. A similar lack of joint responsibility is true of the |
| XV.2 | p. 258 |
| communal religious matters. So long as an imam is appointed, most of the villagers do not mind much who he is. The fabric of the Mosque is left, with success, to individual initiative of the skilled or the well to do, who are glad to perform the service for the prestige it brings them, and the reward it earns them in the next world. It does not fall as a burden on the community as a whole. The same lack of joint responsibility becomes, in the communal relations with the government, indifference and resignation. As far as possible these matters are left to the village representative, the muhtar. The administrative acts of |
| political superiors are accepted with resignation, and practically the only interest the villagers show is in paying as little as possible to the village funds. There are no signs of political or communal initiative. It is assumed that the village affairs do not require any attention. The important things within the village, the appointing of herdsman and of an imam happen according to well established precedents, about which there is no question. For anyone to show initiative would be to expose himself to attack and criticism, to risk strife in the village. The assumption that the village affairs do not need attention, and the absence of political initiative, are not a symptom of communal weakness, but rather a consequence of the closeness and solidarity of the village society. I have use the term social unit for the village and the household because they are clearly defined, spatially and socially, as against the vaguer groups to which I now come. 3. Social Groups. The quarter, unlike the village, is not a clearly defined group. Although the Lower Quarter and Upper Quarter were recognised by constant reference in day to day affairs, the boundary between them was not definite, and they had no communal rights or responsibilities. Those who live towards the village extremes, and belong without question to one quarter of the other, were in opposition, expressed by joking, by sneers and accusations, and |
| XVI.3 | p. 259 |
| occasionally by actual fighting. But this opposition is not clear cut. There are many personal kinship ties, kabile loyalties and attitudes of respect which cut across it. The only kinship group is the agnatic group of households whose heads have common patrilineal ancestors within three or four generations, called kabile. These groups are primarily political groups for the defence of the members in quarrels, but this function has become less important with the establishment of efficient law and order. They are also kin groups, with close personal and spontaneous affection between the members, or at least, even where there have been members of the same kabile, there is much visiting of houses, very often made easy by their being next door neighbours, and there is mutual assistance in time of economic troubles. Day to day relations may vary, and seem to be largely a matter of residence - where brothers for example do not live next door, they may associate more with their immediate neighbours, who are, in such cases, likely to be their mother’s or wive’s kin. The kabile, though it has |