Page 193 - Arabian Studies (V)

Women *s Inheritance of Land in Highland Yemen 181
propremcnt parier alt6rees: ellcs jouent toujours, identiques & elles-
memes, mais dans unc conjoncturc familiale differente.
Pierre Bourdieu has made a similar criticism of Cuisenier’s analytical
method in Cuisenier’s writings on the other ideal ‘rule’ of rural family
organisation—parallel cousin marriage. See fns. 1 and 12 (129, 131) in ‘La
parente comme representation et comme vo!ont6’ in Esquisse d’une thtorie
de la pratique, Geneva, 1972. Bourdieu correctly criticises Cuisenier for
treating as a sociological type what to the actors is a tendentious ideal.
So far as I have been able to discover, Bourdieu nowhere fully discusses
the question of women’s rights to inheritance, though there are references
to rural practices in Le deracinement: la crise de /’agriculture traditionnelle
en Alggrie, (written with Abdelmalek Sayad) Paris, 1964 and in ‘La parente’
in the Esquisse. In ‘La parente’ Bourdieu cites the disinheriting of women
as a factor contributing to the solidarity of la famille indivise (op. cit., 120-
1):
... les strategies successorales, qui visent & attacher le plus d’hommes
possible au patrimoine en leur assurant I’egalite devant Heritage et en
garantissant 1’unite du patrimoine par l’exher6dation des femmes, intro-
duisent une contradiction inevitable non seulement en mena?ant la terre
ancestrale d’emiettement en cas de division egale entre des hdritiers tr£s
nombreux, mais surtout en placant au coeur meme du systeme le principe
d’une competition pour le pouvoir sur l’economie et la politique domes-
tiques: competition et conflit entre le pere et les fils ... ; competition et
conflit entre les frdres ou entre les cousins. ...
Bourdieu’s choice of the word exhertdation is ambiguous since it implies
not that women have no claim on inheritance (and land) but that the claim
is simply denied. The former does indeed make for solidarity but the latter
is laden with tension. Bourdieu’s treatment of women’s power and roles in
‘La parente’ is less entirely negative ihan his treatment in ‘Le sens de
l’honneur’ (1960) and ‘La maison kabyle’ (both reprinted in Esquisse),
but he still often proceeds as though the logical exercise of opposing
persons, things and qualities masculine and feminine provided a symbolic
key to understanding the functioning of complex family units. Thus
although he has come to question in ‘La parente’ the ideological represen­
tation of male family solidarity, adopted rather uncritically in Le diracine-
menty Bourdieu still tends to ignore the contradictions or tensions implicit
in women’s roles in the family comparable to those he describes so well for
men’s roles.
In one section of Le deracinement (96-8) Bourdieu describes how,
following the departure of young male labour for work abroad, women
were taking over a greater part of agricultural labour and even the cultiva­
tion of their own lands. This is advanced as further evidence of destruction
of traditional peasant values and practices. Although the broad lines of
Bourdieu’s account are moving and true, it somewhat uncritically incorpor­
ates elements of popular male historicising. In reaction to the destruction
of their way of life, men evoke a past of untroubled paternalism, male