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But not only does the structure of the women’s social relations differ from
that of the men, the division between men and women itself is one of the most
important facts of the social structure. This division, which is expressed in
division of labour and the village concept of social function, in segregation of
men and women, except for intimate kin, and in the low status of women as
against men, divides the village into two distinct societies, two separate webs,
as it were, side by side, and with odd strands running back and forth between
them, linking each point in each web with a few points in the other web, Each
household would be represented by a little cluster of such cross strands.
6. Other relations
This picture of a web of relationships leads me on to consider personal
relationships which lie outside the groups and units we have so far considered.
These personal ties are not different, except in intensity, from those which
make up the units and groups. They are, in the main, kin ties, but they include
also relationships of buyer and seller, craftsman and
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client, fellow craftsmen, personal friends or acquaintances, and so on.
Although they cannot be summed up in terms of units of groups as part of the
social structure, they are influences by the group structure of the society.
Matrilateral ties within the village are different in kind from ties across
village boundaries, and an economic transaction with a close neighbour is
likely to follow a different course, and have different consequences, from a
transaction with a stranger. That is to say that, although these relationships do
not form part of the group structure, they are not independent of this
structure, but take place within it and are influenced by it. In turn, they
influence relationships between the groups, especially the social units, the
households and the villages. Inter-village relations are primarily along the
lines of inter-marriage, creating affinal and matrilateral kin ties. Much
economic Activity, many personal acquaintances outside kinship, and many
fresh marriages come out of these ties.
Beyond the personal ties with surrounding villages, and extending to Kayseri
and other nearby town, are a set of important relations to the society of which
the village forms a part. The economic relation of the migrant craftsmen has
a personal element, but apart from these, relations are almost entirely with the
government and are of an impersonal kind - the sale of surplus grain to the
government depot, the orders which come down from impersonal authority
above through the more personal link to the local müdür, the drafting of the
village young men for service with the army, the imposition of the new
western legal system, and so on. Perhaps these are not a part of the village
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social structure, but an account of the village must take note of them. What is
and what is not part of the village social life? The decision on where to draw
the line in a description cannot be solved by thinking about what constitutes
“society”, but only by deciding in detail what seems indispensable to the
completeness and comprehensibility of the account offered. Here I wish
merely to say that in addition to the personal relations of all types in the
village society, there exist a set of
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impersonal, or less personal, relationships whose impact on the village is at
least as important.
7. Conclusion.
The test of analogy is appropriateness. If the picture leads to a better
understanding, a deeper insight, then the analogy has done its work. But it
must also be remembered that with a deeper insight, on one score, an analogy
may also bring a dense fog to befuddle us on another. I used a moment ago
the analogy of a web - two webs, as a matter of fact. Webs are common in
anthropological writing, and justly so, because the analogy is enlightening.
But this analogy has its dangers. In fact, no society consists, like a web, of
lines joining points. People are no more like points than the relations between
them are so many straight lines. Equally, no society consists, like a building,
of units which are simply piled one on another, nor, in spite of the array of
authority that has said the contrary, does it consist of parts, distinguishable
from each other, but related in a systemic balance of interdependence, like the
structure of living organisms. All these analogies are useful, that is
enlightening, but all of them, if taken too literally, crete fog while they shed
light.
The attempt to set down in words my experience of the village in which I
lived has followed lines of thought, used models and vocabulary, based on
these other analogies, aiming, not at the kind of report in terms of
personalities, which a novelist or a traveller would have given, but rather at
an analytical and systematic description of the social relations within the
society. But this is only one of many possible ways of treating the material,
and if it has the advantage of making some things about the society clearer,
and opening the way for comparative sociology, it also has the danger of
making us forget that we are not dealing with dehydrated straight lines
between points but with people. The observed reality is not a structure or a
web or a set of relations, but the activities and feelings, the miseries and joys,
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