| 3. | Locality and Kinship |
| Apart from the large scale local units such as the village and the quarter, every household can be thought of as belonging to a neighbourhood group with vague boundaries, more or less centring on itself. Very often this group consists mainly of close kin, members of the same kabile, and perhaps matrilateral and affinal kin. Conversely a large part of a man’s kin, those with whom he has most pressing and active ties, are also his closest neighbours. With a residentially stable society, with no exogamous social groups, this coincidence between kinship and neighbourhood makes it doubtful how much of the intimacy between such neighbours is due to kinship and how much to neighbourhood. Certainly some of the behaviours of close neighbourliness are the same as those of close kinship. From childhood upwards, neighbours make free with each other’s house, play, talk and work together, know the details of each other’s affairs, and very often end with inter-marriage. Such close familiarity is also the stuff of close kinship ties within the village. Indeed, often for a woman, her most intimate associates will be her non-kin neighbours, especially if she is in a village far from her own people. Haydar (FB 1) and Haci Ali (VA 13) were close neighbours - their fathers had moved together away from their old homes in the centre of the village, to the site they now share a little apart from any other households. The two men were intimate friends and Haci Ali and his sons were to be found in Haydar’s oda far more often than in the company of their agnatic kinsmen. The relationship between neighbours is clearly recognised, the word “Komsu” - neighbour - having as in English a friendly intimate tone. I saw young Mehmet (SC 2) helping Osman (AG 1) to build a dovecote. My attempt to discover some special reason for this unusual co-operation came up against the repeated reply “komsuluk”, neighbourliness. Often when I asked visitors to the village if they were kinsmen of someone, they would reply yes, but on being pressed to give details would say that there was no kin connection, what they had meant was that they were neighbours. The word used for kinship, “akraba”, covers any kind of kin ties, including affinal. The “yengeler”, who, as I mentioned above, go to fetch the bride at a wedding, and also the larger party of men who go with them, should always include some non-kin neighbours, since they say the new gelin will have to get on with her neighbours as well as with her new kinsfolk, and these should, therefore, have some part in the ceremony. On the other hand, distance may weaken a kinship tie. Bilal had close, if not always cordial, ties with his father’s brother’s son, Mustafa, his next door neighbour. During a quarrel between the two wives, Bilal remarked to me about Mustafa’s wife, “This is mine, too.” But neither of them had much to do |
| with Ibrahim who lived at the other end of the village. Mustafa (VA 5) had no very close day to day associations with his brothers, Ahmet and Sevket, who lived at the other end of the village. Equally, the three branches of PB, though no very far away from each other, were not close neighbours and did not maintain very close ties. Iba (FA 3) serves as an example both ways. His day to day associates were his neighbours - his house belongs to his wife and his neighbours were her people. But when he needed help with the harvest because he was ill, it was his kabile from the centre of the village that came to help him. Similar examples both of kinship maintained in spite of distance, and of kinship allowed to lapse because of it, could readily be quoted from among the women. I have already discussed the composition of the odalar in detail showing the influence of locality relative to agnatic and matrilateral kinship. Similar observations might be made for the out-of-doors group that forms spontaneously during off seasons or in the evenings when the weather is fine enough. These groups are even more informal that the oda groups - it is simpler to join a group sitting and talking in the open than to enter an oda. An analysis of these groups would probably show that locality counts even higher in their composition that was the case for the oda groups. One group, of the Upper Quarter, would form in the space outside Haci Ahmet’s house, another, consisting mainly of users of the communal DS-DG oda and DT, congregated in the open space near the Mosque. Sometimes a group would form on the other side of this space right by the Mosque, of people living nearby, but more often they would go either down to the school or across the road to the Lower Quarter group. The members of the AM oda often come down to the school to sit. Even the three brothers (KU 1, 2 and 3), who lived at the far end of the village, used to come down here - why I do not know, for they seemed to lack any obvious motives, but they were the only exception to the formation of these groups by locality. The largest and most permanent group sat either by the school or across the road outside Selahaddin’s (BA 5) oda. Sometimes there would be a group in both places. This group was augmented by passers-by along the village road and by men from the Upper Quarter or from neighbouring villages waiting for lorries. Generally speaking, all these groups were local, and if a man joined a group which he did not normally sit with or which was not near his house, he was usually treated with a slight degree of extra interest and extra politeness due to a guest - this is a matter of nuance, on which I would not like to speak too confidently. |
| Another joint social activity illustrates the same overlap between kinship and neighbourhood. On the whole, unless there is a special reason for co- operation, all agricultural work is done strictly by the household concerned. But during the harvest, though they reap and thresh household by household they join forces for bringing the crops in from the field. A man will announce his intention of bringing his wheat and rye in early the next morning. His kabile, his other kinsmen, and his neighbours, and anyone else who wishes, come with their “kagnilar” - ox carts - at dawn, and all go to the fields to bring in his crops to the threshing floor. They arrive back in the village together, a fine sight, and having unloaded, they go together and eat a special meal provided by the owner of the crops they have brought in. Although to provide such a meal is costly and no small reward, it is undoubtedly less than the service rendered. The act must, therefore, be considered a spontaneous service and it is performed not only by a man’s close kin, but by his neighbours also. Ali Osman helped Yakup (AK 2) in this way, with whom he had no special connection, not even close familiarity; and Bilal did the same for Osman (PB 2) with whom he had similarly no special ties. In this section I have tried to bring out the point that within the village, especially in the smaller local units into which every household fits, the relations of neighbourhood and the relations of kinship overlap and reinforce each other, since both are based on the same easy day to day intimacy and similar help and co-operation in small ways. Kinship is, of course, a more permanent and more definite bond, carrying with it more precise obligations and help on a large scale, even to the point of fighting. But the quality of kinship ties in the village is partly shaped by neighbourhood. The intimacy between two households is not simply due to the fact that their heads are brothers, but that it so happens that the brothers are also neighbours. That this is so becomes clearer still if we consider the whole field of kinship ties, including ties outside the village. This between brothers are at once the most consistently local ties between brothers are at once the most consistently local ties and the strongest. Ties between affinal and matrilateral kin vary in warmth with the distance of the parties for each other, and outside the village such ties take on a more formal character involving, as the first duty, the provision of hospitality and a footing in an otherwise strange environment. |
| 4. | Age and Seniority |
| This section I insert here, although it forms a digression, because it seems to tie up more with the general topic of kinship than with any other chapter heading, and is too small to stand on its own. |
| In their treatment of the age principle, as in general in their society, the villagers have no formal groups or age sets. Such age groupings as occur are spontaneous and informal, and being of a certain age never constitutes a bar to entering a house or room or to joining a group in the open. On the other hand, seniority is constantly recognised in social relationships between both men and women, and old age is held in high respect. Among men, four rough categories are recognised at least linguistically - children, “cock”, youths, “delikanlik”, young “young” here means in the prime of life, up to about fifty. The “delikanlik” are the unmarried or newly married young men up to about twenty-five. At about twenty all young men grow moustaches - there are no clean shaven adult men in the villages. At about the age of fifty or so a man allows his beard to grow, this being the sign that he has reached the state of “ihtiyar”. A beard carries religious prestige. The only young men who wear beards are either imams, or of special religious zeal and knowledge. In the odalar, all ages of men gather, but seniority plays a large part in their conduct. Small children must keep quiet, and behave decently, or they are ordered out. Young men will say little unless there is a gap in the conversation, or they are called upon. The older men sit nearest the hearth, and if one of the older men of the village, such as Hasan (VA 1) arrives, a place is immediately made for him besides the hearth. Every time a man in middle years enters an oda, his rough equals all shove down, forcing him to take a seat above them, while the new arrival tries to seat himself below them. It is always left to juniors to insist on paying respect, and such respect is always deprecated by the recipient. If a man wish to drink, a boy will bring him a drinking cup from the water jar always kept in every room used for human habitation, bowing respectfully as he does so. The drinker will offer the cup to anyone senior to him who is sitting near him, who almost invariably refuses. Similar scenes occur when coffee is drunk, every one refusing to take a cup until all whom he considers senior to himself have drunk. Informally, the villagers do sort themselves out into rough age groups, or rather the young men detach themselves and form groups on their own. Even in the odalar, the young men sometimes form a group of their own and conduct a conversation in low tones at the lower end of the oda. In the open, these groups are more marked, and one often finds the delikanliklar sitting together in a group. At weddings, when they are dancing, if the older men join in the young men will stand back. I once saw a group of fifteen year old boys give way to the youths in a dance in this way, and soon afterwards the youths in turn gave way to the more mature men. |
| Though with less formality, the same principles are at work among the women. Older women are treated with respect, and always given a place to sit round the tandir, younger women and girls gather in groups of roughly similar age. Before and after a girl or young woman dances, she kisses the hand of all the old women present, and similarly on all occasions for exchange of greetings, a young woman kisses the hand of her seniors. The same respect is shown by girls to their senior male relatives, and by young men to the senior women of their household. When Haci Ali (BK 3) came home on leave after a long absence in the army, his neighbours and kinsmen came to him where he sat among them in a large ev. The children and younger adult women came and kissed his hand, which he would allow them to do without interrupting his conversation; his equals among the men he would stand up and embrace, or shake by the hand; his elders - both men and women - he would stand up to embrace and then kiss their hands. The last act of a bride before mounting her horse when leaving her home is to kiss the hands of her uncles and her father. Letters home from men on military service consist almost entirely of a list of all kin and neighbours who should be remembered, with their appropriate greeting written out in full separately for each person. Respect for age goes beyond these formalities; the old people wield a considerable power in the household and in the community. An old man expects his sons to work for and wait on him and an old woman looks to the young women of the household to do most of the housework, and to her sons, if need be, to keep her. |
| VII | MEN AND WOMEN |
| 1. | Division of Labour |
| The division of labour between the sexes follows the lines familiar in most human societies, the men being responsible for the main sources of livelihood, the women for the care of the house and children and the preparation of food. What is of interest is not so much the details of this division, as the degrees of strictness with which it is observed and its place in the total social organisation. The various tasks which are necessary to the village life might be arranged in a list, starting with things only a man can do, and continuing through things which men usually do, things which either sex may do, to things which are |