Feuding and social change in Morocco

Abstract

In Morocco, before the French protectorate, harmony and balance in human relationships were predicated upon conflict. Feuding and occasional bloodshed formed an integral part of social patterns, prefigured by custom, confirmed by ever-present dangers, and accepted as tradition. It was this constant prospect of conflict which: (1) offered the individual Moroccan a sense of assurance concerning the likely behavior of other men; (2) secured the clan group its cohesive character in the struggle for survival; and (3) produced, in the European imagination, an imprint of Moroccan society as inherently chaotic and, even, anarchic. Rather than constituting a pathological condition, however, conflict in pre-1912 Morocco was fundamentally integrative at the local level, socially sanctioned, and economically imperative. Since regional and tribal concerns prevailed over any integrative national consciousness or loyalties during this period, it was the clan organization and, upon infrequent occasion, the broader tribal edifice which provided functional continuity and solidarity to rural Morocco. It also was among clan groups that conflict most frequently erupted. It is this level of rural Moroccan society which the author proposes to examine to illustrate his contention that