Camel Raiding of North Arabian Bedouin: A Mechanism of Ecological Adaptation
T HE Bedouin camel breeding peoples of Arabia are among the most conspicuous in the public tradition of romanticized warrior nomads, but among the least used in current ethnological theory. Yet they inhabit a desert zone marked by varying and extreme geographical conditions for human survival and display in their modes of adaptation a wealth of features useful for developing cultural ecological theory. Moreover, their contiguity with regions occupied over millennia by complex states provides a host of problems of intercultural adaptations. Most prominent among these, perhaps, has been the persistence and elaboration of kinship as the organizing basis of these desert societies. This paper is concerned with examining some of the features and adaptive functions of one of the core mechanisms of Bedouin socio-cultural systems, institutionalized raiding, as a major factor in the persistence of such kin-based societies.2 Raiding is variously regarded as a sport, a passion, an industry by Western writers; it has been labelled brigandage, feuding, and warfare, and has been denounced and deplored, and rarely admired. But few serious students of Bedouin life have failed to appreciate its significance for the Bedouin, regardless of the moral or political stand from which the writers might evaluate it. Burckhardt, for example commented upon the precariousness of wealth in camel herds among the Bedouin, the rapid changes of individual fortunes as parties of men raided and counterraided each other's encampments. But he also calculated in monetary terms the cost of living as a Bedouin camel pastoralist. He concluded:
The Segmentary Lineage: An Organization of Predatory Expansion1
THERE has been a broad inclination in social anthropology in recent years to apply the designations "segmentary system" and "segmentary process" to a wide variety of societies. Only slightly narrower is the application of the concept to lineages or societies with lineages. While granting certain general similarities in all the organizations popularly called "segmentary lineage," it seems more useful to restrict the term to a very few societies, most notably the Nuer and the Tiv. The argument can be made on purely formal grounds: Tiv and Nuer are in critical respects organized differently from other societies that have been placed in the category "segmentary lineage system." Thus, in Tribes Without Rulers, Middleton and Tait were moved to classify Tiv and Nuer-along with Lugbara, which seems inaccurate-as a subtype of segmentary lineage systems, at one point as the "classical" variety of such systems (1958:29). But the type can also be considered in an evolutionary perspective: TivNuer, the segmentary lineage organization properly so-called, is a specific adaptive variety within the tribal level of society and culture. (The criteria of "tribal level" and the meaning of "specific adaptive variety" will be spelled out below.) This evolutionary perspective is adopted here because it furnishes a practical basis for distinguishing Tiv-Nuer from other "segmentary" societies and, at the same time, it has the power to suggest the circumstances which produce segmentary lineage organization, to "explain" it, at least partly. Conversely -and contrary to the vision of Radcliffe-Brown for a comparative-structural approach-formalism alone has only tended to obscure the salient characteristics of the segmentary lineage organization. Focusing on such general structural and functional resemblances as "segmentation" and "complementary opposition," the formal definition of "segmentary lineage" threatens to become as broad as the formal view of the "lineage" itself. For segmentation and complementary opposition are very widespread-nearly universal-features of human social organization. It is then no wonder that Tiv and Nuer have been lumped with societies that virtually run the evolutionary gamut from simple tribes to protostates, such as the Alur (Southall 1956). Our dissatisfaction with this procedure parallels Fried's discontent with the use of "lineage" in current social anthropology:
World history of the dance
More inclusive than any other art, the dance has been associated with every phase of human life. In relation to their historical setting the author deals with the magic powers attributed to the dance, and such motives as fertility, war, marriage and health. We read that the Indian divorces his wife in the dance and, when he is ill, dances to dispel the disease; and that once in front of the Turkish soldiers sixty Greek mothers and girls danced the old Romaiika as they threw themselves one after another into the abyss. The book includes analyses of many forms of the art--sitting dances, dances of the hands, solo, group and couple dances--and a discussion of rhythm and melody in relation to the dance. But it is not only because of its informative character that the book is distinguished. World History of the Dance, written with rare force and insight, communicates a feeling for its subject such as is seldom found in works of historical research. It is the author's understanding of the essence of the art, its exhilaration and power to break down the distinctions of ordinary life, that makes his book so rich a contribution to the knowledge and appreciation of the dance.