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Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs (I)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Micheal E. Meeker
Affiliation:
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Extract

At the turn of the century the societies of the Near East provided materials for some of the most pressing anthropological and sociological issues of the day. W. Robertson Smith, Marcel Mauss, and Max Weber, to name only one representative of three national traditions, all devoted considerable attention to Semitic societies. Since that time, fewer sociologists and anthropologists have had a background in Semitic languages and literatures, and new materials from outside the classical and Semitic cultures have seemed to offer fresher, more challenging problems. In recent decades, Near Eastern societies have come to play a minor role in the development and discussion of anthropological problems. In general, only the tribal societies have maintained any prominence, and even these societies have only been test cases for a theory that was formulated by Evans-Pritchard for the Nuer of sub-Saharan Africa.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 243 note 1 Fans, Nabih Amin, trans., The Foundations of the Articles of Faith (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1963), p. 4.Google Scholar

page 244 note 1 The Tswana of South Africa and the Balinese are perhaps the best examples of societies with FBD marriage which have not been strongly influenced by the Near Eastern tradition.Google Scholar

page 244 note 2 Peristiany, J. G., ed., Honour and Shame (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965).Google Scholar

page 245 note 1 Granqvist, Hilma, Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village. Part I. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, vol. 3, no. 8 (Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1931);Google Scholaribid.Part II, vol. 6, no. 8 (1935);Google ScholarCohen, Abner, Arab Border-Villages of Israel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

page 247 note 1 Meeker, Michael E., ‘The Great Family Aghas of Turkey’, in Antoun, Richard T. and Hank, Iliya, ed., Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

page 248 note 1 The connection of the concept of honor with the form of lineages is not at all new. Most of the papers in Peristiany, Honour and Shame, mention this. In this paper, however, a further step has been taken. Honor is interpreted not as a way of talking about a social group, rather the social group is seen as an expression of honor. Most, if not all, of the papers in Honour and Shame adopt the contrary view that a form of social structure determines the quality of its concepts and values. Peristiany writes: ‘What do these groups have in common? This, it seems to me, is the crux of the problem. The papers collected here may allow the formulation of a tentative, an exploratory, answer. Honour and shame are the constant preoccupation of individuals in small scale, exclusive societies where face to face personal, as opposed to anonymous, relations are of paramount importance and where the social personality of the actor is as significant as his office’ (p. 11).Google Scholar In contrast with this, the view of this paper is more nearly a development of Evans-Pritchard's formulation of segmentation in relation to “situations and values,” see ‘The Nuer of the Southern Sudan’, in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ed., African Political Systems (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 286.Google Scholar

page 248 note 2 The principal references are Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949);Google ScholarPeters, Emrys, ‘The Proliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin of Cyrenaica’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 90 (1960), 2953;Google ScholarLewis, I. M., A Pastoral Democracy (London: Oxford University Press, 1961);Google ScholarGelner, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969);Google Scholar and Hart, David M., ‘Clan, Lineage, Local Community and the Feud in a Riflian Tribe’, in Peoples and Cultures of the Midle East, Vol. 2, ed. Sweet, Louise E. (New York: The Natural History Press, 1970).Google Scholar For a different view of these societies, see Berque, Jacques, Structures Sociales du Haut-Atlas (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955),Google Scholar and Bourdieu, Pierre, The Algerians (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962). The latter writers examine a wider set of phenomena than those considered by the corporate segmentary theorists, and the approach of this paper may recall some aspects of their treatments. Still, these writers, like the corporate segmentary theorists, maintain in essence a social structuralist position that is rejected in this paper.Google Scholar

page 249 note 1 These phrases are used explicitly by Gelner, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas, pp. 35 and 44. They have the value of pointing Out the connections of segmentary corporate theory with modern Western political thought. In other words, it is a theory of society in Western terms with little or no relation to indigenous conceptions of the significance of “political” action.Google Scholar

page 249 note 2 One of the best studies of such processes among rural Near Easterners is Cohen's, AbnerArab Border-Villages of Israel.Google Scholar

page 249 note 3 Peters, Emrys, ‘Some Structural Aspects of the Feud Among the Camel Herding Bedouin of Cyrenaica’, Africa, 37, 3 (1967), 261–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 250 note 1 Meeker, ‘The Great Family Aghas of Turkey’.Google Scholar

page 252 note 1 Goldziher, Ignaz, Muslim Studies, Vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 22.Google Scholar

page 253 note 1 Ibid. pp. 46–7.

page 253 note 2 Ibid. p. 48.

page 254 note 1 Ibid. p. 50.

page 255 note 1 The interpretation of segmentation in this paper also cuts the link between segmentation on the one hand and ecology and segment population on the other. The latter issues posed difficult problems for segmentary corporate theorists, since the balancing of segments could only obtain with respect to relatively stable ecological conditions and segment populations (see Peters, ‘The Proliferation of Segments’). On other grounds, it seems questionable to derive ideological categories, that is, native segmentary thinking, from a possible empirical result of this thinking. This position would require one to posit an “accidental” origin to such thought whenever it occurs since its persistence is rooted in a functional result. The existence of a similar segmentary ideology over a vast contiguous area would not be expected from such a theory, nor would one expect the constant reformulation of segmentary systems after periods of latency unless such reformulations were a result of a native realization and conscious application of the empirical results. All these points have become academic since Peters (‘Structural Aspects of Feud’) has shown that the empirical result of balancing does not obtain and cannot obtain given the character of segmentary ideologies and their typical context.Google Scholar

page 256 note 1 There is an extensive literature on such blocs among the Berbers by French sociologists. In addition to brief discussions in Berque, Structures Sociales, and Bourdieu's, The Algerians, there is an exhaustive study by Montagne, Robert, Les Berbères et le Makhzen dans le Sud du Maroc (Paris, 1930). I have not been able toconsult the latter. Berque mentions the Berber blocs in relation to the theories of Levi-Strauss.Google Scholar

page 256 note 2 For the hamûla Arabs, see Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, p. 14 n. 4.Google Scholar For the Black Sea Turks, see Meeker, Michael E., ‘The Black Sea Turks: A Study of Honor, Descent, and Marriage’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1970), p. 73.Google Scholar

page 256 note 3 Barth, Fredrik, Political Leadership among Swat Pathans, London School of Economics, Monographs on Social Anthropology no. 59 (London: Athlone Press, 1959).Google Scholar

page 257 note 1 Barth's Swat Pathans have a total genealogy, but in this case the ‘total society’ is a group of landholders in the midst of a large majority of landless men excluded from the total genealogy. This occurrence of blocs in such a situation is understandable in terms of the generalizations in the text, since the blocs in Swat have more to do with all the people of Swat while the genealogies are the affair of the Pathans alone. So again the blocs are an expression of a structure not included in a total genealogy, as in the case of clan societies.Google Scholar

page 257 note 2 See Cuisenier, Jean, ‘Endogamie et Exogamie dans le Manage Arabe’, l'Homme, 2, 2 (1962), 80105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a criticism of the structuralist approach as well as an evaluation of sociopolitical interpretations of parallel cousin marriages, see Chelhod, Joseph, ‘Le Manage avec Ia Cousine Parallèle dans le Système Arabe’, l'Honzme 5, 3–4 (1965), 113173.Google Scholar

page 259 note 1 In the Near East, other meanings besides ‘significances’ are mediated in the idiom of descent. For example, ‘love’ is also mediated but this broaches a matter that has been carefully skirted in this paper, since it introduces many other problems (see Part II).Google Scholar

page 260 note 1 Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Raw and the Cooked (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 8.Google Scholar

page 261 note 1 There are concepts of the self and conscience in Of, but they are not, curiously enough, related to the present issues. Conscience is not associated with a moral law, and the self is not associated with personal character.Google Scholar

page 262 note 1 For a description of such variations in Spanish society and history see Pitt-Rivers, Julian, ‘Honour and Social Status’,Google Scholar and Baroja, Julio Caro, ‘Honour and Shame: A Historical Account of Several Conflicts’, in Peristiany, , ed., Honour and Shame.Google Scholar

page 263 note 1 See Pitt-Rivers, Julian, ‘Honour and Social Status’.Google Scholar

page 264 note 1 Goldziher, , Muslim Studies, 1, 22, 48.Google Scholar

page 265 note 1 In particular, this is true in the limited case of ‘sexual honor’ (namus), that is, conventions concerning the control of women. In Of, for example, these conventions are associated with the customs of the early Muslims and their ability to prevail in the Holy War. More generally, namus can also apply to all village custom, but this sense of the word has not been explored here. All customs are attributable to some saying of the Prophet, a tradition of the early Muslims, an event that occurred among them, or some passage in the Koran. There are even explanations of why one lays a spoon with its face down after use rather than up, or vice versa according to the custom.Google Scholar

page 266 note 1 I have borrowed the metaphor from Levi-Strauss, C., ‘Introduction a l'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss’, in Sociologie et Anthropologie by Marcel Mauss (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), p. xlix. The analysis of mana as a “signifiant flottant” is not unrelated to the present problem of sharaf, I believe, but a thorough analysis would require the introduction of the problem of baraka and a considerable elaboration of the present argument.Google Scholar

page 268 note 1 Of course, what has always shocked or mystified Westerners is precisely that the “handling of women” involves convention and not a moral conscience. For a concise catalogue of many such conventions, see Antoun, Richard T., ‘On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Tradition’, American Anthropologist, 70 (1968), 671–97,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Canaan, Tewfik, ‘Unwritten Laws Affecting the Arab Woman of Palestine’, Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, 2 (1931), 172203.Google Scholar

page 268 note 2 There is a conscious realization of this difference. Villagers in Of who have experience in the cities discuss the logic of custom (âdet) and the logic of style (moda). They see the former as appropriate to the village and the latter as a feature of high society in Istanbul. Women talk about what they may wear in their natal village, what they may wear in the town where they live, and what they may wear when visiting relatives in the city. The discussion proceeds in terms not related with preferences, but with the appropriate communal custom. For a few pietists, these matters are strictly defined by a religious interpretat?on of village, town, and urban society.Google Scholar

page 270 note 1 Bourdieu, Pierre, The Algerians, p. 89.Google Scholar