Change in the contemporary Middle East is ubiquitous and often rapid and pervasive (87, 171, 212). In some countries, such as Israel (73, 159), Lebanon (109, 172), Egypt and some regions of the Maghreb, change started early and has been going on ever since; in others such as the Gulf States and Oman (121, 181), it has only just begun. But as some studies of remote areas indicate, the winds of change have by now penetrated even the more outlying, isolated communities (e.g. 146, 147; see also 34, 79). The process blurs the traditional boundaries between the component pieces of the Middle Eastern of people (50, p. 2); but the mosaic does not disappear; new and larger pieces are formed and imposed upon the older ones as new boundaries are forged and older ones reassert themselves in new disguises (114, p. 308-309). Change is not a unidirectional homogenizing process of modernization or Westernization. There is little doubt that the announcement of the Passing of Traditional Society (142) was vastly premature. How deep reaching is that change? Does it actually transform Middle Eastern societies and communities, or are their basic features resilient to the forces of change? Is the process of change essentially the same throughout the 'region, or can one distinguish different kinds of processes and different types of communal response to them? To what are the differences related? Anthropologists of an older generation were chiefly concerned with the description and analysis of the transmitted, traditional traits of Middle Eastern societies [e.g. 143; 210, Vol. 1; see also Hart's review of French anthropology in Appendix III of Antoun's work (9)]. Among the new generation,