Es ist unnötig, das Wahlverhalten von Arbeitern, die sozialdemokratisch wäahlen, ausführlich zu erklaren. Ihre Parteinahme erscheint uns «normal», da wir im allgemeinen davon ausgehen können, daß die politischen Fronten in der Wählerschaft die soziale Schichtung widerspiegeln. Wie aber erklärt sich, daß die SPD in der Bundesrepublik nur 60 Prozent der Arbeiterstimmen erhält, daß ein Drittel aller Arbeiter mit großer Konstanz ihre Stimme der CDU geben?

Modes of succession to high office in Africa today present the same problems for study as most other institutions in that continent; we have to analyse and understand both ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ practices. The two terms imply time-depth and it is of course true that we can pinpoint, for example, the recent entry of the extensive electoral procedures which follow a European model, whereas the kind of hereditary system by which offices circulated between segments of royal dynasties was there long before. But today ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ exist side by side and from one standpoint the insistence upon this division carries some dangers if it leads automatically to the idea that, as time goes on, ‘modern’ practice is necessarily going to completely oust ‘traditional’ methods. In the first place, the two systems may continue to operate in different spheres of social life, the ‘traditional’ for local chiefs, the ‘modern’ for national politicians. Even when this is the case, both types of leadership occur within one socio-cultural field, which, however highly differentiated it may be, is bound to modify the behaviour of the interacting individuals, roles and institutions. The mode of selecting an Ashanti chief is certainly not what it was before the advent of first colonial over-rule and secondly independent nationhood. The style of choosing representatives for local and national government is in turn influenced by the norms of chiefship. One continues to modify the other because both exist side by side.

There is now increasing interest in the study of ideology in anthropology. We are disenchanted with community studies. They are obviously useful; but they provide a flat, two-dimensional picture; they are essentially a relic of the times when anthropologists were exclusively interested in primitives and when it was deemed possible to study an entire ‘tribe’ single-handedly. Turning to study the Tamils, Sinhalese, Turks, Kurds, or Circassians, if the anthropologist digs himself into a small peasant village, it is likely that most of the important and significant issues facing these cultures at that time will be lost.

The original attempt to interpret the post-independence tribal unrest was first published in the European Journal of Sociology in 1962 (1). Its evidence was drawn primarily from the first half decade of Moroccan independence. It sought to explain certain oddities of Moroccan political life of the period.

The comparative sociological study of the countries of the Middle Eastern culture area for the nineteenth century can scarcely be said to have begun. But such studies can do much to help us come to a more precise estimate of the functions which particular institutions might fill, and the weight they could be required to bear in different parts of the Middle East during the critical period of the onset of modernization. It is the purpose of this article to begin to make some of the kinds of distinctions which set off different parts of the Middle East one from another, using the case of late nineteenth century Morocco. It is hoped that the analysis which follows will stimulate the same kind of critical examination of the institutions of other segments of the Middle East culture area. Even if it does not accomplish this objective, such an exercise may be useful if in studying the Moroccan modifications of some of these basic institutions, it can shed light on why Morocco was significantly different and therefore perhaps on the nature of these institutions themselves.

The origins of the modern Sicilian latifundium go back to the early nineteenth century when feudal land was transformed by law into private property. In what is called the Risorgtmento, a rising rural bourgeoisie gradually replaced the traditional feudal elite by acquiring most of the land that came on the market. Although the peasants had become legally free, they obtained their freedom at the cost of title to the land they held under feudal conditions. The common use rights of gleaning and pasturage, which the peasants exercised on the former fiefs, guaranteed them the fundamental means of living. But arbitrarily excluded by the avid bourgeoisie from a share in the land that should be given out to them as a recompense for the lost use rights, the Sicilian peasants emerged from social servitude only to fall into economic and political dependency. A growing rural proletariat was the necessary concomitant of the partly feudal and partly capitalist enterprise that was the latifundium.