The Basseri of Iran: How Pastoralism Impacted Kinship, Social Organization - Research Paper Example

? The Basseri of Iran: How Pastoralism Impacted Kinship, Social Organization, and Political Organization Ashford The Basseri of Iran: How Pastoralism Impacted Kinship, Social Organization, and Political Organization The Basseri of Southern Iran are traditionally a nomadic, tent-dwelling people, descended from Arabic, Persian, Turkic, and Gypsy ancestors. Amanolahi (2003) informs us that the Basseri have now been detribalized and integrated into the national Iranian state, however. Traditionally, their primary mode of subsistence had been pastoral, herding sheep and goats. They numbered about 16,000 in the 1950s, when research for the classic ethnography, Nomads of South Persia by Frederik Barth was conducted (Amanolahi, 2003). Anthropologists have long observed connections between the primary mode of subsistence and aspects of culture such as kinship, social organization, and political organization, and the case is no different with the Basseri. This paper will explore some of those connections as outlined in published ethnographic work. Kinship Pastoralists have “pre-state” societies and therefore do not have a state, by common definition in anthropology (see Scupin, 1995). They are instead organized through tribal kinship relations, encompassing often thousands of persons. The Basseri were divided into 13 tirehs, with each tireh further subdivided into several oulads. For most pastoralists, descent is traced through the male (“patriliny”) unlike horticulturalists where matrilineal or matrilocal kinship patterns are common (Nowak & Laird, 2010). The Basseri follow this pattern, and membership in an oulad is determined by descent in the male line, and the structure of the tireh is based on connections of descent in the male line (Keesing, 1981). This type of tribal kinship pattern could be considered a segmentary lineage system, in which sub-groups were ideally arranged in a complex structure of complementary opposition and alliances by various groups and sub-groups, though real life often strayed from this ideal (Lindholm, 1986). This tribal kinship organization, rather than any state-like institutions, was used to manage the collective use of land and other resources by the Basseri in their pastoral mode of subsistence. The entire social organization, in fact, was based upon these tribal kin relationships. Social Organization The Basseri migrated seasonally through a strip of land some 300 miles long, an area of about 2,000 square miles, settling in one pasture area during summer, when they would also grow some wheat, and being more nomadic during winter (Keesing, 1981). This frequent movement pattern of thousands of people, of necessity, required a society and social organization that was flexible and mobile. Family groups were conceived of as “tents” and were the main units of production and consumption. These tent groups were represented by their male heads, and held full rights over property and sometimes acted as independent political units, according to Barth (cited in Keesing, 1981, p. 138). All of the property of a tent group – tents, bedding, cooking equipment – moved along with the herds when the group migrated. An average family would have 6 to 12 donkeys and somewhat less than 100 sheep and goats. In winter, the families separated into small clusters of 2 to 5 tents, associated as herding units. The rest of the year, larger camps of 10 to 40 tents moved together. Members of these camps comprised solidary communities, but because of their mobile patterns, quarreling would sometimes lead to temporary or even permanent fission (Keesing, 1981). Nowak & Laird (2010) have noted that living in camps of 30 to 50 tents, Basseri would strike camp and move every three to four days. This requires great organizational skills, with the animal herder, a young boy or girl, leaving early in the morning with the herd while the adults break camp, loaded their possessions onto pack animals, and moved to the new camp, set it up, and prepare for the herds, which would need to be milked upon their arrival. According to Murdock’s (1967) cross-cultural tabulations (cited in Scupin, 1995, p. 171), pastoralists have a median size of 2,000 people, but in large regions where villages are tied through economic, social, and political relationship, some tribal populations have denser populations. This indeed appears to be the case for the Basseri, as they engaged in extensive relations with surrounding villages and wider state authorities for thousands of years, engaging in extensive trade and political relationships (Keesing, 1981; Amanolahi, 2003). We can see, therefore, that the pastoral mode of subsistence, and their economic and political relations with other societies, impacted the size of Basseri society. At higher levels, the Basseri were divided into 13 tireh, or sections, which were structurally equal, though each tireh might differ in size significantly. Most tireh were divided into “families” or oulads (as many as six), each with a headman, and with a particular grazing area and migration route. Oulads of the same tireh had closely linked migration routes and schedules (Keesing, 1981; Amanolahi, 2003). This illustrates the importance of the kinship and social structure with regard to the needs of the pastoral mode of subsistence. One aspect of social organization that has been debated about the Basseri has been the institution of private property. Barth had argued that in pastoral societies generally – including the Basseri – there existed a unique set of relationships between populations of men, the animals off of which they lived, and the habitat which the men and their herds collectively exploited, which promoted cultural patterns of ascribing animals to individual men as private property (as cited in Dowling, 1975, p. 419). Barth argued that a pastoral population could only reach a stable level if other effective population controls intervened before those of starvation and death-rate, and that a first requirement in such an adaptation was the presence of the patterns of private ownership of herds, and individual economic responsibility for each household. The institution of private property caused the population to become fragmented with respect to economic activities, and economic factors could strike differentially, eliminating some members of the population without affecting other members of the same population. This would be impossible if the corporate organization with respect to political life and pasture rights were also made relevant to economic responsibility and survival, he argued (as cited in Dowling 1975, p. 419). Dowling (1975), on the other hand, argued that Basseri private property was not as a result of the pastoral mode of subsistence particularly, but rather a response to participation in a wider external market and exchange of goods with other villages and communities, urban and peasant (see Amanolahi, 2003). He notes that the ethnographic data from many non-market pastoral societies shows that animals are usually not considered private property, and that Barth's theory fits some gardening societies better than the Basseri. Dowling (1975), therefore, argues against assertions that the Basseri’s primary mode of subsistence – pastoralism – impacted this aspect of its social structure, and rather that Basseri participation in an external market impacted the development of the social institution of private property, which resulted in significant wealth differences among different sections of Basseri society. As an example of these wealth differences, for instance, Nowak & Laird (2010) note that successful Basseri built up their herds, accumulating hundreds or thousands of animals. Fearful of losing their wealth to disease and the vulnerabilities of nature, herders converted this capital into an alternative form of wealth, such as land in local villages. The land was cultivated by villagers as tenant farmers, including unsuccessful Basseri who lost their herds and ended up as agricultural laborers. Political Organization Though the Basseri were a “pre-state society” (see Scupin, 1995), they did have a fairly centralized political system, with a khan or kalantar acting as the central, autocratic leader of the entire Basseri tribe (Keesing, 1981; Salzman, 2000; Amanolahi, 2003). Barth describes the khan as “the central, autocratic leader of the tribe” who had “great power and privilege” (cited in Salzman, 200, p. 50). This power was conceived as emanating from the khan, rather than delegated to him by his subjects. The monopolization by the chief of the right to command was a fundamental abstract principle of Basseri social structure. The Basseri were like the other nomadic tribes of south Persia in being led by an omnipotent khan or chief, argues Barth. Indeed, although the Basseri had diverse ancestral origins, it was their common allegiance to the chief which constituted them into a single tribe in the Persian sense (cited by Salzman, 2000, p. 50). The authority of the Basseri chief was exercised regularly in three fields: allotting pastures and co-ordinating the migrations of the tribe, settling the disputes that were brought to him, and representing the tribe or any of its members in politically important dealings with sedentary authorities (Salzman, 2000). However, despite Barth’s characterization of the khan as being omnipotent and all-powerful, Salzman (2000) has argued that because of the nature of the pastoral mode of subsistence, this was only an image, but not the reality of power and politics in Basseri society. The Basseri, after all, were made up from collectivities of free tribesmen who constituted a mobile, ready-made cavalry force. Many Basseri owned horses for riding, and hunting was a popular sport. Firearms were esteemed, and the tribesmen were skilled in their uses. This suggests that Basseri tribesmen were capable, at least as individuals or small groups, of applying armed coercion against the khan. Indeed, Salzman (2000, p. 53) quotes a member of the powerful Qashqai tribal confederacy who notes that because nomads are armed and of strong character, this makes tyranny impossible among them. In addition, Basseri tribesmen had the universal capacity to remove themselves from the authority of their chief through their almost absolute capability for spatial mobility that comes from their pastoral mode of subsistence. Their established nomadism rested on a technology of portable housing and production equipment, and their capital resources – livestock – were both spatially mobile and, thanks to the urban marketplace, financially liquid. Tribesmen could have, if they wished, literally walked or ridden away from their chief (Salzman, 2000). Also, on occasions when it was feared that the khan might use his authority to expropriate the herds of rival tribesmen, some large herd owners sold their livestock, bought agricultural land, and settled in villages as landowners (Salzman, 2000). Furthermore, notwithstanding Barth's argument that Basseri tribesmen were not well situated to organize independently of the chief, large groups of tribesmen had settled as units in compact villages in their traditional summer pastures. Furthermore, large groups of tribesmen acting as units would sometimes leave the Basseri entirely to join other tribes or form new ones. The abandonment of the Basseri by these large groups of tribesmen would result from tribesmen's rejection of their tribal chief, notes Salzman (2000). In other words, because of the pastoral mode of production, a tribal chief in Fars Province (where the Basseri were situated) did not have a monopoly of leadership over his tribesmen. The presence of neighboring tribes and their chiefs presented alternative leadership options to common tribesmen. Weak and ineffective chiefs could lose their tribesmen to competing chiefs from other tribes. If tribesmen believed that their interests were better served by the chief of a neighboring tribe, they could have switched allegiance. Passive refusal or the threat of or actual violent attack was also possible. A tribal chief was thus in constant if implicit competition with neighboring chiefs for the loyalty of his tribesmen. (Salzman, 2000) Salzman (2000) also argued that even though the Basseri had certain features of a tributary chiefdom (where the chief and his circle appropriated surplus from the rest of the tribe), the Basseri had more of a kin-based chiefship, which institutionalized its political power upon the management of consensus among clusters of participants, rather than coercive force. To paraphrase Eric Wolf (cited in Salzman, 2000, p. 64), the relative egalitarianism of the pastoral mode of subsistence made the chief as much a prisoner of the kin order as he was its ruler. However, because of the complex and plural social environment in which the Basseri found themselves, nothing served the Basseri better than the collectively “manufactured” picture of a solidary and unified tribe unquestionably following the commands of their strong and unchallenged ruler, argues Salzman (2000). Salzman forwards the argument that among pastoral nomadic societies like the Basseri, hierarchical political institutions are generated only by external political relations with state societies, and never develop as a result of the internal dynamics of such societies. Simply put, the pastoral mode of subsistence, by itself, generates more egalitarian political organization rather than hierarchical structures. The Basseri political structure of working by tribal consensus, but producing an image of chiefly omnipotence, was generated by its long-standing interactions with other societies. Conclusion The Basseri’s pastoral mode of subsistence impacted Basseri culture in very specific ways. As has been observed by Murdock (cited in Scupin, 2000, p. 171), the pastoral mode of subsistence supports a population size of a few thousand, compared to the smaller forager societies of a few hundred or the larger agricultural societies which would number in the tens of thousands. This requires a tribal kinship structure, between the small kin-based egalitarian bands and the large tributary chiefdoms and agricultural states. The Basseri kinship tribal structure was organized through its 13 tireh (sections) and many more oulad sub-sections, ideally arranged in relations of complementary opposition (Lindholm, 1986). Also, like most other pastoral societies, the Basseri were patrilineal. With regard to the social institution of private property, the issue appears to remain unresolved. Dowling (1975) has argued that because the Basseri have lived for thousands of years with other tribes, states, urban populations, and peasants, they have developed market relations with these groups, which gave rise to private property. Barth, on the other hand, had argued that private property came from the nature of the pastoral mode of subsistence itself (cited in Dowling, 1975). Finally, with regard to political organization, Salzman (2000) has argued that the relatively egalitarian nature of the pastoral mode of subsistence, where ordinary tribesmen had the capability and means to resist, ignore, flee, or otherwise not comply or accept the authority of a khan, made the image of a centralized chiefdom a mere illusion, which was useful to maintain for the outside world, but did not reflect the nature of social and political relations in a pastoralist society like that of the Basseri. In conclusion, the ethnographic material on the Basseri helps to illustrate the complex and interesting relationships between a society’s mode of subsistence and important aspects of its culture. References Amanolahi, S. (2003). Socio-political changes among the Basseri of south Iran. Iran & the Caucasus, 7(1/2), 261-277. Dowling, J. H. (1975). Property relations and productive strategies in pastoral societies. American ethnologist, 2(3), 419-426. Keesing, R. M. (1981). Cultural anthropology: a comparative perspective (2nd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Lindholm, C. (1986). Kinship structure and political authority: the Middle East and Central Asia. Comparative studies in society and History, 28(2), 334-355. Nowak, B., & Laird, P. (2010). Cultural anthropology. Ashford University Discovery Series. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUANT101.10.2/sections/ch00 Salzman, P. C. (2000). Hierarchical image and reality: the construction of a tribal chiefship. Comparative studies in society and history, 42(1), 49-66. Scupin, R. (1995). Cultural anthropology: a global perspective (2nd ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Read More