Women and Property in Morocco
Their Changing Relation to the Process of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas

A study of the effects of 'modernization' on the social and economic world of women in Morocco.

Vanessa Maher (Author)

9780521040419, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 September 2007

252 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.388 kg

This is a study of the effects of 'modernization' on the social and economic world of women in Morocco. Vanessa Maher suggests that three systems of social stratification modify one another: a system of classes based on relation to the means of production; a system of estates, differentiated by inherited status; and a system of segmentary tribal groups, based on territorial rights. Although all Moroccans use all these systems on different occasions it is the women who, faced with their own exclusion from wage-earning, along with the instability of marriage and the inadequacy of most family incomes, respond by perpetually reconstituting the groups on which they must depend, those based on territorial rights and putative kinship. By observing these social networks, Maher has been able to identify part of what inhibits the development of class consciousness, and what favours a clientistic political structure.

List of tables
List of illustrations
Preface
Note on orthography
Introduction
1. The background
2. Estates, tribal groups and the market today
3. Patron-client relations
4. How it looks on the ground
5. The cultural corollary: education and social stratification
6. Religion and social stratification
7. Conjugal roles, kinship roles and the division of labour
8. Relationships among women
9. Fostering
10. Marriage
11. Marriage and the market
12. The position of the bride after marriage
13. Divorce and property
Conclusions
Glossary
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]