Page 194 - Arabian Studies (V)

MB

182 Arabian Studies V
dominance, and patrilineal solidarity: then la famille indivise was the rule;
then women surrendered their claim to inheritance as a matter of course.
Another example of this is E. L. Peters’ observation that Lebanese
Christians also believed that in the past women did not inherit, though
Peters found considerable documentary evidence demonstrating the
contrary. This discussion occurs in Peters’ article ‘The status of women in
four Middle East communities’, N. Kcddic and Lois Beck (eds), Women in
the Muslim World, Cambridge, Mass., 1978,345.
Such popular historicising is also vague about the extent of inequality in
traditional rural society. Bourdieu’s remarks about the traditional ‘mode
de reproduction' (La parente, 119) are for this reason not entirely convinc­
ing. By describing traditional family agriculture in primarily negative
terms, implicitly contrasted with modern, more highly mechanised agricul­
ture dominated by the urban market, Bourdieu tends to flatten the charac­
teristics of the older system. He states that in the past the distribution of
resources was basically egalitarian and that mobility in rural society for the
largest part was the result of ‘reproductive failure* (les rates des
mecanismes de la reproduction, ibid. fn. 40, 145). But how can the reader’s
confidence in the egalitarian distribution of resources not be shaken when
he reads in the next sentence that ‘ ... la Kabyle a connu de tous temps une
main-d’oeuvre flottante de pauvres qui, & l’epoque des grands travaux, se
constituaient en 6quipes passant de village en village’ (ibid., 119).
This makes one ask how typical the mode de reproduction, that is, of la
famille indivise was of the mode(s) de reproduction of the rural population
as a whole? It is clear that the family (see ibid., fn. 31, 141) whose history
provided the stimulus to Bourdieu’s theoretical observations in ‘La parente*
(see his remark to this effect in ibid., fn. 1, 129) is a wealthy and
distinguished family indeed.
A notable exception to the haziness surrounding the details of the trans­
mission of property in different Middle Eastern family systems and in
particular of women’s rights to property is the work of E. L. Peters. In the
article ‘The status of women* (op. cit.) Peters describes a different pattern
for the transmission of property in each of the four communities described,
and, contrary to what is implied by Bourdieu in Le deracinement, finds
that women had a strong claim on family property in every community but
that of the deracine bedouin cultivating the Tripolitanian olive groves after
the departure of the Italians.
3. I have relied upon the handbook of N. J. Coulson, Succession in the
Muslim family, Cambridge, 1971, for a general introduction to these codes.
Zaydl fara’id apparently differ on some points from Sunni codes, but are
far closer to Sunni than to Shl‘1 principles. The daughter cannot exclude
the male ‘asabah as in Shi‘I law.
4. In the area under discussion some women did inherit considerable
property from the mother (especially housing and jewelry) and lesser
amounts from the husband, brother, and sister, but land came almost
exclusively from the father.
5. Women of lower economic standing, whose families did not possess
the capital for a relatively self-contained family farm or enterprise, often