ASAD, Talal Anthropological Texts and Ideological Problems An Analysis of Cohen On Arab Villages in Israel, Economy and Society, V. 4, N. 3, 1975, Pp. 251-282.

This article was downloaded by: [Universitaets und Landesbibliothek]
On: 09 December 2013, At: 05:28

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Economy and Society

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reso20
Anthropological texts and ideological problems: an

analysis of Cohen on Arab villages in Israel
Talal Asad
Published online: 28 Jul 2006.
To cite this article: Talal Asad (1975) Anthropological texts and ideological problems: an analysis of Cohen on Arab villages
in Israel , Economy and Society, 4:3, 251-282, DOI: 10.1080/03085147500000014
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085147500000014
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained
in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of
the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied
upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be
liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of
the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Anthropological texts and ideological
problems: an analysis of Cohen
on Arab villages in Israel*
Talal Asad
Abstract
Anthropological texts, like all ideological products, are related in
complex ways to social practice. Abner Cohen's Arab Border Villages in
Israel is analysed as an ideological specimen which embodies contem-
porary anthropological practice in its typical form-the field monograph
-and objectifies a specific historical reality in a politically charged
manner. For understanding this text a distinction must be made between
(i) its conscious analytic concerns (rooted in anthropology as a discipline
dealing with colonised peoples) and (ii) its unconscious political-
ideological determinations (connected primarily with the Zionist Colonial
character of Israel). It is argued that the coherence of Cohen's text at the
Downloaded by [Universitaets und Landesbibliothek] at 05:28 09 December 2013
unconscious, political level is the very condition of its failure at the

conscious, analytic level. It is suggested that in order to be adequate at
the theoretical level, Cohen would have had to break radically with
anthropological practice and attack the political reality which he
attempts to reflect.
Introduction
I n order to evaluate the theoretical limitations of contemporary

anthropological knowledge, and its political implications, it is necessary
to carry out detailed critical analyses of specific representative work.
This is the only effective way of demonstrating the principle that the
uncritical reproduction of an ideological object is itself ideological and
therefore theoretically faulty. Arguments that remain at the level of
personal affirmations of political commitment-or of ethical neutrality-
do not carry us very far.
I n the present paper I take Professor Abner Cohen's Arab Border
Villages in Israel because it is a good example of a relatively sophisticated
study, of one small part of the Middle East, in the Manchester school
tradition (it carries Max Gluckman's imprimatur in the form of a
laudatory preface) and also because it is the first major work, published
in 1965, by a prominent anthropological theorist writing today. Arab
Border Villages in Israel is, as we shall see, theoretically unoriginal,
* I am grateful to D. Booth, I. Cunnison, R. Owen and S. Zubaida for their
helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as to the members
of the Middle East Conference that met at Hull in September 1974 where
it was first presented.
252 Talal Asad
but from the point of view of understanding the theoretical and ideo-
logical tendencies of the discipline it is this very average character (as
Durkheim might say) that gives it its special claim to our attention. As
an anthropological monograph it is of course unique, as every field
monograph is which organises and presents a particular series of events.
Yet it also employs certain concepts and procedures which it shares with
other anthropological texts. It is with this theoretical apparatus, and
the contact it makes with a particular historical reality, that I am here
concerned, and not with the skill (or lack of it) displayed by the author
in using it.
Briefly, Arab Border Villages in Israel purports to explain a profound
change in the bases of political organisation of Arab villages in Palestine-
Israel. The nature of this change was expressed (in 1959, when the
major part of Cohen's fieldwork was done) in a seeming paradox: (a) the
Arab village was no longer self-contained since it was integrated into
the industrial economy and parliamentary politics of Israel; (b) and yet
in spite of these modern realities, the Arab village spontaneously
reverted to a traditional form of political organisation, based on patrili-

neal clans (hamulas), which had almost ceased to exist in the decades
prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The book
explains this apparent paradox by reference to the international conflict
between Israel and the neighbouring Arab states, and the consequent
tension that this produces among the Arab villagers in Israel.
Now this account of social change necessitates Cohen's venture into
a kind of history-i.e. into the definition of three phases in the history
of Palestine through which the revival of 'hamula organisation' is
displayed: the original (Ottoman) period, the intervening (Mandate)
period of hamula decline, and the modern (Israeli) period of revival.
Although this venture has met the approval of many anthropologists1 it
was assessed somewhat critically by a reviewer in Man.2 Henry Rosen-
feld (a fellow-Israeli anthropologist who had also studied Arab villagers
in Israel) wrote that Cohen had failed to prove his thesis, because ( I ) he
had oversimplified the historical picture prior to 1948 and (2) the case
material supplied in the later chapters for the more recent period was
inconclusive. 'The effect of the wider political system' Rosenfeld
argued, 'the control of the village economy, technology and politics by
overlords, merchants, tax-collectors and land owners during the
Ottoman period is given no weight. The ongoing manipulation of
village patrilineal groups, of local leadership, of factions, by some of the
same groups during the Mandatory period, and by the Mandate govern-
ment itself, in order to preserve the economic and political status quo, is
not dealt with.' Furthermore, there was no evidence for the revival of the
hamula in the Israeli period. In fact the same process as before was now
at work, and hamula organisation was thusperpetuated not revived. 'The
process has been an ongoing one due to the failure, among other things,
to bring about a total transformation in the village agriculture and
Anthropological texts and ideological problems 253
economy.' Yet in spite of this residue from an earlier epoch, class was
now more important than ever before, since there was today in Israel
'a full-fledged Arab village proletariat, working mainly in the Jewish
sector.'
Although much of Rosenfeld's criticism was justified, it is true that,
in an important sense, the Arab rural population of Ottoman Palestine
was relatively egalitarian compared with the subsequent Mandate
period (there is ample evidence of increasing disparities in landholdings,
of growing rural debt, unemployment, etc., in the first half of the
twentieth century); and that compared with this period, there is com-
paratively less inequality within the Arab village population of Palestine-
Israel. Now these facts have nothing to do with the cyclical change
proposed by Cohen: hamula-class-hamula. They have to do, as we shall
see, with developing class relations in the Palestinian countryside over
two centuries. Rosenfeld may be right in maintaining that 'hamula
organisation' at village level did not decline in the Mandate period, but
such a statement misrepresents important structural transformations.
This emerges more clearly in Rosenfeld's 1964 paper3in which he depicts

Arab 'subsistence' peasants being gradually integrated into a 'modern'
economy-from about 1920 onwards-as industrial wage-labour
absorbs an increasing number of active workers. For Rosenfeld, this
quantitative process of change in the village occupational structure is
merely the incomplete erosion of a 'traditional feudal' organisation by
a 'modern industrial' one. What I want to stress is that despite Rosen-
feld's criticisms of Cohen, the difference between the two is empirical,
not conceptual. Both of them employ the notion of class in a descriptive
sense-to refer to the pattern of occupational differentiation, income
stratification and prestige criteria characteristic of a 'modern, industrial
economy'. For Rosenfeld, focusing on the occupational pattern of
village Arabs, 'class has become increasingly important' since the 1920s.
Cohen, concerned primarily with the question of inequalities in wealth
and status differentials, sees class as having become less important for
Arab villagers since the establishment of Israel. Similarly for both of
them the hamula is 'a kinship principle' of traditional social organisation
at the rural level, opposed to class, and the question of the decline or
otherwise of this 'organisational principle' during the Mandate period
is seen by Rosenfeld to hinge on the facts that Cohen provides (or fails
to provide) in his book. The formulation of Cohen's problem itself is
not subjected to a theoretical critique.
Cohen's history ('continuity and change in [Arab village] social
organisation') is conceptually ordered in a determinate manner. Its
simplifications, emphases and omissions are not accidental, but the
product of theoretical and ideological positions which support each
other. I t is not enough to point to simplifications, as Rosenfeld does,
for all constituted history must resort to simplifications. The critic must
first attempt to uncover the underlying problem which dictates the mode
254 Talal Asad
of constituting history, and then confront this problem with the apparent
object of that history. I n what follows I try to disclose not only the
discrepancy between the apparent aim and the unconscious problem,
but also the ideological character of the construction projected through
the monograph.
Cohen's history of Arab peasant organisation in

Palestine-Israel
(This section contains only summaries and quotations from Cohen.)

Up to and including most of the nineteenth century, Palestine suffered
from general insecurity which was responsible for the decline of popula-
tion and of agriculture. 'Under these conditions land was abundant and
almost free. Groups and individuals established rights in unused land
simply by settling on, and cultivating, it., In the villages, all land,
with a few exceptions, was State land and was held by the village
community in a form of joint ownership called musha'.' ( 5 ) The village
constituted a single tax unit and was divided into hamulas (clans).
Membership in the hamula determined rights to a share of the village
lands.
'Thus the dominant cleavage in the village during the Joint Estate
Period was on hamula lines. Hamula organisation provided the basis of
political organisation. Law and order in the village was maintained by
means of a balance of power between the hamulas, regulated by institu-
tionalised forms of collective self help.' (8) Politically and economically
the villages remained isolated.
'During the latter half of the nineteenth century, and well down to the
Mandatory period, economic and political conditions changed drasti-
cally. The country became the centre of interest for European power so
a large number of missionaries came and established institutions of
various sorts, spending a great deal of imported capital. The number of
traders, pilgrims, scholars and travellers visiting the country increased.
T h e administration was reorganised and social order became more
stable. A substantial increase in the population followed, as a result of
natural increase, of [Arab] immigration from the neighbouring [Arab]
countries, and of the settlement of bedouin in permanent villages. These
developments were associated with the break-up of the joint estate, in
many villages, and the conversion of land to private property. I n the
process, a large proportion of peasants became landless and lived as
tenants on the land of others.' (8)
Disparities within the village increased. T h e accumulation of wealth
produced a leisured class who migrated to the towns and lived there
as rentiers, acquiring modern education and monopolising the elite
occupations (professionals, businessmen, political functionaries, etc.).
But there was also a flow of landless into the towns, 'particularly as a
result of the high birth-rate in the rural population.' (14)
'During the Mandatory Period, the Histadrut ["The General
Federation of Jewish Labour in the Land of Israel"] had to face the
competition of Arab labourers who were prepared to work for wages
that were much lower than those demanded by Histadrut members.
T h e only way to deal with this problem was to try to induce Arab
workers to organise and to act in harmony with the Histadrut. However,
because of the tension between the two sectors at the time, little was
achieved.' (26) T h e development of Arab nationalism proved an
insurmountable obstacle. Communications facilitated the formation of
nationalist organisations, and a pyramid of political alliances, culmina-
ting in the nationalist leadership of the towns, integrated the entire
Arab population, urban and rural, into a unified political entity. ' l n
the course of political disturbances in the country during the 1920s and
the 1930s the Arabs developed their own armed, though mainly irregular,
forces, their own banks and industry, labour and business establish-
ments, youth associations, cultural associations, propaganda offices,

and associations for aiding peasants and saving Arab lands from
being sold to the Jews.' (12-13) I n these ways the Arabs developed
a powerful, and completely autonomous, national class structure
in Palestine, in which law and order came to be hierarchically
imposed.
'With the conversion of a great proportion of joint estates to private
ownership, the hamula lost its economic basis. T h e new lines of
stratification cut across hamula boundaries and tended to disrupt the
hamula. The development of an Arab country-wide nationalist organisa-
tion weakened the hamula further by the creation of national associa-
tions that cut across particular patronymic and territorial groupings.
The dominant cleavage in the village ran on class lines.' (8) After
1948-9, the Arab village in Palestine-Israel 'lost its centuries-old
economic autonomy'. (19)
Most of the villages on the strategic border with Jordan lost some
land through expropriation by the State which needed to establish
'Jewish pioneering border settlements' with an essential defence func-
tion. (17) Although compensation was offered by the government, it
was refused by the villagers. This has contributed in part to a land
scarcity in the Arab border villages in Israel. 'Above all, however, this
increasing scarcity of land is relative to the rapid growth of village
population resulting mainly from natural processes.' (21)
But land shortage is no longer economically important. Integration
of the Arab villages into the modern industrial economy of Israel has
meant not only a greatly improved economic status for its inhabitants,
but also the opening up of new economic options for the individual
Arab peasant. 'He could concentrate on production for the market,
produce for his own consumption, lease his land to a more enterprising
256 Talal Asad
peasant while he himself worked for wages, or he could cultivate his

land for part of the time and work for wages for the rest of the time,
leaving the care of the crops to his wife and children.' (24)
T h e Arab villagers have taken advantage of the expanding job
opportunities of the booming Israeli economy of the 1950s. 'As a result,
many Arab villagers have been abandoning those plots of their land
which are uneconomical to cultivate under present conditions' (34) in
order to take up wage-employment.
Great differences in wealth have now disappeared with improvement
in the conditions for the many, and loss of privileges for the few.
'Within the village itself, the new economy created a new egalitarian-
ism.' (42) At the political level, a new system of elected local councils
connected with the central government departments and national public
associations has been instituted in the Arab border villages. 'The
institutionalisation of election by ballot as a means of recruitment
for positions of authority both inside and outside the village gave every
man and woman the right to vote and thus vested each person with an
equal share of political power.' (178)

The Jewish State provides its Arab citizens with education and social
welfare services. 'There are, however, serious limitations to the de-
velopment of Arab- Jewish co-operation. These limitations stem largely
from the state of hostility between Israel and the neighbouring Arab
states.' (15) This international confrontation has necessitated the
establishment of a military administration in the border areas occupied
by Arab villages in Israel. Initially this meant restrictions on movement
into and out of these military areas for security reasons, but by 1959
such restrictions had become largely insignificant.
T h e special border conditions have meant that 'Once more, the main-
tenance of social order, in accordance with indigenous values and notions
of justice, is the concern of the village community as a whole.' (134)
This is partly because the central authorities cannot deal effectively
with feuding between hamulas across the international frontier. But
more important, perhaps, because 'by voting for hamulas, instead of
for national parties in the council election, the villagers prevent outside
"foreign" agencies from dominating their internal affairs." (173) Even
in parliamentary elections, the 'opportunism' (161)between national
parties and Arab electors makes it possible for the latter to 'cleverly
exploit' (95) national party divisions for local village ends.
'The revival of hamula organisation has thus provided a social
mechanism for the preservation of Arab traditional values and for the
maintenance of the political and social autonomy of the village.' (173)
Cohen's problematic: the conscious and unconscious levels

What is immediately striking about this history of Arab Palestine is
the shifting range of events being ordered. The first part (up to about
the middle of the nineteenth century) consists of a generalised ethno-
graphic account of a segmentary structure made up of economically
autonomous units (settled villages and nomadic tribes), whose persisting
common elements are patrilineal clans, dividing and linking the basic
units within themselves and to each other in horizontal order. The
second part (up to the establishment of Israel in 1948) proposes
a macro-history of an organic society, in which heterogeneous entities
and processes (town and country, occupational specialisation, the
growth of population, landlordltenant relations, commerce and trade,
social mobility and the formation of classes, nationwide political
institutions, etc.) combine to integrate a total structure vertically. The
final part (up to 1959, the year of fieldwork) is a micro-sociology of a
handful of villages whose inhabitants are part of a wider field subject to
conflicting forces (State administration, economic prosperity and social
welfare encouraging them towards a fuller participation in Israeli
society: Arab nationalism, kinship loyalty, and the mercurial politics of
the neighbouring States pulling them in the opposite direction) and yet,
through this very tension, able to maintain their ethnic identity and
social equilibrium. I n itself each of these three modes of ordering social
facts is part of the intellectual armoury of any professionally-trained
social anthropologist.
At a na'ive level, someone even half-way familiar with the recorded
history of Palestine will find the omissions astonishing. Apart from
the simplifications alluded to in Rosenfeld's review, there is no mention
for the Ottoman period of systems of tax collection (in money and in
kind), of vigorous urban life, of extensive commerce in handicrafts and
agricultural produce, and of economic dislocation in the early decades of
the nineteenth century caused by the expanding forces of European
industrial capitalism. There is no mention of the political implications
of setting up the British Mandate Government in Palestine upon the
destruction of the Ottoman empire, nothing on the massive flow of
European Jews into the country, or the purchase of land by Zionist
colonists from Arab landlords and subsequent expropriation of Arab
cultivators, or the pressure by Zionist organisations on Jewish employers
to replace their Arab labourers by immigrant Jewish labour at a time
of acute unemployment. There is silence on the paramilitary and
economic support given by the Jewish settlers to the British Mandate
Government in its suppression of the Arab peasant rebellion; and
silence, too, on the role of the Arab peasant cultivators in providing the
Jewish settler community with most of its food. In fact there are only
two references in Cohen's book to the existence of Jews in the Mandate
period (on p. 13 and p. 26 quoted above in section 11). The existence of
Jews is recognised, of course, in Cohen's account of the Israeli period,
when his fieldwork was carried out. But there is no hint of the fact that
in terms of Israeii social stratification the Arab villagers represent the
258 Talal Asad
lowest socio-economic stratum. Nor is much made of the fact that the
political and economic life of the Arabs is directly controlled by a
Military Administration.
But the significance of such simplifications and omissions cannot be
appreciated unless we first return to the modes in which the history
offered is constituted-from an ethnographic account of a segmentary
structure, through a macro-history of an organic society, tb a micro-
sociology of a social field. What gives these curious shifts their overall
coherence is Cohen's pursuit of the dejinition of Arab 'ethnicity' in Israel.
In phase I this ethnicity is defined by the autonomous segmentary
clan organisation, in phase 2 by the autonomous national stratified
organisation, and in phase 3 by the ambiguous normative status of
Israeli Arabs-at once mobilised by the Zionist authority structure
(the Israeli state) and yet not mobilised by it (Jewish ethnicity). I t is
only when this idealist problem is recognised that Cohen's simplifications,
emphases and omissions become intelligible. Why, after all, should
Cohen discuss the effect of the wider political system, the control of
the village economy, technology and politics by overlords, merchants,

tax-collectors and landowners during the Ottoman period if his concern
is to define the essence of contemporary Israeli Arab ethnicity in terms
of the segmentary hamula system as a normative structure? And why
should he go beyond an attempt at reconstructing the way Arab villagers
were authoritatively 'integrated' with the rest of their 'national structure'
during the 'Mandatory period', since it was that normative structure
which ideologically confronted 'the Jewish nation in the land of Israel'
as a distinct, separate, hierarchically organised whole? I n other words,
the historical facts have been worked upon,. sifted and ordered by
Cohen with unconscious reference to the idea of Arab ethnicity in
Zionist Israel. And as such, the historical omissions make sense: the
total account is adequate to its object.
Cohen's history is thus ideological history (not a history of ideology)
in the sense that it reconstitutes elements of the Palestinian past in
terms of the imputed cultural categories of the Israeli Arab present. I t
responds to the unspoken question: what is the political identity of
Israeli Arabs? What gives them their sociological unity? That is why
the reader is presented with three normative systems in equilibrium
separated by ideological time (in which discontinuities occur only and
accidentally from outside) which together define the conditions of
Arab ethnicity in Zionist Israel. For Cohen it is always a question of
the arrangement and rearrangement of the same ideological elements
which constitutes the unity of his object: 'In this way, I consider
interconnections between the same factors, within the same cultural
tradition, at three different points in historical time: the year 1959,
which is the ethnographic present of the monograph and the starting
point of the analysis; the year 1948, to which I refer as "The Mandatory
Period"; and the beginning of the nineteenth century, which I call
Anthropological texts and ideological Problems 259
"The Joint Estate Period". I n processing the material, I considered

each period separately, as if it was a system on its own.' (4)
Theoretically such an approach implies (I) the logical priority of
'ethnicity' (ideology) over political economy, and (2) the conceptualisa-
tion of politics in formal terms-either as law and order (integration,
the balance of opposing segments), or as ongoing power struggle
(the transaction of symbolic values between allies and rivals). That is to
say, 'ethnicity' as a political category serves either to define a total
normative structure in equilibrium (as most clearly in Cohen's discus-
sion of Ottoman Palestine), or to dissolve the concept of a total structure
altogether and replace it by others such as 'network', 'transaction' and
'social field' (as is the tendency in Cohen's analysis for 1959). I n this
shift from the acceptance of a concept of total structure (in equilibrium)
to its unqualified rejection, Cohen's work encapsulates a general
tendency of contemporary anthropology and one aspect of its theoretical
~terility.~
There are theoretical reasons, therefore, why in Cohen's approach
the political organisation of Arab villagers in Israel cannot have a

history but can only be arbitrarily assigned to points in historical time ;
why there is no necessary connection of this organisation with its own
past, still less with the past of other ethnic groups. But none of this
matters, for the fundamental ideological problem is to identify and
categorise Arabs in Israel, and to do this in terms of an alleged ideo-
logical determinant whose lineaments are specified in a reconstituted
'tradition'. This idealist problematic is fully compatible with Cohen's
empiricist methodology: 'Social phenomena are so complicated, and
the factors involved in them are so numerous, that, no matter how
thorough the anthropologist is in his study of the present situation, his
analysis of the factors involved can never be exhaustive or conclusive.
But by comparing the present with some stages from the past, more
factors can be isolated, and the "cause" of the phenomenon he is analys-
ing will become progressively more elaborate and more precise. Under
these circumstances the anthropologist is, indeed, under an obligation to
use history, because as a student of science he has a duty to examine all
the available evidence which can help him in his enquiry.' (175) And
yet, like other empiricists in the social sciences, Cohen's enquiry is so
defined in advance that the examination of what is relevant becomes
quite simple. Indeed, the underlying problem suppresses most of the
potential evidence relating to real organisational change. The changing
social organisation of the Arab village population in Palestine-Israel
can be grasped only if the terms of the problem as consciously stated are
completely recast such that the range of 'available evidence' can be
significantly and systematically expanded. But for this to be done the
logical priority of ethnicity over political economy must be reversed,
and the concept of politics must proceed not from the universal idea
of order based on some formal notion of balanced exchanges, but from
260 Talal Asad
the specific historical movement of the production, accumulation and

control of surplus. In short, a class analysis of village organisation must
be attempted, so that the category 'hamula' can be demystified, and its
ideological tendency exposed.
Notes towards t h e definition of t h e class situation o f A r a b

villagers i n Palestine-Israel
The object to be grasped is the developing class situation of Arab

villagers within a specific historical social formation, and it is to be
explained by analysing the articulation of a capitalist with a non-
capitalist mode of production which defines that social formation. I n
this context it is essential to recognise that southern Syria was not
composed of economically self-contained units in the Ottoman period.
The rural population in what was later to become Mandate Palestine

produced not only for themselves but also for the ruling classes:
although most cultivators in general consumed what they themselves
produced, much of what the cultivators produced was not consumed by
them. This surplus was appropriated directly by the Ottoman state,
through tax farmers, and later by landowners on whom the direct lia-
bility for tax rested. From at least the beginning of the nineteenth
century the involvement of the Ottoman empire (and in particular of
geographical Syria) with the market forces of European industrial
capitalism increased the need for surplus extracted from the peasant
population, and served eventually to change the legal expression of the
production relations which facilitated that flow.
For centuries before this transformation, the region's economy had
been characterised by urban manufacture, long-distance trade, marked
agricultural specialisation from one area to another, local markets in
agricultural goods and handicrafts. But the peasant producer was only
indirectly (or if directly only marginally) linked to the system of regional
and transcontinental commodity circulation.
Typically village land was held jointly by the villagers ('the harnula')
but worked by component families whose heads were linked to one
another by agnatic ties which defined mutual obligations and customary
shares to the land from one generation to the next (the musha'a system).
T h e families constituted units of production and consumption in
association with each other.5 T h e inequalities in holding between clan
members which might arise over time purely from within this system of
property distribution do not, however, define the class situation of the
village-cultivators. For this one must turn to the forces and relations of
the indigenous non-capitalist mode of production linked to the expand-
ing European capitalist mode. The forces are those that generate surplus,
Anthropological texts and ideological problems 26 1
and the relations those that define the pattern of appropriating and
controlling the surplus generated. In this sense the forces and relations
of production necessarily take one beyond the village community and
into a domain about which Cohen remains deliberately naive.
In Ottoman Palestine, the more fertile areas (coastal plains, Esdraelon)
were the more heavily taxed, but despite this fact, also the more densely
populated. Unlike other areas subject to irregular rainfall and damaging
desert winds, here the extreme variability of harvests was not a problem
for the peasant. Hence the relative assurance of a good return for his
labour was a condition of the peasant's subjection to his exploiters-for
the exploiters' ability to extract a greater surplus here rested on the
higher yield of the land to which more intensive labour could also be
applied.
The attempt by the Ottoman state to register titles in land for tax
purposes (begun in 1858), facilitated a pattern of change to the detri-
ment of the cultivators. The intention was to grant the title directly to
the cultivators, eliminating any intermediary between the Government
and the small individual owner, so that the state could appropriate the
maximum tax itself. But in many cases 'The villagers fearing that the
registration was a preliminary to a call for military service, or for taxation
purposes, falsified the returns, registering the property either in the
name of the head of the tribe [clan?] or in the name of a member of the
family who would not be liable for military service. I n practice they
disregarded the titles granted (the sanad tapu) and continued to farm
on the musha' system, recognising the customary quota-holders as
the real owner^.'^
The class significance of the legal changes can only be understood
when it is recognised that the Land Code of 1858 was a moment in the
intensification of surplus generation from peasant producers. Its
superstructural, accidental character is merely illusory. I n the more
productive areas, especially in the more fertile densely-populated plains,
the Land Code immediately institutionalised and re-enforced pre-
existing relations of dependence between indebted cultivators and debt-
owning usurers (whether traders or urban notables). The registration of
land titles thus became an instrument for stepping-up the appropriation
of the cultivator's product by his exploiters and not merely the occasion
for legal misunderstanding and deception.
The decline of rural handicrafts and urban manufactories (notably
textiles) in the face of European competition throughout the nineteenth
century,' increased peasant dependence on land and hence tended to
depress their competitive position in relation to the richer, more fertile
land (the very areas where large estates were most common). The
capacity of cultivators to yield up greater amounts of surplus, however
reluctantly, began to converge with the rising demand of unproductive
urban classes for the consumption of the agricultural product-partly
directly, but also in exchange for imports from capitalist Europe.
262 Talal Asad
I n general, this movement continues throughout the first half of the

twentieth century, only becoming more intensified and more complex
after the First World War, with the steady expansion of capitalist
production within Palestine, primarily rooted in the growing community
of European (Jewish) settlers in a newly-created European (British)
colony. -
The establishment of European (British) rule over Mandate Palestine

set the preconditions for the implantation of a European (Jewish)
capitalist ~ e c t o rThe
. ~ steady growth of this sector, initially maintained
by European settlers and European capital, represents a colony in the
old sense (N. America, Australia, etc.)-in the sense, that is, of a
relatively autonomous extension of Europe-centred capitalism as a
productive system and a power structure. Measured in terms of popula-
tion the European (Jewish) sector was always smaller than the Palestinian
(Arab) sector-although due to immigration it grew from about 10per
cent to 33 per cent of the total population during the Mandate p e r i ~ d . ~
But the intrinsic character of the European (British) colonial state
ensured the long-term economic growth of the capitalist mode of
production at the expense of the non-capitalist mode, although it
prevented the latter's complete elimination. This fundamental process
is disguised by the political subordination of the Jewish community,
equally with the Arab community, to the British Administration. That
is to say, the concept of a form of political continuity in Palestinian
history before and after 1918 ('the two communities were first ruled
by the Ottomans and then by the British-i.e. always by an alien ethnic
group') covers up a real structural break represented by the Mandate.
For the old indigenous Jewish community10 was an integral part of a
non-capitalist social formation, and the local Ottoman administration
the organ of a non-capitalist state.
Most writers on Palestine have tended to represent the Mandate
period in terms of the political confrontation of two national communi-
ties in which each excluded the other and maintained its own economyll
-a political contest whose first phase ended with the collapse of the
Mandate and the establishment of a national state by one of the two
autonomous, competing communities. In this respect Cohen's account
is not unique. But in order to grasp the changing organisation of Arab
villagers it is necessary to begin with a different set of concepts: the
articulation of a capitalist with a non-capitalist mode of production
mediated by the British colonial state. I t is only in terms of these
concepts that apparent continuities (e.g. the state's registration of title
to agricultural land, begun by the Ottomans and continued by the
British) can reveal their contradictory movements. For it was the
British Mandate state, not the Ottoman, which constituted the pre-
condition for the relative and absolute growth of the capitalist sector12
(including commercial agriculture and industry) at the expense of the
non-capitalist (mainly peasant) sector in Palestine.
The Mandate Administration maintained a fiscal structure which
facilitated the extraction of surplus from the non-capitalist sector, and
its partial transfer to the expanding capitalist sector.
Rural Property Tax, although not a major category of Government
revenue, was paid by and constituted a substantial burden on the peasant
producers.13 The rationalised system of agricultural taxation evolved
by the British administration14 seems to have contributed to increasing
peasant indebtedness.15 Over the years much of this debt was trans-
ferred from money-lenders to the Administration.16 I t is worth noting,
incidentally, that since this tax was levied as a fixed percentage on net
productivity of the soil (i.e. minus cost of production) capital-intensive
Jewish agricultural enterprises paid proportionately less tax in relation
to gross product, or even none at all, because of comparatively high
'labour costs'.17 In other words the lower subsistence level of the

Arab peasant producer became, indirectly, a reason for the State's
subsidising the higher standard of living of the European immigrant
worker in Jewish agriculture.
Indirect taxation was by far the most important source of Government
revenue. But most of this, being levied on necessities, was regressive
and tended to fall most heavily on the poorer (i.e. rural Arab) popula-
tion.ls (See Table I.) Furthermore, the large Arab landowners, together
with other non-productive Arab urban classes, were themselves
disbursing surpluses accumulated largely through the exploitation of
Arab rural producers-and hence the indirect taxes paid by them on
imported commodities were also in part a form of indirect taxation on
Arab rural labour.
I n the industrial sector the Government gradually shifted the weight
of taxation in favour of large-scale enterprises which were mainly
Jewish.lg This, incidently, hastened the demise of Arab craft manu-
facture which had helped to supplement the domestic peasant economy.20
And here, again as in the agricultural sector, the fiscal structure
served to support the differential wage-rates between Jewish (immigrant)
and Arab (native) labour obtaining in the industrial sector.21
I t has been said that the Government of Palestine had an extremely
conservative fiscal poli~y.2~ However that may be, its two main objects
of expenditure were: (a) 'developmental and economic services' (i.e. the
improvement of transport, communications, harbours, etc., which
imparted relatively greater value to capitalist production than to non-
capitalist); and (b) 'defence' (i.e. the maintenance of a repressive state
apparatus, continuously and primarily directed against the Arab
producing masses).23(See Table 11.)
The basic pattern of income and expenditure of the non-productive
Fiscal Importance of Indirect Taxes
1937-38
Amount % of Amount % of Amount % of Amount % of Amount % of
in total in total in total in total in total
Tax LP. receipts LP. receipts LP. receipts LP. receipts LP. receipts
Customs Duties 1,868,598 48.90 2,600,370 49.10 2,751,246 49.03
Excise Duty on Matches 17,740 0.47 23,817 0.46 30,933 0'55
Excise Duty on Salt 12,950 0'34 14,450 0.27 16,400 0.30
Excise Duty on Tobacco 237,812 6.23 274,055 5.18 257,694 4.60
Excise Duty on Wines and Spirits 50,057 I 58,139 1.10 67,723 1.21
Stamp Duties 70,160 1.84 105,254 1.99 124,477 2.21
Total 2457,317 59.10 3,076,085 58.10 3,248,473 57.90 2,452,498 54-56 2,451,140 51.7
(Source: M. F. Abcarius, 'The Fiscal System' in S. B. Himadeh (ed.), The Economic Organization of Palestine, Beirut, 1938,p. 530.)
e,
0
'g
U
G
! 8C
.
U
-
C
g
-d
C -d
2
" '6
(I) H
!-S .-g m
a
,
U
,
U
U
% *
.2 ::
f
g G - r n2 - 3.5
0
Z '2 5 '8 $ f
a " 4 4 ~ Q
266 Talal Asad
Arab classes had largely the same general effect as that of the Mandate
Government on the Arab peasant producers-namely, it subjected them
to a progressively greater extraction of surplus, part of which was
transferred to the Jewish capitalist sector.
The growth of European immigration and-despite some fluctuations
-of the European (Jewish) capitalist sector, contributed to increases in
cost which affected Arab labour adversely.z4 Unemployment was
always far higher in the Arab sector than in the Jewishz5because despite
massive immigration of European Jews, Jewish capitalist enterprises
expanded fast enough to absorb them, while the small segment of
capitalist industry in the Arab sector did not grow sufficiently to take up
the increasing numbers of unemployed coming from the depressed
rural areas. (Urban workers maintained close links with their native
villages.) For a brief period, during the second world war, an abnormal
rise in the price of local produce caused by large military expenditure
benefited landlords and owner-cultivators (as well as other classes in
both sectors). But even during the war-time boom, the poorest strata
fared badly because of inflati0n.~6And in general, rising costs due in
great measure to the expansion of a tariff-assisted capitalist sector

pressed heavily on the Arab working classes. (See Table 111.)
Table 111
Index Numbers of Nominal and Real (rough) Daily Wage Rates

o f Arab and Jewish Labour, 193 1-37 (basis 193 1 = 100)
Weighted average of
seven manufacturing Retail prices Movement of
Year groups and building (cost of living) real wages
Arab Jewish Arab Jewish
1931 100'0 100'0 100'0
1932 95'0 99'6 102.4

1933 97'3 110.5 99'1
1934 112'4 135.0 99'7
I935 110.3 131'1 . 99'0
1936 104.1 126.2 104'5
March 1937
S ~ P . I937
103.0
98.5
123'4
120'1
} 109.6
(Source: A. B. Himadeh, 'Industry' in S. B. Himadeh (ed.), The Economic Orgnnizn-

tion of Palestine, Beirut, 1938,p. 286.)
Since rent was generally paid in kind,27as a share of the total produce,
a rise in the total cost of local commodity prices meant a rise ill the
value of rent paid by tenant to landlord.28 Indebted owner-cultivators
who pledged their harvests to trader-usurersz9 lost in the transaction

for comparable reasons.
Zionist colonisation must be seen primarily as the steady expansion
of a capitalist mode of p r o d u ~ t i o n The
. ~ ~ primary consequence of this
process for the internal organisation of Arab villages lies not in the
immediate eviction of native cultivators from land acquired for exclu-
sive European settlement, or in the expulsion of native labour from
European enterprise, although both these processes did occur, but in
the way in which the capitalist mode dominated the non-capitalist mode.
This domination was expressed in (a) the systematic flow of surplus
from the Arab peasantry to the expanding European community,
mediated primarily by the Mandate state apparatus and the non-produc-
tive Arab classes, and (b) the political tension within the alliance of
Arab classes based on a subordinate non-capitalist mode, and the con-
flict between the Arab alliance on the one hand, and the Zionists and the
Mandate government (representing the capitalist mode) on the other.31
The crucial determinant of the class position of Arab villagers was there-
fore the contradiction between the forces and relations of production

within a particular social formation-a decline in the relative capacity of
cultivators to generate surplus in conditions of mounting pressure from
above (through tax, interest and rent) combined with non-market
labour relations on the land.
T h e increasing extraction of surplus, determined in the final analysis
by the increasing dominance of the capitalist mode, produced the
increasing disparities in the countryside which are noted by so many
observers in Mandate Palestine, and alluded to by Cohen in his study.
The rapid population growth which Cohen, following other writers,
cites as a 'natural' cause of deterioration in the economic condition of
Arab villagers may be seen, here as elsewhere in the Third World,32 as
the individual peasant family's response to the problem of its individual
poverty.33However that may be, the trend of overall growth of the Arab
agricultural population in relation to slightly declining area of land,
and virtual lack of alternative sources of gainful employment, became,
under the Mandate, a force for the intensification of surplus generation.
Mounting indebtedness to the trader, and the rise in commodity prices,
were moments in this intensification.
The analysis so far does not assume that the accumulation of capital
in the Jewish sector in Palestine is to be explained entirely, or even
mainly, by the flow of surplus extracted from the Arab sector. I t merely
concludes that the developing class structure of the latter (and so the
class position of the Arab peasants) cannot be understood unless it is
related to the process of surplus extraction from the peasantry that
necessarily follows from the articulation of the capitalist with the non-
capitalist modes of production within a single social formation. At its
most abstract the conclusion may be summarised as follows. In the non-
capitalist mode of production the productive process is unmediated
268 Talal Asad
(the production of values for immediate consumption) or mediated by

simple circulation (production for the market in order to obtain other
values for consumption). I n the capitalist mode of production the
productive process is mediated by compound circulation (production for
the market in order to obtain values to exchange for labour-power and
the means of production in the market in order to produce more values
for the market, etc.). But the capitalist productive process is also
mediated by the negotiated 'exchange' of profit tax for state-provided
values. In Mandate Palestine these values (externalities) were provided
largely out of surplus extracted from a sector in which production was
primarily non-capitalist-i.e. capable of generating surplus but not of
accumulating it. Such accumulation as did occur in the Arab sector
remained largely in the sphere of circulation, and was therefore un-
productive. Growth in the capitalist mode of production inevitably
meant increasing, though indirect, pressure on the non-capitalist mode
-both at the point of circulation (non-productive Arab urban classes)
and that of production (Arab cultivators and craftsmen). But as soon
as the British' Mandate, which mediated the articulation of the two modes
of production, gave place to the political dominance of the (Jewish)
capitalist sector, and to the unmediated unity of the social formation,
the complete destruction of the non-capitalist mode of production was
inevitable. There is here again another structural rupture which
Cohen's perspective fails to comprehend.
I n the Mandate period the Jewish sector did not seek Arab labour
but Arab land. Because of its political subordination to t6e British
Administration such land could only be acquired through market
exchange-a slow and politically unsatisfactory process.34 By 1947
total Jewish holdings comprised only about 9-12 per cent of all cultivable
During the 1948-49 war, there occurred the massive separation of

Arab labour from their directly controlled means of production. 'The
[U.N.] Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated [in 1949-501
that more than 80 per cent of the territory ruled by Israel represented
land owned or otherwise held by Arab refugees, of which somewhat
more than 4,574,000 dunums were ~ u l t i v a b l e . The
' ~ ~ political and eco-
nomic cost of this landlessness was transferred by military means to the
neighbouring Arab countries and the U.N.
From 1948-49 onwards, the Jewish sector (based on the capitalist
mode of production) becomes directly and politically dominant within
the social formation. Jewish enterprises no longer exclude Arab labour
that remains behind-on the contrary. This new opportunity for the
direct exploitation of Arab labour is only possible by the systematic
depression of Arab agriculture in Israel. There are thus two major

moments in the radical transformation of the class position of Arab
villagers in Israel :
I. The mass expropriation of Arab land (1948-49). This is the 'booty

capitalist' phase in the development of the Jewish sector in which the
indigenous non-capitalist mode of production is destroyed. The
remaining Arab villagers constituting a source of cheap 'surplus' labour
are forcibly sealed off in military reserves in the early years, and sub-
sequently controlled by the military-administered work permit system.
2. The depression of Israeli Arab azriculture.

- With the establishment
of Israel, the pattern of agricultural production changes in the major
(Jewish) sector-from intensive mixed farming to the large'-scale
production of industrial crops.37 A discriminatory price structure for
Arab agricultural products, fewer loans, less assistance to Arab farmers
and legal expropriation of land belonging to Israeli Arabs38 further
discourages the residual sector of traditional Arab agriculture. Relative

rises in the cost of agricultural commodity production, together with a pro-
portionate drop in access to money capital by Israeli Arabs pushes them
further into a dependence on the labour market. The Israeli economy is
not massively based on cheap native labour as South Africa's is,39but it
makes effective use of the convenient reservoir of Arab labour. Arab
workers suffer from higher u n e r n p l ~ y m e n t receive
,~~ lower rates of pay
than comparable Jewish workers.41 But the existence of an-albeit
depressed-subsistence agricultural sector in the Arab villages prevents
the development of an otherwise greater disparity between the living
standards of Jews and Arabs in Israel. I n other words, it serves to
subsidize the low wage-rates of Arab labour, so it cannot be allowed
to disappear totally.
Inflationary tendencies have been present in the Israeli economy
from 1949, despite the fact that, at least from 1955 to 1965, the share
of the total wages bill has declined.42 I t is the effect of such pressure
that drives women and children in the Arab villages to seek wage
employment, and not, as Cohen ingenuously suggests, the need to
exercise prosperous but idle hands ('The need for such employment
became more pressing when in many of the villages the supply of piped
water to the houses, and the use of oil fuel in cooking, released the labour
of large numbers of women and children who in the past had been en-
gaged in carrying water and collecting wood.' p. 22) This kind of
topsy-turvy logic (another example : 'Arab villagers maintain a lower
standard of living than that maintained by the majority of Jews, and
they therefore do not mind working for wages which are lower than the
official ones.' p. 27) reveals that Cohen has no conception of the class
determinants of Arab village organisation in Israel.
Many Arab villagers live at a higher standard than they did in the
270 Talal Asad
1930s. But their new inability to control their means of social reproduc-
tion is expressed in the fact that for many their labour-power can only
be productively applied to their own land after it has first passed through
an exchange relationship which is an integral feature not of Arab
village organisation but of the capitalist mode of production which
sustains the entire Israeli society. Thus Cohen records that about
a third of the best category land in one of the villages he studied was
leased to a Jewish agricultural company by a large number of petty
owners (land to which machinery, irrigation, etc. were then applied)
and that this company employed up to IOO villagers, many ofwhom
were 'the children of the very owners of the land on which they worked.'
(31) I n this way the villagers' own land becomes an instrument in the
hands of the capitalist for realising their labour-power-at a rate of
exploitation far greater than was possible when they were peasant
owner-producers.
The 'new egalitarianism' of which Cohen speaks is the equality of
a repressed and exploited working class, and it is not in any way defined
by the so-called 'revival of hamula organisation'. On the contrary, it is

the latter that is determined by the villagers' historical class situation
which has become totally transformed since the Mandate.
Hamula decline and revival: t h e continuity o f 'tradition'
The alternate stress on 'hamula' and 'class' as 'principles of organisa-

tion' is spurious. The key to any real understanding of the changing
organisation of Arab villagers in Palestine-Israel, as indicated by the
brief sketch above, is their class position within a developing non-
capitalist mode of production in articulation with an increasingly
dominant capitalist mode. At no point in the entire period under
consideration is the hamula a basic principle of the political economy
of the Palestinian peasant. I t is only vulgar idealism that allows Cohen
to speak of the existence of 'the same form' (the hamula) among Pales-
tinian Arabs regardless of whether they are peasant subjects paying
tax directly to'the state, freeholders prosperous or in debt to usurers,
share-croppers retaining only a fraction of the harvest, cash cropping
tenants paying a fixed money rent-or intermarrying proletarians
supplementing their basic wages with income from small plots of land.
And it is this same vulgar idealism that is reflected in Cohen's abstrac-
ted empiricism when he writes: 'Classes are the figments of the imagina-
tion of sociologists. What actually exists are large numbers of interest
groups of different scales and political significance, which can be
ranged on one continum, from the most formally organised to the most
informally organised . . .'43 Thus, shifting 'interests groups', now appear-
ing now not, yet always palpably 'ranged on one continuum', give
Cohen's kinship-defined groups a reality and continuity that 'classes'
Anthropological texts and ideological problems 27 1
lack! Is it any wonder that class disappeared and the hamula endured
among Israeli Arabs?
The most clear-cut case produced by Cohen of hamulas as interest
groups in the village he studied is 'The Case of the Labour Exchange
Office (1954)'. It seems that in the early years of the 1950s the villager
appointed as the local employment officer came, understandably, to be
identified by the other villagers as representing the Israeli Military
Administration, and as the result of a severe local unemployment crisis
in 1954, a challenge was made to the man's complete control of job
allocations. Cohen claims that eventually 'the representative of the
village labourers proposed that the distribution of jobs should be
entrusted to a body in which each one of the major patronymic groups
would be represented'. (67) Shortly before the 1959 elections the
Military Administration established 'The Committee of Labour' on
just this principle, and the hamula was thus institutionalised. What
emerges from this is the labourers' attempt to decentralise the process
of job allocation, and to distribute work-permits more widely among
themselves. That this attempt succeeded in the way it did is testimony

not to the spontaneous resurgence of the hamula, but to the power of
the Military Administration.
Cohen is very coy about the Military Administration, and attempts
to minimise and obscure the degree of control exercised by it over the
Arab village population. He does mention the affiliations between the
Military Administration, MAPAI and the Histadrut, the trinity which
dominates the Israeli political economy.44 But the significance of this
alliance for the so-called revival of the hamula completely escapes him
in his discussion of the 1959 elections. The Local Councils in Arab
villages are dominated administratively by the Military Government.
Partly by the application of sanctions through this channel and the
Histadrut, and partly by the device of encouraging (closely supervised)
'hamula lists', it is able to outflank quite easily the rival national parties
such as MAPAM and the Communists, whose policies are relatively
more favourable towards Israeli Arabs.
But not so easily in the parliamentary elections. Here the issue
is not simply the local control of Arab villagers through local govern-
ment structures, but the recruitment of MAPAI members to the Knesset.
So clearly, leaving the field to 'hamula lists' will not do-MAPAI is
obliged to come out into the open with lists in its own name. And here
again (given its overwhelming weight in the Military Areas) MAPAI polls
more than its rivals. But a number of interesting points emerge from
the voting figures which are partly reproduced in Cohen's book: the
two Left Wing national parties MAPAM and Communists together
polled nearly 30 per cent in the Arab border villages, while MAPAI
polled 44.6 per cent ;in the country as a whole MAPAM and Communists
only polled 10 per cent. Furthermore, the share of MAPAI votes fell
by about 18 per cent, and that of MAPAM and Communists rose by
272 Talal Asad
about 9 per cent in the border villages, between the 1955 and 1959
elections. Also (and this is not mentioned by Cohen) the Communist
Party obtained 45 per cent of Arab votes in the towns, where the
Military Administration has no authority, and 26.6 per cent in the
villages, where it prevails.45 All of this probably points to incipient
class opposition to MAPAI, the ruling Zionist party, and not necessarily
to ideological identification with the political leadership of the other two.
Such differences are not adequately explained by the bland statement
that in the parliamentary elections the Arab villager voted 'mainly as
individuals, or groups with private interests, on party lines' (159) and
that by 'voting for hamulas, instead of for parties, in the council
election, the villagers prevented outside "foreign" agencies from
dominating their internal affairs.' (173)
T o begin with, Cohen might have informed the reader that out of
about IOO Arab villages in Israel there were only 30 which had local
councils,46 and that these local councils are an important means at the
disposal of the Military Administration (and so of MAPAI) of political
manipulation and patronage. Thus an official report, published in 1959,
stated: 'The Military Government deals with a large number of matters

which come within the competence of the civil administration. It gives
instructions or advice to the Ministry concerned, or opposes the grant-
ing of permits to buy agricultural equipment, to rent land or to work.
The Controller's Office has established that, in the field of co-ordination
[of policy regarding Israeli Arabs] the Military Government has fre-
quently dealt with matters that fall within the competence of govern-
ment offices, without there being any weighty security reason to justify
such interference. I t has been suggested to the Military Government
that it should restrict its activities to matters in which security reasons
make its interference essential. . . . The Controller's Office emphasises
the necessity for the Military Government to drastically curtail its
interference in matters that lie within the field of responsibility of govern-
ment office^.'^'
The 'integration' of Arab Israelis as non-Jewish 'kinship-based'
proletarians, located in Military Administered Areas, into Israel's
political economy is the very condition of their political-ideological
~ ~ their formal inclusion as citizens in the realm of
~ u b j e c t i o n . For
the Israeli state is contradicted by their substantive exclusion as non- Jews
in the sphere of the Zionist institutions. These institutions-chief
among which is the Jewish Agency, an organ of the World Zionist
Federation-exercise a massive hegemony over the political economy of
the country. Thus the Jewish Agency is 'a major agency which recruits
financial aid for Israel from Jews in the Diaspora and organises migra-
tion to, and settlement in, Israel. The scope of its activities is well
illustrated by the size of its budget, which was 21 I .5 million Israeli lirot
(about $122 million) for 1958-1959, compared with the budget of the
Israeli government, which amounted to 969 million Israeli lirot in
1957-1958'.~~Its energies and properties are devoted exclusively to

Jews. As a consequence of the covenant signed by the Jewish National
Fund and the Israeli government in 1961, the principle of Jewish
exclusivism was extended to all state lands, so that 90 per cent of all
land in Israel is not accessible to Arab Israelis by way of sale, lease or
any other holding rights.50The fact that 'the Jewish Agency is governed
by a coalition of all major Israeli parties', and that 'the Israeli political
parties have cognate parties in the Jewish c o r n m ~ n i t i e sin
' ~ Europe
~ and
America, reflects well the basic political articulation of Israel's Zionist
structure. At another level stands the Histadrut ('The General Federation
of Jewish Labour in the Land of Israel'), a powerful trade union federa-
tion with its unparalleled health and insurance schemes,52 and also a
major owner of business e n t e r p r i ~ ehaving
, ~ ~ close links with the Israeli
government in general and the ruling MAPAI in particular. Until 1959
it was prevented by its charter from admitting Israeli Arabs, but since
then the formal obstacles have been removed although the essential
ideological character of the institution remains unaltered: only a tiny
fraction of the Arab labour force is admitted to full membership with

its security and benefit.54
The mobilisation of Israeli Arabs periodically according to 'hamula'
ideology is thus the expression of a special subjection-as members of
an exploited class who are prevented, because of Israel's Zionist structure,
from developing either a class-based or a nation-based political organi-
sation. Zionist ideology separates them from their Jewish fellow-workers,
but it also cannot permit the existence of two politically organised
national identities (Palestinian and Jewish) within what is by definition
a Jewish national state. The institutionalisation of the hamula in local
government is an attempt to provide an ideological solution to this
political contradiction: for through this device it becomes possible to
control rural Arabs administratively and also to separate them authorita-
tively on the basis of an imputed ethnicity.55
Cohen attributes the absence of a country-wide Arab national
organisation to the Israeli Arabs' inability to overcome their internal
divisions, which, in the form of factional rivalries (a part of 'traditional
Arab culture'), are exacerbated by the unstable foreign policies of the
surrounding Arab states. (See Chapter VII.) But the conclusion of
anti-Zionist Israeli Jews on this subject is very different:
'In the twenty-odd years of Israel's history, the Palestinians have
never been allowed to create an independent political movement.
Whenever such a movement has appeared the huge weight of military
rule has been directed against it. When the group centred on the El Ard
publication was established in the sixties with a clearly Arab nationalist
programme, it was simply proscribed by the courts.
'Any Arab who became politically active, either in the ranks of the
Communist Rekah Party or as an individual defending his civil rights,
was blacklisted by the military government and the Security Service
274 Talal Asad
(Shin Beit), which secretly control development of the non-Jewish

sector-partly through the Department of Arab Affairs of the Prime
Minister's Bureau; partly through the so-called Special Branch of the
police-and partly through parallel organisms planted in the various
civil services such as the Ministry of Posts and Communications, the
Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of
Culture and Education and the Histadrut. This overall checking is
systematic, regulated, and consistent with the Zionist Establishment's
policy of allowing the Arabs controlled development in separate, limited
and sharply delineated areas.'56
Conclusion
At the very least we have established that Abner Cohen's Arab Border
Villages in Israel lies in an ideologically contested domain. And yet
Cohen presents his account as though it were a patient record of un-
mediated evidence-in the recognisable tradition of anthropological

objectivity. I must stress that it has not been at all my intention to
impugn the objectivity of a particular work. On the contrary, I have
tried to analyse the complex character of this objectivity, and to demon-
strate its anthropological modes, especially where these have been
hidden from the author himself because he reproduces through them
part of his own social being.
Cohen's apparent object (continuity and change in Arab village
organisation in Israel) has revealed itself, on closer examination, to
be an ideological study of the normative status of Israeli Arabs in a
Zionist state. A realistic understanding of the consciously stated
problem, I argued, was possible only if its terms were radically altered.
I indicated briefly in historical outline that it is in terms of class as a
theoretical concept, not of hamula as the so-called 'traditional form' of
Israeli Arab organisation, that we can hope to comprehend this problem.
Furthermore, I argued that 'the hamula' of Israeli Arabs was the
ideological resolution of a Zionist problem-for it constituted a mode of
control and an imputed identity for the only political existence allowed
to Arab villagers in Israel. In asserting that this existence was the
essential one, Cohen was therefore reflecting official Zionist ideology-
although that ideology itself is not mere 'reflection'.
'Ideology' is a kind of false consciousness, but false consciousness
that is, in the first place, embodied in institutionalised practice. T o
speak of ideology in this sense is, therefore, to refer to the mystifications
and distortions that are structurally necessary to social movements,
institutions, etc. Hence we may say that the falsity of ideology as
institution relates to the subject of social practice, and that in the
present case the subject is the Zionist movement with its historic
practice of creating facts in opposition to and at the expense of the native
Palestinian peasants. But ideology as a form of politically mediated

social understanding relates also to the object of knowledge, when it
reproduces faithfully and uncritically the categories which are embodied
in ideological practice. That is to say, in so far as Cohen is simply
re-stating, in the form of 'objective knowledge', the kind of mystification
and distortion that are necessary to the social movements and institu-
tions being studied as objects (Arab villages in Israel), his work is
ideological.
Abner Cohen's monograph is at once specific and general. In its
specific form it reflects unconsciously the ideological problems and
resolutions of a specific structure of exploitation and domination. But
in its general form it draws upon the armoury of theoretical categories
available to him as the trained member of a bourgeois academic disci-
pline. Among these is 'ethnicity', which is employed implicitly as the
problem-orienting notion in Arab Border Villages (and explicitly in his
later The way in which the idea of ethnicity-and therefore
general anthropological theory-fits into Cohen's specific ideological
position is not hard to identify. 'Ethnicity' itself proposes a certain auton-

omous subject: the ordered ethnic group, or individuals interacting in
terms of ethnic categories-i.e. those who collectively share, or who
individually manipulate and respond to, given norms, customs, symbols,
etc. Ethnic subjects, whether combining or competing with each other,
act in accordance with shared rules (symbolic, moral, prudential) of
the 'power game' which thus constititis the identifiable social order.
So not only does ethnicity propose autonomous subjects, it also postu-
lates the authority of a shared order as the ultimate form of social reality.
I t is through this postulate that 'ethnicity' lends itself to an ideological
enterprise, when it is used to assert an unmediated social unity where in
reality there is merely a moment in the development of contradictory
forces-i.e. when something that is merely the momentary, one-sided
expression of social repression is projected as a real, complete whole
defined and integrated by an immanent authority.
The ideological character of Abner Cohen's Arab Border Villages in
Israel is thus revealed in the way in which it (a) adjusts uncritically
to the repressive reality of the object it describes, (b) mystifies its
analysis in the interests of that adjustment, and therefore (c) employs
theoretical categories (like ethnicity) which disguise the contradictions
generated by exploitation and repression, categories which are part of
a wider anthropological tradition.
Anthropological categories are not ideological in the abstract but
become ideological in the specific context which gives them their
operative meaning and their political tendency-that is, in the specific
accounts of 'other cultures' produced by real anthropologists in the
real world. The ideological attitude of the anthropologist emerges most
clearly when, as a privileged member of the dominant culture of capi-
talism, he obscures the systematic (though often indirect) nature of
276 Talal Asad
capitalist exploitation which is shaping and transforming the object he

claims to be describing. Therefore, when I describe Abner Cohen's
attitude as ideological, I am not moralising about his alleged lack of
concern for the oppressed (an allegation which can probably be shown,
from the point of view of liberal ethics, to be either false or arbitrary) ;
I am simply pointing to his theoretical standpoint in its relation to a
real confrontation of unequal power. I n other words, the ideological
character of this monograph is determined not by Cohen's motives or
by Cohen's consciousness, but by the semantic relationship of his
text to the political reality which lies outside it. That relationship is an
essential part of the significance of this text, and since the text is
anthropological (i.e. produced by an anthropological discipline) it is an
expression of one way in which the ideology of that discipline is
objectified.
Notes and References

I . E.g. Percy Cohen in Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 2 , 1966 ; I. M. Lewis

in History and Anthropology, London, 1968; R. A. Fernea in R. Antoun and
I. Harik (eds.), Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East, Indiana,
1972.
2 . Man (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute), Vol. I , 1966.
3. H. Rosenfeld, 'From Peasantry to Wage Labour and Residual
Peasantry: the Transformation of an Arab Village' in R. A. Manners (ed.),
Process and Pattern in Culture, Chicago, 1964.
4 . An instructive example of this shift is found in the work of another
Manchester anthropologist, Emrys Peters, who abandons the holistic
framework of 'Aspects of rank and status among Muslims in a Lebanese
village' (in J. Pitt-Rivers (ed.), Mediterranean Countrymen, Paris/La Haye,
1963) in which stratified status groups balance and complement one another,
for a transactionalist model in which individual decision-makers mobilise or
exchange assets in 'Shifts in power in a Lebanese Village' (in R. Antoun and
I. Harik (eds.), Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East, Indiana,
1972). Both papers reveal the traditional anthropologist's inability to
formulate the problem of political power and structural transformation.
5. Cf. D. Warriner, 'Land Tenure Problems in the Fertile Crescent' in
C. Issawi (ed.) The Economic History of the Middle East: 1800-1914, Chicago,
1966, P. 75.
6. D. Warriner, op. cit., p. 76.
7 . Cf. I. M. Smilianskaya 'The Disintegration of Feudal Relations in Syria
and Lebanon in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century' in C. Issawi (ed.),
The Economic History of the Middle East, 1800-1914, Chicago, 1966.
8. '6. Palestine was mainly an agricultural country before the War, and
those industries which existed were of an agricultural character. The
manufacture of soap in a primitive way and wine were the only
industries established on a large scale. A large number of traditional
industries in which hand or animal power was used in the process of
manufacture were also in existence, and these include oil pressing,
weaving of carpets, mats, Arab cloth and head-gear, textile dyeing, and
glass making.
'7. After the [First World] War, when Jewish immigrants brought into
the country their industrial experience and capital, a number of small

factories producing a variety of articles and a few large factories for the
manufacture of cement, vegetable oils, flour, and stockings, were
established.
'8. In 1927 the policy of protecting local industry was initiated and the
familiar phrase "infant industries" became part of the fiscal language of
Palestine. Machinerv and certain raw and semi-manufactured materials
imported for use in production were freed from duty, while in certain
cases the charges on the finished article were increased. Where it is not
possible to exempt from import duty imported commodities used in local
production and the local industry is producing for export, a system of
drawbacks permits in approved cases a refund on exportation,
representing a substantial part of the import duty collected on the
imported commodities used in the locally produced article. The wide
manufacturing field now covers extraction of mineral salts from the
Dead Sea, food products, drinks, cigarettes, tobacco, building materials,
metalwork, furniture, textiles, leather goods, artificial teeth, matches,
wearing apparel, and chemical and allied products . . .' Palestine Royal
Commission Report (H.M.S.O.), London, 1937, pp. 208-9.
9. Some of these immigrants settled on the land, but the vast majority
swelled the urban population of Palestine. 'The rural population has
increased, but its proportion of the total has decreased, from 65 per cent in
1922 to 51 per cent in 1944. [ . . . ] The majority of the rural population are
Moslem, while the Jewish population are predominantly town dwellers and
account for half the population of the towns.' D. Warriner, Land and
Poverty in the Middle East, London, 1948, p. 55. According to A. Granott,
writing at about this time, 'Although decades have passed since the division
of joint property started, about half the villages in Palestine still hold their
lands, at least officially, in mesha'a.' The Land System in Palestine, London,
1952, p. 178. Most of the Arab population worked on the land, and apart
from some wage-labourers (especially on citrus farms), the majority had
direct control of their land-in the various forms of property right then
prevailing.
10. Structurally, as well as culturally, the urban-based Ottoman Jews were
quite distinct from the new European colonists. Many of them were state
officials and tax-farmers, together with local Ottoman Muslims and
Christians. For example, 'The [Jewish] banker family of Farhi, whose
members had considerable influence on the economical and political life of
the provinces of Damascus and Acre in the first half of the nineteenth
century, held many villages [in Palestine as tax-farmers].' A. N. Poliak,
Feudalism in Egypt, Syria, Palestine and the Lebanon 1250-1900, London,
1939, p. 52, n. 5. Whether through trade, banking or government, the roots
of the old Jewish community lay in a non-capitalist mode of production.
I I . Thus S. N. Eisenstadt, Israeli Society, London, 1967, discusses the
development of the Jewish community during the Mandate period with
virtually no reference to Palestinian Arabs. In the Introduction to The Arab
Labour Force in Israel, Jerusalem, 1966, Y . Ben-Porath writes 'In the
mandatory period the Jewish and Arab sectors constituted virtually separate
economic units.' (Page I . ) Not entirely inconsistent with this view is the
suggestion by other writers that the development of Jewish immigration
produced a spill-over effect which benefited the more backward Arab
economy-see, for example, D. Horowitz, 'Arab Economy in Palestine' in
J. B. Hobman (ed.), Palestine's Economic Future, London, 1946.
1 2 . During the Mandate period the growth of Palestine's capitalist sector
is broadly correlated with the inflow of Jewish capital from Europe (N.
278 Talal Asad
Halevi and R. Klinov-Malul, The Economic Development of Israel, New

York, 1968, pp. 21-2), virtually all of which remained within the Jewish
sector (E. Asfour, 'The Economic Framework of the Palestine Problem' in
W. R. Polk, D. M. Stamler and E. Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy, Boston,
1957, pp. 333-6). 'The most significant change in the industrial origin of
national income is the rise in the share of manufacturing from 26 per cent
in 1936 to 41 per cent in 1945, mainly at the expense of construction, trade
and finance. Since the corresponding figures for the non-Jewish sector show
that the share of manufacturing fell from 13.6 per cent to about 10.8 per cent,
it is clear that this happened only in the Jewish sector.' N. Halevi and
Klinov-Malul, op. cit., p. 26.
13. In bad years, which were by no means rare, many cultivators were
unable to pay any taxes, and even had to be helped by the government with
loans for the purchase of seed grain. Nearly every one of the annual Colonial
Office Reports on the Adn~inistrationof Palestine and Trans-Jordan contains
entries on the remission of some rural taxation due to poor harvest in
particular districts.
14. For details of the British system of land revenue see M. F. Abcarius,
'The Fiscal System' in S. B. Himadeh (ed.), The Economic Organization of
Palestine, Beirut, 1938.
1 5 . 'Before the [First World] War rural indebtedness existed but to a much
smaller extent than that which has accumulated since the War', G. Hakim and
M. Y. El-Hussayni, 'Monetary and Banking System', in S. B. Himadeh (ed.),
op. cit., p. 497.
16. h a r t from monevlenders and the Government. the two maior sources of
short-ierm credlt to Arab cultivators were credit cooperatives in Arab villages
(whose funds were borrowed from Barclays Bank at 6 per cent and lent to
members at 9 per cent) and Barclays Bank through its local branches
(lending at 9 per cent). 'The total seasonal credit issued by Barclays Bank in
1935-1936 was EP.zgo,ooo, the loans to be repaid in instalments falling due
between the middle of September and the end of December.' See G . Hakim
and M . Y. Hussayni, op. cit., pp. 498-500. (It should be noted that the
Ottoman Agricultural Bank has been criticised for contributing to peasant
insecurity in the pre-Mandate era by lending at an interest of 6 per cent. See
A. Granott, op. cit., p. 60.) I n contrast to this familiar pattern of peasant
indebtedness, debt in the Jewish agricultural sector largely represented
productive investment. (See G. Hakim and M. Y. Hussayni, op. cit.,
P P 502-4.)
17. 'They [Jewish agricultural settlements] carry a labour force which; with
this amount of machinery, must be greatly in excess of labour requirements.
.
[ . . ] No detailed analysis of the financial position of all the farms has ever
been published. Some balance sheets are available for 17 settlements in the
Haifa district, which were submitted to the Government during the war to
justify continuation of the government subsidies. [ . . . ] They show . . . that
the majority of the farms did not even cover capital expenditure or rent, and
none were free from debt.' D. Warriner, op. cit., pp. 69-70.
18. It should also be noted that (a) professional, service and trading classes-
always more heavily represented among the Jewish community than the
Arab-paid no direct taxes at all (M. F. Abcarius, op. cit., p. 556); (b) export
manufacturing industries-largely Jewish-owned-were entitled to
refunds on taxes as described above in footnote 8 ; (c) newly constructed
houses and industrial buildings-i.e. mainly those built by the Jewish
immigrant community-were exempt from the payment of the Urban
Property Tax for a period of three years immediately following completion
(M. F. Abcarius, op. cit., p. 529).
19. See S. B. Himadeh, 'Industry' in S. B. Himadeh (ed.), op. cit., p. 225.

20. 'A great transformation has taken place in the structure of enterprises,
methods of production, and character of production. Home industries
producing articles for trade have almost disappeared. What remains of these
industries is limited practically to needlework in all its forms. The relative
number of independent craftsmen has decreased and the relative number of
artisans employed in workshops or factories has increased. Traditional
methods of production are giving way to machine production.' Himadeh, op.
cit., pp. 223-4.
21. Some idea of wage differences maintained by Jewish unions (all of which
vigorously excluded native Arab members) may be gained from the table
taken from Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1937-1938, and reproduced in
S. B. Himadeh, op. cit., p. 284.
22. By, e.g., R. R. Nathan, 0. Grass, D. Creamer, Palestine: Problem and
Promise, Washington, 1946, pp. 3 14-16.
23. Between 1933 and 1937 the expenditure on 'defence' rose steeply by an
additional EP.1,451,828, which constituted 4 3 . I per cent of the total increase
on all items. (See Table 11.) This remarkable rise was necessitated by the Arab
peasants' and workers' revolt of the thirties. (See also Barbara Kalkas, 'The
Revolt of 1936: A Chronicle of Events' in I. Abu-Lughod (ed.), The
Transformation of Palestine, Evanston, I 97 I .)
24. 'Accordingly, real wages of Arab labor, in September, 1937 fell by 10

per cent as compared with wages in 1931, while wages of Jewish labor
increased by 10 per cent . . . Actual earnings in 1936 and 1937 decreased
more than is shown by the index numbers of the daily wage rates, because of
periods of unemployment and reduced hours of work . . . The number of
Arab unemployed in seven selected towns, on December 31, 1937, was
estimated at 21,000 and of Jewish laborers (combining whole and part-time
workers) at 12,ooo.' S. B. Himadeh, op. cit., pp. 286-7.
25. One immediate cause of rising Arab unemployment was at the same time
the cause of falling Jewish unemployment. Thus in March 1939, The Jewish
Frontier noted with satisfaction: 'unemployment among Jews at the end of
1938 was much reduced owing to the replacement of Arab labour in
plantations, increased security measures and public works . . . This year for
the first time only Jewish workers are employed in Jewish owned orange
groves. There are 25,000 of them, 10,ooo more than usual.' Quoted in E.
Asfour, op. cit., p. 333.
26. See A. M. Hyamson, Palestine Under the Mandate, London, 1950, p. 179.
27. 'Cash rents are practically unknown in the country and the normal
practice in the case of lands under ground crops is for landlords to take a
proportion of the gross yield varying between one third and two-fifths.'
M. F. Abcarius, op. cit., p. 524.
28. 'It seems probable that the cost of tenancy rent has gone up in the
country.' A. Granott, op. cit., p. 294.
29. The most important category was the money-lending merchant who
acted as the main assembling agency of local cereals, and granted short- and
medium-term credits to the peasants at exorbitant rates of interest. The
peasants were usually compelled to pay their debts immediately after harvest
when prices were low. (See B. Veicmanas, 'Internal Trade', in S. B.
Himadeh (ed.), op. n't., pp. 363-4.) Some money-lending merchants who
dealt with Arab peasants were Jewish, but whether they formed a significant
proportion overall is not clear. (See D. Duff, Sword for Hire, London, 1934,
p. 258 for a reference to Arab peasants around Hebron in debt to Jewish
merchants.)
30. This generalisation is intended to include the agricultural cooperative
280 Talal Asad
(moshav) and collective (kibbutz), which, although characterised in varying

degree by non-capitalist relations of work and consumption, are governed
nonetheless by capitalist relations and forces of production. Thus in 1948
D. Warriner observed: 'Much is made of the distinction between these two
types of organisation, but in fact there is little real difference between them,
except in so far as the older generation, with some inclination to farming, prefers
the small-holding co-operative, while the younger generation prefers the
communal settlement. T h e settlers on the CO-o~erative farms are considered
to hold their farms on 49-year leases from the Jewish Agency, whereas the
members of the collective farms appear to be workers only. But since the
farmers on the co-operative settlements are not free to cultivate or invest or
sell except as dictated from above, they are also in the position of workers in
every important respect. Minor details of the farm operations are decided by
a committee of the settlers, but every major decision as to production,
technical methods of cultivation, and finance is taken by the experts of the
Jewish Agency.' ( 0 9 . cit., p. 68.)But more significant in the context of
Palestine is the fact that such settlements have, from the beginning, been
essentially engaged in the production of exchange-values (which has driven
many of them over the years to expand into manufacture-see D. Warriner,
op. cit., pp. 70-I),and that the reproduction of their means of production has
always been determined by capital.
31.N. Weinstock, 'The Impact of Zionist Colonization on Palestinian Arab

Society before 1948'(in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 11, No. z, 1973)
writes interestinnlv on the nature of class contradictions amone Palestinian
U ,
Arabs during the Mandate, but does not deal with the problem of surplus
transfer. Yet it is only in the context of this problem that the historical
determinants of class alliance and struggle in Mandate Palestine can be
grasped.
32. See, for example, M. Mamdani, The Myth of Population Control, New
York, 1972.
33. This suggestion is tentative, but it may be worth noting that the
demographic increase was always greater in rural as against urban areas in
Palestine. See E. Hagopian and A. B. Zahlan, 'Palestine's Arab Population'
in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 111, No. 4, 1974.
34. See W. Lehn, 'The Jewish National Fund' (in Journal of Palestine
Studies, Vol. 111, No. 4, 1974)for details on land acquisitions. The Zionists
were evidently not unaware that one of the obstacles in the way of land
purchases was the pattern of communal land tenure among Arab peasants.
See, for example Palestine Royal Commission Report, 1937,p. 268.
35. J. Ruedy, 'Dynamics of Land Alienation', in I. Abu-Lughod (ed.), op.
cit., p. 134.
36. J. Ruedy, op. cit., p. 135.
37. S. N. Eisenstadt, Israeli Society, London, 1967,pp. 140-1.
38. 'More than 80 per cent of all farming land and over 90 per cent of the
areas now cultivated by Jews are administered by the [Israel Land Authority]
company . . . T h e Israel Land Authority charges the farmers rents which are
far less than the average economic rent.' S. N. Eisenstadt, op. cit., 79. The
I . L . A . leases land to Jews only. On the discriminatory price structure;
availability of government loans, etc. see the figures from Israel Government
Yearbooks reproduced in S. Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel,. Beirut, 1969,
pp. 156-63.On the expropriation of Israeli Arab land, see D. Peretz, Israel
and the Palestine Arabs, Washington, 1958,especially Chapter IX.
39. See H.Wolpe, 'Capitalism and Cheap Labour-power in South Africa' in
Economy and Society, Vol. I, no. 4, 1972.
40. See A. Hovne, The Labour Force in Israel, Jerusalem, 1961,p. 13
Anthropological texts and ideological problems
(Summary Table) for Jews, and p. 30 (Table g) for Arabs. For greater
detail, see Y. Ben-Porath, op. cit., Chapter 5 .
4 1 . T h e Jewish writer Aharon Cohen (not to be confused with our
anthropologist) noted that 'The wages paid to Arab workers never equalled
those paid to Jews, even if the Arab was doing the same work.' Israel and the
Arab U'orld, 1964, p. 530. Abner Cohen, in a curiously worded sentence,
writes that 'On the whole, their [i.e. Arab] wages are not lower than the
official rates, but they work harder and, sometimes, they work for longer
hours.' (p. 27.)
42. N. Halevi and R. Klinov-Malul, op. cit., p. 275 (Table 83).
43. Two-Dimensional M a n , London, 1974, p. 17.
44. But he does not elaborate, as does A. Etzioni, in Studies i n Social Change,
New York, 1966, p. 169.
45. S. Jiryis, op. cit., p. 5 1 .
46. S. Jiryis, op. cit., p. 49.
47. Report of the State Controller on the Ministry of Defence, No. 9,
15 February 1959, pp. 57-8, quoted in S. Jiryis, op. cit., p. 43.
48. In true colonial fashion the need for direct control of Arabs was early
recognised in Israel: 'In an interview with the press in February 1953, the
Prime Minister's advisor on Arab affairs (then Joshua Palmon), expressed the
opinion that it was unnecessary to allow Arabs to elect their local councils in
a democratic manner. "Democratic elections will only augment family feuds
and are not in keeping with the existing conditions in the Arab community.
T h e establishment of local councils is also bound to lead to bloodshed. In the
Arab community one must choose a 'middle road' of not-too-much
democracy." ' D. Peretz, Israel and the Palestine Arabs, Washington, 1958,
p. 129.
49. A. Etzioni, op. cit., p. 159.
50. W. Lehn, op. cit., p. 88.
51 . A. Etzioni, op. cit., p. 161.
5 2 . 'Because of the strong political vested interest of the Histadrut Sick Fund
no overall health insurance developed. Similarly, there is as yet no
unemployment insurance.' S. N. Eisenstadt, op. cit., p. 2 1 I .
53. S. N. Eisenstadt, op. cit., p. 129.
54. Thus Eisenstadt writes that by 1962 'about 16,000 fee-paying Arabs had
joined the Histadrut', and adds, obscurely, that subsequently 'the willingness
of the Histadrut to grant Arab workers equal status increased'. O p . cit.,
P. 397.
55. T h e importance of the hamula as an ideological category for reconciling
the Zionist contradiction between 'the universalistic and secular truths of a
modern state based on equality of all its citizens' and 'the specifically
Jewish orientation of the State of Israel' emerges distinctly from the brief
discussion of 'Problems of the Arab Minority' in S. N. Eisenstadt, op. cit.,
pp. 394-7. For example :
'Although there was full recognition of the minority groups' rights to

cultural autonomy, it was not clear what exactly such autonomy implied
or what-beyond a general idea of common citizenship-could develop
as a common focus of Israeli identity.
[...l
'The parallel development of a Zionist and Arab national movements
could only hinder the development of a common identity . . . '
'The Arab minority (whether Muslim or Christian) had no distinct
cultural Israeli or even Palestinian identity, except on the local,
traditional level which had survived through centuries of conquest. I n so
282 Talal Asad
far as a wider identity developed among them (and this began to happen
under the Mandate, through contacts with the wider Arab national
movement, and paradoxically, through the process of integration within
Israel) it was closely tied to other Arab countries or communities . . .
[...l
'The causes of this ambivalence of the Israeli Arabs towards the
State are, in essence, simple. By ties of kinship, ethnicity, or incipient
nationalistic orientation, they were much more closely tied to the Arabs
across the border, in countries hostile to Israel.'
T h u s the category of hamula conveniently endows Israeli Arabs at
once with a merely fragmented local tradition and also an extra-territorial,
other-nation loyalty-thus removing them ideologically from the essence
of Israeli citizenship.
56. M. Ghilan, How Israel Lost Its Soul, Harmondsworth, 1974, p. 197.
57. Custom and Politics in Africa, London, 1969; Urban Ethnicity (A.S.A.
Monograph no. I 2), London, 1974 ; Two-Dimensional Man, London, I 974.

ASAD, Talal Anthropological Texts and Ideological Problems An Analysis of Cohen On Arab Villages in Israel, Economy and Society, V. 4, N. 3, 1975, Pp. 251-282.

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

ASAD, Talal Anthropological Texts and Ideological Problems An Analysis of Cohen On Arab Villages in Israel, Economy and Society, V. 4, N. 3, 1975, Pp. 251-282.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [Universitaets und Landesbibliothek]

On: 09 December 2013, At: 05:28

Economy and Society

Anthropological texts and ideological problems: an

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085147500000014

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

unconscious, political level is the very condition of its failure at the

I n order to evaluate the theoretical limitations of contemporary

reverted to a traditional form of political organisation, based on patrili-

This emerges more clearly in Rosenfeld's 1964 paper3in which he depicts

Cohen's history of Arab peasant organisation in

(This section contains only summaries and quotations from Cohen.)

ments, youth associations, cultural associations, propaganda offices,

peasant while he himself worked for wages, or he could cultivate his

equal share of political power.' (178)

Cohen's problematic: the conscious and unconscious levels

the village economy, technology and politics by overlords, merchants,

"The Joint Estate Period". I n processing the material, I considered

the political organisation of Arab villagers in Israel cannot have a

the specific historical movement of the production, accumulation and

Notes towards t h e definition of t h e class situation o f A r a b

The object to be grasped is the developing class situation of Arab

The rural population in what was later to become Mandate Palestine

I n general, this movement continues throughout the first half of the

The establishment of European (British) rule over Mandate Palestine

'labour costs'.17 In other words the lower subsistence level of the

Fiscal Importance of Indirect Taxes

great measure to the expansion of a tariff-assisted capitalist sector

Index Numbers of Nominal and Real (rough) Daily Wage Rates

Arab Jewish Arab Jewish

1931 100'0 100'0 100'0

1932 95'0 99'6 102.4

(Source: A. B. Himadeh, 'Industry' in S. B. Himadeh (ed.), The Economic Orgnnizn-

who pledged their harvests to trader-usurersz9 lost in the transaction

fore the contradiction between the forces and relations of production

(the production of values for immediate consumption) or mediated by

During the 1948-49 war, there occurred the massive separation of

depression of Arab agriculture in Israel. There are thus two major

I. The mass expropriation of Arab land (1948-49). This is the 'booty

2. The depression of Israeli Arab azriculture.

discourages the residual sector of traditional Arab agriculture. Relative

by the so-called 'revival of hamula organisation'. On the contrary, it is

Hamula decline and revival: t h e continuity o f 'tradition'

The alternate stress on 'hamula' and 'class' as 'principles of organisa-

themselves. That this attempt succeeded in the way it did is testimony

stated: 'The Military Government deals with a large number of matters

1957-1958'.~~Its energies and properties are devoted exclusively to

fraction of the Arab labour force is admitted to full membership with

(Shin Beit), which secretly control development of the non-Jewish

mediated evidence-in the recognisable tradition of anthropological

Palestinian peasants. But ideology as a form of politically mediated

position is not hard to identify. 'Ethnicity' itself proposes a certain auton-

capitalist exploitation which is shaping and transforming the object he

Notes and References

I . E.g. Percy Cohen in Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 2 , 1966 ; I. M. Lewis

the country their industrial experience and capital, a number of small

Halevi and R. Klinov-Malul, The Economic Development of Israel, New

19. See S. B. Himadeh, 'Industry' in S. B. Himadeh (ed.), op. cit., p. 225.

24. 'Accordingly, real wages of Arab labor, in September, 1937 fell by 10

(moshav) and collective (kibbutz), which, although characterised in varying

31.N. Weinstock, 'The Impact of Zionist Colonization on Palestinian Arab

'Although there was full recognition of the minority groups' rights to