| no formal organisation, and its senior member has no power or ritual office, is in a sense a corporate group in that a serious quarrel with one member involves a quarrel with all members, and that if one member is in a fight all his close agnates will at once come to his aid. Although members of one kabile often live as neighbours, the kabile is not necessarily a neighbourhood group. Such neighbourhood groups are distinguishable, but they are vague and their composition depends on the point of reference. For each household, there is a circle of close neighbours among whom are found agnatic and uterine kin, with whom there is day to day intimacy. Neighbourhood is the main factor in the groups which form for conversation during the slack part of the day, and especially during the evening. The overlap between these groups, and the mutual reinforcement or neighbourhood and kinship ties, make it impossible to disentangle the relationships which constitute them, or to analyse out of them any precise pattern. |
| XVI.3 | p. 260 |
| A more formal extension of the conversation groups among the men can be seen in the institution of the odalar. In these, during the winter, groups of men meet regularly to pass the time in warmth and congenial company. The composition of these groups os largely a matter of kabile, partly, also, of matrilateral and affinal ties, and of neighbourhood. In the depth of winter, nearly every man frequents an oda for most of the day time. In this section, I have discussed the groupings within the village. These groups are not definable in precise social terms, even less in spatial terms. The kabile is of no definite depth, and the neighbourhood groups are even vaguer. Within limits, the household is the unit of which these groups are formed, though the men and women of a household do not always follow the same grouping in their social life. 4. Stratification From units and groupings we turn to consider the horizontal differences in the social life. One of the most striking facts about the villages is the absence of any formal barriers to social intercourse between people at different levels in the social scale. The poorest villager will always be treated politeness by the richest, and no one is forbidden entry to an ev or oda. Persons of the upper level do not, associating with each other, leave the lower level to form its own society. Rather, the rich and influential gather round them a group of lesser villagers, and become the leaders of vague followings. Such groups consist |
| partly of those who attend a given oda, partly of the kin of the influential man. But there is no socially recognised system of patronage of the poor by the well-to-do. It is simply that, on the whole, the village leaders do not associate with each other, but rather with their kinsmen and neighbours. To say this, however, is not to say that there is social equality between all members of the village. People vary in status, but status must be thought of, not in terms of membership of social classes or of privileged groups, but in terms of |
| XVI.4 | p. 261 |
| personal prestige and influence. The placing of people in some order of status is, therefore, dependent on my own estimates, from which it is difficult to disentangle my personal feelings about individual people. I have to give the reader the result of my impressions of the importance and prestige of various villagers, and of the factors which give prestige, impressions formed by a great number of odd incidents - the seating order in the odalar, casual remarks about each other, respect shown in gesture or tone of voice. The main factor in prestige is undoubtedly wealth. But it is not enough simply to possess wealth, a man must own an oda, dispense hospitality and show a measure of generosity. The household of Haci Mehmet (T 1), which had a reputation for meanness, did not carry as much weight in the village as the combination of wealth and the religious title “Haci” would lead one to expect. Haci Ali (DT 1) on the other hand; though not a rich man in terms of land - he probably held about fifty dönüm - had a great deal of prestige. This was partly the result of his not unsuccessful attempts to get all important guests in the village into his oda, partly the result of his being a Haci, but, I think mainly the result of his father’s prestige in the village. It may also be due in part to the fact that all his kabile were loyal to him as the senior member of the kabile, and they were all themselves respected members of the village. Haci Ahmet (SA 2) was no richer than Haci Mehmet (T 1) but he was considered an honourable man, and had a reputation for helping the needy - he provided the meal for the village elders at the wedding of his neighbour, Hasan’s son, Durmus (VK). Wealth is not then a guarantee of high status, but it is a necessary condition, for a man who cannot afford to keep an oda to entertain his neighbours and distinguished guests cannot achieve high status. Perhaps the second most important factor in status is religious learning and piety. Piety is assumed to go with moral worthiness, though it does not always do so. Thus, old Ibrahim (AK 1) was both despised for his dirtiness and his |
| morals, but |
| XVI.4 | p. 262 |
| treated with formal respect, because he knew much of the Koran, and had a reputation for Koranic spells. Reverence for their piety contributed greatly to the prestige of Haci Ahmet and Haci Ali. Age has much bearing on influence and prestige. Haydar (FB 1) was much respected, although he kept to himself, because not only was he wealthy by village standards, but he was learned, upright and always, so I was told, ready to lend money without interest if he could spare it - a really good man. But he was only about forty years old, and consequently he cannot be said to rank high in the village, or to wield any influence. On the other hand, poor old men who were upright and pious were treated with great respect. The wealth to which I have referred is largely thought of as wealth in land and animals. Money is not considered of much prestige value, except in so far as people use it to buy land or animals. The cash earning power of the migrant ustular is therefore not a direct factor in their prestige, and in fact even their better clothes and their wrist watches di not seem to carry much weight. On the other hand, their comparative sufficiency, combined with the title “usta”, which is a word of social respect - one villager always addressed me as “usta” - puts them for the most part well in the middle of above the middle of the social scale. They belong among the majority of the villagers who have enough land adequately to feed and clothe their families, and to conduct the marriages of their children with proper ceremony. The unskilled labourers on the other hand, the “amele”, belong in status with the poor, the pedlars and the shepherds. As I have pointed out2, there is more correspondence of status, for the ustalar actually from the middle and upper households of the village, the ameleler from the poor and landless who also supply the pedlars and herdsmen. Status in the village is partly indicated by the mode of address. A lad will be addressed by his name without any title, |
| XVI.4 | p. 263 |
| but as soon as a man reaches somewhere about the age of twenty five, he is usually addressed by non-kin as “aga”, placed after his name - thus “Mustafa aga”. Sometimes “efendi” is used, but this is rather more respectful. After 2 See Chapter XII. Sections 1 and 3. |
| the return of three haci from Mecca, I referred to Haci Ahmet (SA 2) as Ahmet and was reproved, and told that henceforth he had to be referred to as Haci Ahmet Efendi. The title “efendi” is always used in speaking of men of special prominence of wealth, The title “bey”, which is the usual word of address in the towns amongst educated classes, the village reserves for town visitors. Sometimes even the new schoolmasters and health officers are, in view of their education, referred to as “bey”. The keeping of bey for townsmen seems to indicate an assumption that the towns have a monopoly of the upper class. Differentiation in terns of status and prestige is a measure in terms mainly of wealth, and of piety, and morals. But such differentiation is not used as a basis for the exclusion of anyone within the village from social intercourse with anyone else. In practice, some of the poor men refrain from visiting often the odalar, as far as I can judge from shame. But the fact that some people show a sense of shame for their poverty does not constitute exclusiveness on the part of the better off, and this is clearly proved by the fact that some of the very poor do in fact mix freely in the odalar and in general village society. Status, in the sense in which I have been using it, belongs to the head of households, but a man’s status reflects, with due adjustment fr age, on his children, and on his women fold. Wealth allows them to be cleanly and decently dressed, allows him to marry them with due ceremony, while poverty prevents him from so doing. But beyond the household, this no longer applies. Members of the same kabile may vary considerably in status. Bilal (VT 1), was respected, and would rank among the middle villagers, in spite of his poverty, whereas his father’s brother’s children - Mustafa and Ibrahim (VT 3 and 4) - belonged at the lower end of the social scale. Ali (CS 1) was rich, and |
| XVI.4 | p. 264 |
| among the village leaders, but his close agnates Mehmet and Sayit (CS 4 and 3) were middling households. The same differences are, as I said at the beginning, noticeable among the vaguer neighbourhood and oda groups, because there is often a tendency for these groups to form round one of the wealthier households, and they always contain people of every level of village society. I have been speaking of wealth and poverty, but it is important to remember that, though the difference between landlessness and ownership of a hundred acres is considerable, these so called wealthy households do not have more than a comfortable sufficiency, and the standard of life which they maintain, the details of day to day life, do not show any striking luxuries, nor |
| really differ markedly in pattern from the life of the poor households. Tentatively, therefore, I would say that social differentiation in terms of wealth is played down almost to the maximum extent possible in the society of these villages. 5. Men and Women. Cutting right through the social units and groups which I have so far discussed is the division of the village society into men and women. In fact, all I have said in this chapter about the social structure needs to be qualified in the light of this distinction - for what I have said applies only in part to the women. Even the household is less of a unit from the women’s point of view, since women are in a sense members both of their natal and their conjugal households. The neighbourhood groups of the women are different in composition from those of the men, the women do not belong except indirectly to their husband;s kabile, and they have no oda groups. They form groups of their own, and the ties of kin and close neighbourhood are expressed by gossip groups, by petty borrowings, and by such day to day intimacies. For a woman her status follows very roughly the status of her husband, but age carries more weight than wealth or other considerations. Old women are normally treated with deference, though old and poor widows, who were thought shiftless, receive |
| XVI.5 | p. 265 |
| little respect. Thus Zekiye, mother of Ibrahim (VT 4), and widow of four men, who having quarrelled with her daughter in law and left the house, was forced to make her food by begging, was generally treated with little respect, and mention of her was always good for a laugh, but Anis, the mother of the wives of Bilal (VT 1) and Cemal (VA 12), although she lived on her own and was almost as poor as, and more senile than, Zekiye, was treated with a fair amount of respect. Old widows of respectable houses enjoy much higher status among the women than their sons among the men, and on the other hand, a young wife of an elder will have no special respect shown her. Where, however, age and a highly respected husband coincide, a woman will rank high among other women. Thus, one of the leading women in the village was Haci Ahmet’s first and only permanent wife; she was also sister to Ali (CS 1). Although elderly, she was far from senile, and was, in fact, a powerful personality. |