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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
The subject of this descriptive essay is social stratification and social control among sharecroppers and wage laborers in Haftabad, a peasant village in northeastern Iran. The aim of the essay is threefold: (1) to describe the complexity of the economic, social, and cultural differences among its residents; (2) to call attention to a critical sociocultural variable hitherto overlooked and/or underplayed in the literature on the rural people of Iran and the Middle East--the hometowner-stranger difference; and (3) to pose the question, whether a large, heterogeneous (with respect to origins) village with both dispersed and nucleated settlement patterns and a wideranging pattern of social status differences can be regarded as a community and, if so, in what sense.
A number of researchers have already called attention to the necessity of examining the complexity of rural social structure in Iran. Ajami (1969), Hooglund (1973 and 1975) and Safinejad (1969), for instance, have argued that at the very least a three-way breakdown of the population is necessary.
1. The village and its inhabitants have been given pseudonyms. The field research which produced the data for the essay was undertaken during the winter, spring, and summer of 1972. I wish to thank the American Council of Learned Societies and the State University of New York Research Foundation for grants that made the research possible. I wish also to thank Michael Bonine, Mary Hegland, and Thomas Painter for their detailed comments and criticisms of an early draft of the essay.
2. The pertinent references are as follows: Ajami, Ismail, “Social Classes, Family Demographic Characteristics and Mobility, in Three Iranian Villages,” Sociologica Ruralis 9 (1) (1969), pp. 62–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hooglund, Eric J., “The Khwushnishin Population of Iran,” Iranian Studies VI (Autumn 1973), pp. 229–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eric J. Hooglund, “Village of Economic Transactions in Iran 1880-1950,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Louisville, November 1975; Keddie, Nikki, “Stratification, Social Control and Capitalism in Iranian Villages: Before and after Land Reform,” in Antoun, R. and Harik, I., eds., Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington, 1972), pp. 364–402Google Scholar; Safinejad, Javad, Boneh (Tehran, 1972).Google Scholar
3. In a detailed study of a hamlet in the Gorgan area of Iran, an economist, Okozaki, has estimated that cotton requires the following labor input: weeding and hoeing, 60 men per hectare over a 50-day period; harvesting, about 40 men per hectare over a total harvest period of 120 days; full-time nonseasonal labor, constant attention of two men per hectare (2.4 acres) all year round.
4. Later a man came to Ali and said, “I am hungry. Where shall I go?” “Go to Mazandaran,” Ali said. “And if I am still hungry?” asked the man. “Then,” Ali said, “go to the cemetery.”
5. Since I have dealt at length with the gentry stratum in another article, “The Gentry of a Traditional Peasant Community Undergoing Rapid Technological Change: An Iranian Case Study,” Iranian studies IX (Winter 1976), pp. 2–21Google Scholar, I will not discuss it here except insofar as they directly effect the lower stratum.
6. I was fortunate to be present on the occasion when the notables of the village met in the mosque for the purpose of levying school taxes. In doing so they defined four graduated degrees of taxation based on the above-mentioned factors.
7. It is not clear to me whether and to what degree these rents applied to land reclaimed by peasant proprietors themselves. My impression is that either they were exempted or the rent paid was only that for cotton that occupied almost all of the newly reclaimed land.
8. Hooglund's paper, “Village Social and Economic Organization in the Qajar Period” (Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 1974) provides some historical confirmation of this view in other parts of Iran. He notes that khoshneshin (landless villagers) were excluded from the basic agricultural work unit, the boneh,and its accompanying plowland and, thereby, from significant social and political influence.
9. See Hooglund, E., “The Khwushnishin Population of Iran,” Iranian Studies VI (Autumn 1973), pp. 229–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. In an opportunistic sample of 24 sharecroppers and peasants I recorded that the long-time migrants assimilated to the nucleated village had lived there between six and 35 years; the dispersed Zaboli sharecroppers had lived in their homesteads between one and fifteen years, and the daily wage laborers had lived in the village or its homesteads less than a year.
11. Since the survey was conducted at the beginning rather than the end of the summer, it is likely that the numbers indicated above do not reflect peak-season sizes.
12. Actually, the contrast of nucleated villagers and dispersed homesteaders is in some cases not all that sharp since some men live and work in the homestead while their families live in the village.
13. That is, by negotiating a sizable marriage payment to the bride and celebrating the betrothal; and also by forming village processions, bathing the bride and bridegroom at the public bathhouse, and anointing them with henna in a public ceremony.
14. The other side of the coin is that most of the Zabolis come to Gorgan with their families, a fact indicating that they must expect that their lot will be better in Gorgan than Seistan. For Zabolis without land in Seistan, that expectation is probably realized. Even for those with land, the diminished supply of water from the Helmand River makes it doubtful that they could have eked out a livelihood there--thus their migration.
15. The total number of household heads surveyed was 94 with the total number of individuals in the households surveyed being 408.
16. See Antoun (1976) for a discussion of the economic, political and social status of the gentry in the village. For a more theoretical discussion of social control see Antoun, , “Pertinent Variables in the Environment of Middle Eastern Village Politics: A Comparative Analysis,” in Antoun, R. and Harik, I., eds., Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington, 1972), pp. 118–62.Google Scholar
17. The Iranian land reform of 1962 did not in general recognize the rights of sharecroppers who had not exerted traditional rights of usufruct over designated land parcels, to claim land plots as their own. But at the early stages of the land reform it was by no means clear that this would be the uniform interpretation of the law, and some sharecroppers did claim land in some areas. In the case of the Zaboli migrant, it is not clear whether and to what extent he in fact tilled the same plots of land from one year to the next over the twenty-year period. What is clear is that he was not a “nuclear” villager with an original share in the riceland of the village.
18. For a detailed analysis of the 1962 land reform law, its subsequent amendments and interpretations and applications of the law in various parts of Iran during the 1960s, see Lambton, , The Persian Land Reform 1962-1966 (London, 1969).Google Scholar
19. Okazaki estimated that weeding and hoeing require the services of an average of 60 men per hectare over a 50-day period, while harvesting carried out in several cycles needs about 40 men per hectare over a total harvest season of about 120 days. See Okazaki's The Development of Large-scale Farming in Iran, Tokyo, 1968 and his “Shirang-Sofla: The Economics of a Northeast Iranian Village,” The Developing Economics 7 (September 1969), pp. 261–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20. See Richard Critchfield's “Revolution of the Village,” Human Behavior (May 1979), pp. 18-27.