Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies edited by Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury s~ Duckworth in association with the Center for Mediterranean Studies of the American Universities Field Staff166 Patrons and Clients in Mediterrancan Societies the patron-client linkages reveals the important part that non-kin based groups play, their modes of competition and conflict, and the resulting accommodation. This provides a more balanced view of the ‘complex social organisation in the Middle East mosaic NOTES 1. Iman earlier paper (Vinogradov 1974) Ihave examined the special adaptation of ne ofthese groups erm of thei lferet sets of patrons 3 Fors definition and diression of pluralism and plural vociety se, among others espores (1968), Morris (1967), and the varius exsays by L. KuperandM.G. Smith in Paral fc, 1989 Sr the domestic service ofthe Christians and Jews wat limited tothe households of the secular notables and tribal cies, The sade who abided by a sri code of ritual purity and polation, refused fod prepared by non-moslems Fe cannot go into the effects of British ale onthe traditional patronage system of “Mogul. Sufce to say that notables who became cients of the British, soon attained atonal prominence one of them becoming a pereni se The sade, in eneraly dl nt collaborate with the Bets, REFERENCES Desperes, (1968) ‘Anthropological theory, cultural pluralism and the study of, ‘Complex societies’ Curent Ahly 9, 936 ey M18) aero peng Spin’ Arp! ort 9,1 3 Lemarchand, R. (1972) ‘Poical clietelism and ethnicity in tropical Altice i sliders in nation-building, Aeron Paina! Sew Resa LXV, ‘Mocs HS, (1967) "Some aspeet ofthe concept plural soe Pte Rivers, J. (1961) The Plo eur Cheag Seoit, J. (i972) *Patroncient polities and political change in Southeast Asia’, nica Pil Stoee Ree XVI, 1, 92-113, Vinogradon, A. (1974) “Ethnicity, cultural discontinuity and power brokers in ‘Norther lag. The cas of the Shabby Amarin Btinlpt ,1,207-18. Wolf, E. (1956) ‘Aspects of group relations in a complex society, American “Araropolgst 58, 1065-78, Wel (1960) "Kinship, rendship and patron:lient relation in complex societies “nM. Banton ed), Pe Sal Anthropology of Complex Saas, London, Man 2, 169-64 Michael Gilsenan Against patron-client relations ‘There is a fair measure of agreement over what is meant in sociological usage by “patron-client relations’ (the inverted commas hereafter to be understood as always present). Let us take it that the phrase is commonly held to characterise relations between two persons or groups one of whom is in some way in a superior or more Favourable position than the other. From the first flow favours, rewards and protection; from the latter perhaps specific goods and Services but also more diffuse returns of loyalty, support or allegiance. (One usually understands a multi-stranded pattern that is continuous lover time, often east in the idiom of ritual or other forms of kinship (godparenthood for example), honour and respect, friendship, attachment, and so forth. The range and scale of patronage is presented as depending on many factors: the nature of the State and the degree of effective centralisation of political power; the modes of violence and control in a society; the nature of the significant social units and their interrelations. "ypologies have been developed of all ‘dependency telations in traditional Africa’ in which the ‘type of clientelism’ is seen as Characterising the overall system of domination (Lemarchand 1972), ‘On the other hand writers have used the term in settings as disparate as Mediterranean politics in tote, New York City bossism, not to ‘mention Spanish and Portuguese maintenance of a subservient labour force in their Latin-American colonies (Hall 1974). Patronage is even discussed as ‘anxiety-reduction behaviours by which the peasant fattempts to build some security in the face of his perceived ‘environmental threats’, a phrase that not only probably applies better to academics than peasants, but that also reduces the relations under discussion to a psycho-cultural level of subjective perception and hullfies attempts at a more structural analysis (Powell 1970, p.411). De Coulanges, of course, used it in a strict and limited jural sense for a legal-ritual status of inferiority in The Ancient City. In, short, it has become a concept for all seasons, applied quasi-universally to a ‘multiplicity of relationships in a wide diversity of social and economic formations It follows from this confusion that stipulative definitions (when T say patron-client ties I mean ...'), based as they are on a cobbling168 Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies together of traits based to an uncertain degree on specific empirical situations, are inevitably inadequate. They have no real theoretical base and lead merely t0 endless additions to or subtractions from various lists of “characteristics. Where, moreover, —patron-client terminology is employed as a framework for # discussion of whole systems I would argue that iti part of a functionalis-consensus view of society that obstructs & deeper analysis of social structures in quite Tandamental ways ‘A second complementary but distinet point should be made. Clearly patron and client are terms that are sometimes used in particular societies to classify and constitute certain relationships (as fare also “riends’ or ‘kinsman’ for example). These categories are often very much part of local thought and behaviour, and in that regard require analysis as do any other social elements. But itis precisely because they are so often an integral part of local ideology that they must be abandoned for heuristic purposes. The local ideological- normative model cannot be used £0 analyse itself. Only by such a critical rejection can one begin to show how the ideology and social practices of which patron-client relations are a part are connected, dnd the complex linkages of ideology and practices to the factors that generate ‘and structure them. For conscious models, to use Lévi- Strauss' term, have important objective factors behind them. Indeed without such factors this way of constituting and thinking of relationships in the everyday world could not be maintained and legitimated The area in which I worked, Akkar in North Lebanon, is one of the last regions to be incorporated into the political and econo hinterland of Beirut. I is one of the characteristically undeveloped peripheral provinces that until recently formed effectively a political find quasi-autonomous enclave, in which only the ruling class of Beys (or lords) had outside connections with the governing stratum. Put simply, the lords’ modern dilemma has been to maintain sticly Personal-sfactional politics, localism and village bounded loyalties, and supply of cheap labour by preserving traditional relations of exploitation. For there have developed: considerable pressures to invest, diversify. and. generate far larger surpluses in order 10 participate in a rapidly widening political arena on a national scale {in which of course other lords were their rivals on the electoral ists). A rise in land prices and the relatively ate cultivation of eash erops in the 1960s has’ compensated to some extent for the sale of land into which many were forced. The old extensive agriculture, mostly cereals ‘with primitive technology, and semi-servile villages in which often all ‘means of production were owned by the Beys, has gradually, but not entirely, given way to wage labour and capitalist agriculture asa side investment (orange groves, etc.) by the Beirut commercial elite and by those lords who early on in the French period had seen what was happening. (This ata time when agriculture asa whole was in decline Gilsenan: Against patron-clent relations 169 in terms of share of the GNP and numbers employed.) Under this form of rent capitalism many of the landowners (and there was hardly any peasant smallholding) either lacked the fesources or the political understanding to transform their own positions. They had only limited interest in the process of production, But merely skimmed off the proceeds without any corresponding reinvestment, As a fundamentally sterile and parasitical ruling class, they kept going a system of underdevelopment. As Lebanese political and economic relations slowly changed many of such Beys” families ‘were forced to sell and. Expenditure on cars and prestige goods, the exigencies of elections where they themselves had direct political ambitions, or where that was the only avenue to keeping the flow of rewards going out and propping up social prestige in a highly competitive situation, undercut their positions. ‘Some therefore went for isolation (of which more later). Others went for development, tractors, the use of fertilisers, rationalisation of, production methods, while trying to preserve old ‘feudal’ patterns of dominion over labour and recruitment. These, in the main, became the current big men, owners of villages across the plain into Syria, hhand-in-glove with the French between the two world wars, controlling elections, and marrying into the old Syrian ruling class land into other wealthy, aristocratic Lebanese families, "Another part of the attempt to perpetuate this system lies in the use of staffs of retainers drawn from given villages and used mostly in their hhome villages or, up to 1958, as bailiffs-managers on the plain or in Syria. In the village in which I carried out research one descent group ‘was and is incorporated into the hegemony of status honour, though hot all of them were in the service of the lords. They are men of the sword and horse (old Ottoman marks of prestige and nobility and restricted to certain strata) and now of the car and gun (though only as driver and paid gunman). Strong men, sitting and walking a certain way, swaggering, moustache stroking, with a profound ‘contempt for the despised fllahin (‘peasants’). In short, men of honour. Work-and honour are opposed, one 1s a gabadi, or a hunter etc., but one does not work. One is, and one demonstrates it in a certain style of honour which includes an ethic of careless, spendthrift display and throwing away of money in reckless gestures. ‘There is @ radical devaluation of productive processes and of labour (and associated ideas of planning, the ‘rational’ pursuit of profit, attitudes to the future and time, etc.), This is very important because it has played a vital part in undermining their position, as indeed it has that fof some of the less successful of the lords who are also imprisoned in lan ideology of honour and the traditional ‘feudal’ relations on which honour is based. What had been the expression of an on-going domination in one structural setting became ‘false’ consciousness as that setting changed; it worked to the self-undermining of those members of the once ruling groups whose ideology of status, honour