The Social Mobility of the Haratine and the Re‐Working of Bourdieu's Habitus on the Saharan Frontier, Morocco

Abstract

In this article, I examine the practical relevance of Bourdieu's notion of Habitus in understanding the relationship between the acquisition of land and the transformation of political and social relations of subordination in the stratified communities of southern Morocco. First, I claim that the acquisition of land by the Haratine, a subordinate and low‐status ethnic group, means more than just a simple economic transaction, and land serves as the very basis for changing the political relations of subordination. Second, I argue that the Haratine strategy of land acquisition was made possible by the intervention of the central state in the local power structure during and after the French colonial period. When these transformations were coupled with labor possibilities made available by national and transnational migration, the market game was opened to the Haratine, who could draw on the accumulation to improve their political and social standing. This also meant that the autonomy of the local community was lost forever, and the traditional nobility of Berbers and Arabs was no longer able to exclude the subalterns by extra‐economic or legal means. [Arabs, Berbers, Bourdieu, Habitus, Haratine, Morocco]