Governing property, making the modern state - PSI424

12 | A village of mixed agriculture in the hills:
Kufr `Awan
Farming in Kufr `Awan
We have seen in Chapters 9 and 10 that the patterns of production and of
household organization in Kufr ‘Awan differed markedly from those of a plains
village such as Hawwara. In Hawwara the idiom to describe agricultural land
was the ox team; in Kufr ‘Awan it was the married man. In Hawwara production
depended on labour from outside the village; in Kufr ‘Awan exchanges of labour
in agriculture took place almost entirely within the village. At harvest, institutional
form was given to general exchange of labour, celebrated after a person’s grain
had been threshed and winnowed, by a special dish (‘ajja) of eggs, olive oil and
flour cooked in a crockery pot; wealthier families might provide other dishes such
as mujaddara (a dish of rice and lentils) or even mansaf (a festive rice, yogurt
and meat dish). 1
In Hawwara wheat production was largely destined for the market; in Kufr
‘Awan grain production was primarily for village consumption. Hence whereas in
Hawwara wealthier families transported their grain to the ports of Palestine, in
Kufr ‘Awan small-scale traders came to the village at harvest time. In Hawwara
the structure of village landholding was transformed through land sales over
the course of the fifty years studied, whereas in Kufr ‘Awan land sales remained
secondary to exchange through marital payments and inheritance. In Hawwara
large house compounds comprising many rooms were the mark of wealth; in
Kufr ‘Awan most houses were composed of two rooms. In Hawwara senior male
control was a defining feature of house compounds; in Kufr ‘Awan, the pair of
man and wife formed the practical and imaginary first unit of society with senior
male control restricted to the intertwined processes of arrangement of marriages
and intra-vivos devolution of land. In Hawwara women were generally excluded
from land ownership; in Kufr ‘Awan they appeared increasingly as landholders
in official documents. And while in Hawwara families often had far-flung affinal
relations, in Kufr ‘Awan marital alliance with families in other villages remained
the exception not the rule.
If cash income in Kufr ‘Awan derived only partially from its cultivated fields,
as a whole the village depended for coin on animal raising: cattle herded in the
Ghaur, sheep and goats pastured in the hills, and their products such as clarified
butter and dung cakes, all sold in the markets of Palestine, especially Baisan. The
articulation between cultivation and animal herding was central to the village
economy and to differences in family histories. In Kufr ‘Awan, animals were
herded almost entirely outside the cultivated fields. Little collective discipline was
208