| But not only does the structure of the women’s social relations differ from that of the men, the division between men and women itself is one of the most important facts of the social structure. This division, which is expressed in division of labour and the village concept of social function, in segregation of men and women, except for intimate kin, and in the low status of women as against men, divides the village into two distinct societies, two separate webs, as it were, side by side, and with odd strands running back and forth between them, linking each point in each web with a few points in the other web, Each household would be represented by a little cluster of such cross strands. 6. Other relations This picture of a web of relationships leads me on to consider personal relationships which lie outside the groups and units we have so far considered. These personal ties are not different, except in intensity, from those which make up the units and groups. They are, in the main, kin ties, but they include also relationships of buyer and seller, craftsman and |
| XVI.6 | p. 266 |
| client, fellow craftsmen, personal friends or acquaintances, and so on. Although they cannot be summed up in terms of units of groups as part of the social structure, they are influences by the group structure of the society. Matrilateral ties within the village are different in kind from ties across village boundaries, and an economic transaction with a close neighbour is likely to follow a different course, and have different consequences, from a transaction with a stranger. That is to say that, although these relationships do not form part of the group structure, they are not independent of this structure, but take place within it and are influenced by it. In turn, they influence relationships between the groups, especially the social units, the households and the villages. Inter-village relations are primarily along the lines of inter-marriage, creating affinal and matrilateral kin ties. Much economic Activity, many personal acquaintances outside kinship, and many fresh marriages come out of these ties. Beyond the personal ties with surrounding villages, and extending to Kayseri and other nearby town, are a set of important relations to the society of which the village forms a part. The economic relation of the migrant craftsmen has a personal element, but apart from these, relations are almost entirely with the government and are of an impersonal kind - the sale of surplus grain to the government depot, the orders which come down from impersonal authority above through the more personal link to the local müdür, the drafting of the village young men for service with the army, the imposition of the new western legal system, and so on. Perhaps these are not a part of the village |
| social structure, but an account of the village must take note of them. What is and what is not part of the village social life? The decision on where to draw the line in a description cannot be solved by thinking about what constitutes “society”, but only by deciding in detail what seems indispensable to the completeness and comprehensibility of the account offered. Here I wish merely to say that in addition to the personal relations of all types in the village society, there exist a set of |
| XVI.6 | p. 267 |
| impersonal, or less personal, relationships whose impact on the village is at least as important. 7. Conclusion. The test of analogy is appropriateness. If the picture leads to a better understanding, a deeper insight, then the analogy has done its work. But it must also be remembered that with a deeper insight, on one score, an analogy may also bring a dense fog to befuddle us on another. I used a moment ago the analogy of a web - two webs, as a matter of fact. Webs are common in anthropological writing, and justly so, because the analogy is enlightening. But this analogy has its dangers. In fact, no society consists, like a web, of lines joining points. People are no more like points than the relations between them are so many straight lines. Equally, no society consists, like a building, of units which are simply piled one on another, nor, in spite of the array of authority that has said the contrary, does it consist of parts, distinguishable from each other, but related in a systemic balance of interdependence, like the structure of living organisms. All these analogies are useful, that is enlightening, but all of them, if taken too literally, crete fog while they shed light. The attempt to set down in words my experience of the village in which I lived has followed lines of thought, used models and vocabulary, based on these other analogies, aiming, not at the kind of report in terms of personalities, which a novelist or a traveller would have given, but rather at an analytical and systematic description of the social relations within the society. But this is only one of many possible ways of treating the material, and if it has the advantage of making some things about the society clearer, and opening the way for comparative sociology, it also has the danger of making us forget that we are not dealing with dehydrated straight lines between points but with people. The observed reality is not a structure or a web or a set of relations, but the activities and feelings, the miseries and joys, |