Family and friend in a Moroccan boom town: the segmentary debate reconsidered

Abstract

A debate has flourished in anthropology as to whether segmentation should be viewed as ideology or action, as underlying cultural construct or manifest social behavior. In Morocco, the discussion has centered on whether segmentary or dyadic models inform sociocultural life. I argue that segmentation and dyadism are organizational alternatives. Each receives articulation in cultural perspective as well as in on-the-ground behavior, but the two are very differently weighted in these domains. In the present, the dyadic idiom is most extensively elaborated on the ground, while segmentation is more fully realized in thought and value. The organizational consequences of the differential sociocultural weightings are examined in the commercial system of a southern Moroccan boom town. Segmentation's cultural underpinnings are shown to distance patrilineal ties from the flow of daily life, a characteristic that endows them with increased durability, an important asset in the current commercial environment. [Morocco, anthropological theory, patrilineality, segmentation, interpretation, commercial organization, change]