Reviewed by: Ethnicities, Community Making, and Agrarian Change: The Political Ecology of a Moroccan Oasis Erin E. Stiles Ilahiane, Hsain . 2004. Ethnicities, Community Making, and Agrarian Change: The Political Ecology of a Moroccan Oasis. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. 248 pp. $35.00 (cloth). In this work, Hsain Ilahiane explores the relationship between ethnicity and agricultural intensification through anthropological research in a southeastern Moroccan oasis settlement. He finds that the agricultural productivity of the farmers of Ziz, an oasis in the southeastern province of Errachidia, is linked to ethnicity. His primary claim is that earlier models of agrarian change and intensification, which focus on population pressure (like those of Boserup and Geertz), do not consider the important variable of ethnicity in farming strategies, agricultural decision making, and agricultural change. He argues that studies of farming in multiethnic communities of the developing world must therefore consider "historically specific developments tied to the ethnic distribution and control of resources" (p. 198). The book is based on research conducted in Morocco in the mid-1990s, when Ilahiane collected ethnographic data on the farming strategies and production rates of the primary ethnic groups—Arabs, Berbers, and Haratines—in two villages of the oasis settlement. He attempts to situate the oasis, its inhabitants, and their agricultural practices in recent and more distant Moroccan history, and he notes that his research includes oral histories and archival records, in addition to ethnography and household questionnaires. The book begins with a discussion of the political and cultural ecology of Ziz, an oasis located along the Ziz River. The oasis is densely populated, and most of its inhabitants subsist by irrigated farming and herding livestock. The region is home to several ethnic groups, and Ilahiane reviews the historical conditions—including a harsh environment, political strife, and French imperialism—that contributed to the ethnic stratification of the population. Until recently, the property-owning Berber and Arab ethnic groups (including the high-status Shurfa and Murabitin Arabs and lower-status Ahrar Arabs) held most of the local socioeconomic, religious, and political, [End Page 144] while the generally landless Haratines provided labor as sharecroppers and worked as blacksmiths and craftsmen. In chapter 4, Ilahiane illustrates this by describing the precolonial socioeconomic organization and land-tenure systems of the ksar, which he translates as a "fortified village" and describes as the oldest form of rural housing in the area (p. 64). It is in the second half of the book that Ilahiane focuses on his stated central aim, of demonstrating the important relationship between ethnic identity, ethnic politics, and agriculture. Chapters 5 and 6 bring the reader to the "ethnographic present," as Ilahiane describes the ksar communities of the two study villages in the 1990s; he collected data on contemporary farming practice, household structure, and work life. In chapters 7 and 8, he compares the farming strategies, crop selection, and agricultural yield of the different ethnic groups. He shows that there are significant differences in the productivity of the groups, and argues that ethnicity should therefore be considered a primary variable "in land use change and population dynamics" (p. 171). He had hypothesized that the Haratines would be the most productive land users because of their history as laborers and sharecroppers, but his data indicate that in fact it is the Berbers who get the greatest yield per unit of land; he notes, however, that the more important point is that there are marked differences in intensity and production among the groups (p. 199). One of the most significant contributions of this work is the focus on the changing social and economic status of the Haratines, a group that, Ilahiane notes, has been underrepresented in the social-science literature on North Africa. In the final two chapters, Ilahiane observes that the Haratines have seen an important rise in community cohesion, economic production, and social status in recent years, based primarily on the purchase of land through remittances from family members working in France, which he notes is the "basis of claims to prestige and recognition, and hence ownership of property breeds a status value" (p. 196). The acquisition of additional property brought new rights and led to the formation of Haratine corporate...
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Jan 1, 2012
Gun Rode Sparrhoff 
