The Islamic Spirit of Capitalism

« The Islamic Spirit of Capitalism: Moroccan Islam and its Transferable Cultural Schemas and Values”

Paul Willis, Princeton University and

Mohammed Maarouf, Chouaib Doukkali University, El-Jadida, Morocco

Abstract

This article adds to and critiques current debates about the “spirit of capitalism” for being too “top down”, western and elite-oriented. It takes a bottom-end-up and ethnographic cultural perspective to examine the cultural conditions for the formation of willing, low priced labour power in a Moroccan case study example of the “Islamic south”. Tracing how the popular culture of Islam in Morocco provides a reservoir of religious meaning for the framing of, and accommodation to, capitalistic wage labour relations, we argue that capital both in the “north”, through migration, and in the “south” gains ready access to huge resources of labour.

Popular Islamic religio-cultural practices and beliefs provide ready-made cultural schemas for enacting and reproducing social relations of master-disciple/saint-supplicant, which when applied to capitalist employment relations, despite some real and possible counter-tendencies and seeds of resistance, go a long way towards explaining the apparently submissive attitudes of most Moroccan workers. Further, subaltern classes in

Morocco frequently look to divination, to the miraculous, to jinn-related rituals of trance-dance and eviction to arbitrate what they see as their hit-and-miss affair with Fate. This can produce what we term a magical emancipation seemingly releasing them, partially at least, from the sufferings associated with their crushing conditions of existence and offering some psychic space between immediate oppression and immediate suffering. But magical emancipation also obfuscates the true sources of their suffering and ensures, again, subjection to the maraboutic healer and in general to “the master”. Poverty and richness as well as social inequalities are perceived to a larger extent to be incurred by the machinery of luck, the evil eye, envy and the will of Allah rather than being the results of practices and discourses of exploitative economic relations.

[1] Economic sociology is undergoing a renaissance. Especially following the publication of The New Spirit of

Capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) there is a recognition that capitalist relations of production cannot function entirely through their own intrinsic logics or through direct coercion. They are always socially and culturally embedded and require appropriate attitudes and feelings in their agents to move the whole system at the human level. Capitalism needs its “spirit(s)” to make it work on the human plane. Often thought through from above in terms of the need for managerial or entrepreneurial skills, equally vital for the functioning of capitalist social formations is a subordinate “spirit” from below, a willing submission, at some level, or at least withdrawal of subjective negation, to the formal relations which subsume labour power to the labour process under the direction of capital or its managers. The New Spirit of Capitalism claims that we are now in a third stage of the development of a new “spirit” where, to compress the argument, accommodation for the meanings of workers is produced through Capital’s surprising recuperation of an artistic critique of bourgeois culture taking place through the counter-cultural movements from the 1960s on. Creatively responding to this critique,

Capital’s new “empowering” employment relations, transcending previous forms of domination, appear to offer workers aspects of initiative, autonomy and respect in line with their contemporary sense of self, dignity and aspiration; sensibilities formed in the wake of the counter-cultural critique of bourgeois culture.

[2] Despite the shortcomings to be dealt with in a moment, the scope and power of the argument, its visibility and the importance of the agenda it initiates makes The New Spirit of Capitalism a landmark publication. It resurrects profoundly important and paradigmatic questions about the relations of culture to capitalism, questions which should reverberate in all kinds of ways in all kinds of places, everywhere. We argue that the crucial sites of the playing out of the complexities of these relations may well now be not in France, nor in the

“north” generally but in the rapidly changing economic arenas of the “south”, in the headlong marketisation of these societies and the proletarianisation of vast swathes of their citizenries. These rapidly changing societies

1 The Islamic Spirit Of Capitalism

may also have lessons for how we understand the social relations of the “north” at a cultural level, not least with respect to their very substantial groups of migrant workers from the south, but also for our models for depicting how indigenous workers understand themselves and their cultural experience in relation to capitalist imperatives. Our perspective is that capitalist relations of production are always embedded in and work through prior or separate human meanings systems webbed within local cultures in and through which, among other things, requisite feelings and actions of acquiescence or apparent acquiescence or, at the very least, indifference are produced or found. But this minimum level of functionality or fit does not indicate determinacy nor reduce their autonomy. The “embedded within” cultural forms still maintain a relative independence from the capitalist relations which are embedded and also from the latter’s associated dominant cultures, cultural relations, and internal cultural critiques. Therein lies the nuance and the need for ethnographic, profane and contingent analysis. Even in the “north” there is always a powerful contribution from below which Boltanski and

Chiapello entirely miss. Boltanski and Chiapello’s “third stage” (as well as the earlier two actually) is comprehended in a much too western, elite and top-down fashion and assumes all kinds of anthropological givens about the nature of personality and the role of work and material production in human meaning systems which have hitherto pertained, if anywhere, only to relatively privileged groups in the West. Under conditions of the global advance of capital and global flows of labour and the commoditization of labour and product across vast swathes of previously non-marketised societies it is essential to consider more complex and heterodox forms of the “cultural spirits” from below of capitalism.

[3] In our case study of Morocco, a “pre-emergent economy” touted as a leader in the pack following hard on the heels of the BRIC economies, as well as for the large numbers of workers it sends to the “north”, it is essential to consider the specificities of how fundamental pre-existing cultural orientations —always in Muslim countries implying an articulation with religious ideas and practices—articulate with or might articulate with the expanded labour requirements of capital. This is to introduce a profane and radical element of “the other”, understood in its own ethnographic terms rather than as a projection, into rather too cozy and finally functionalist dominant western-paradigm views of how capital-influenced social totalities function as social/cultural systems. Understanding heterodox or “othered” formations in the “south” questions the universal validity of western paradigms, even at home. Considering that perhaps now a majority of new working class formations of the core capitalist countries is derived from the “south”, the western forms of understanding its own subaltern classes

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may be way off the mark. Even indigenous workers of the “north” may derive crucial meanings from traditional and contemporary forms which are other to, indifferent to, or off-centre from both dominant capital relations and related dominant cultural formations including the latter’s internal critiques.

[4] Welcome though it is, the renewed interest in the west in the “spirit” of capitalism is really a quite narrow

“Management Studies” interest in western employment relations in the middle orders of bureaucratic and administrative power, known well by western academics in their home employment grounds. “Empowerment” may or not make sense for white collar, white coat and administrative workers in corporate layers above, but it usually draws forth a hollow laugh from the shop or service floor—subject to old fashioned speed-ups no matter under what banner of contemporary management fad or fashion. “Empowerment” is likely to draw scorn from the new driven armies of agency, temporary and part-time workers and total bewilderment from the massing ranks of the unemployed. The continuing real and naked powers of capital over the manual proletariats and reserve armies of service and manufacture are not dealt with and the tasks remain neglected of an ethnographic charting, within their own terms and from below, of vivid varieties of proletarian and subaltern cultures [and what profiles they throw up for the judging and surviving of labour], endogenous and exogenous, within western countries. Given large scale migration to the core western economies and the headlong marketisation of social relations in the undercapitalized peripheral economies, it may truly be the case that, understood on a global basis, a whole sector of the new proletarian spirit under girding capitalism at its weakest link—with provision of willing low price manual labour power—may indeed arise from a surprising and displaced Islamic spirit.

[5] We are not seeking to contribute, directly at least, to the Weberian inspired and vexed debate about supposed Islamic shortfalls in the general conditions necessary for capitalist development (for an overview see

Huff and Schluchter 1999) nor to the reviving debate about the putative “official”, Koranic and Islamist


inspired, existence of an Islamic Work Ethic (see Ali and al-Owaihan 2008) for the elite. Nor are we concerned here with any Islamist critique or opposition to capitalism though we note that commentators may have had their eye on the wrong ball: the fanatical minority opposition to “the west” instead of the strange majority popular acceptance of capitalistic wage labour relations. Here we are concerned solely with the practical and actually existent forms of popular subaltern culture in Morocco and their provision of conditions, not for capitalist development or work discipline “top down”, but for the actual supply of willing and concrete labour seen from the “bottom up”. We argue that it is simply not well enough understood that the requirements for entrepreneurial, managerial and organizational resources from above and for the provision of willing labour power from below are quite different things and that the provision of the latter can spring from traditional and

“accidental” grounds quite divorced from the former; they can have different etiologies. Especially under conditions of globalization, the top down and bottom up conditions for the initiation and/or maintenance of capitalist development need not occur endogenously in the same social formation. For the “north”, the labour can come in from the outside; for the “south” the capital, entrepreneurism and organization can come in from the outside.

[6] By mischievously and literally following the line of argument through on the meaning of “spirit” we show how in popular Islamic practices in Morocco, what we call tangible Islam including its pagan survivals, the continuing potency of maraboutic popular beliefs in the occult and magical understandings of fate provide fertile soil within which capitalist forms of exploitation can find easy groundings. We also show how cultural schemas from religio-cultural contexts can be transferred to those of capitalist employment relations so furnishing acquiescent attitudes to authority and acceptance of the fateful, unchallenging distribution of power which are highly propitious for adaptation to the requirements of wage labour. Unintentionally and unofficially, huge reservoirs of an “Islamic spirit of capitalism” are opened up. The provenance of this production of cheap and willing labour power owes nothing to or even is wholly divorced from sui generis capitalist cultural formations. In our case study example of Morocco, we show how complex religio-cultural forms “tolerate” rather than are transformed by modernity; there is something there before, prior, something continuing and separate that does the “tolerating” so that the direction of change is mapped not solely or even mainly by

“modernity”. This does not stop capitalist interests, perhaps never understanding [including in the west] the conditions which make their operation possible, from benefiting from the arcane accommodations they find in the labyrinths of continuing popular religious traditions.

Sharifism, Maraboutism and the Mythic Reproduction of Domination

[7] To fully understand the cultural reservoir of what may be termed the current subaltern “Islamic spirit of capitalism,” it is necessary to comprehend the historical scale of the vast social chasms which characterize

Islamic societies historically to present and to comprehend the associated scale and nature of the sprawling ideological, cultural and religious forms which have draped, justified, and legitimized the received order and maintained hegemonic power for the elites within them.

[8] In Morocco, our case study example, ideological and social survivals of past social hierarchies, colonial and pre-colonial, still map the social dynamics of the relationship between the ruling class of notables and shurfa

(sing. Shrif —descendant of the Prophet) at the top and the ‘ amma (commoners) at the bottom forming the great mass of the population. Below the ‘ amma , at least historically, were the haratin (descendants of slaves) and

Jews who in the urban areas lived in restricted caste-like religious communities specializing in trades regarded as degrading to the honourable shurfa or having, in certain cases, magical characteristics or in the case of Jews forming a kind of closed endogenous caste generally devoted to trade and money lending (Halim 2000, 37-38; see also Ansel 1999). Historically, the sharifian ideology was consolidated during the fifteenth century, centralizing on the idea that the Prophet’s lineage was protected by God and could pass its protection on to the rest of humanity. Some shurfa went to the length of warranting deliverance in the world to come. The shurfa were not one homogenous class. They were rather organized in social hierarchical groups. The Sa’ddis and

‘Alawis who founded sharifian dynasties were geographically marginal, in a sense second-class shurfa if their status was to be compared to the preeminence of the Idrissis. In compensation, the ruling dynasties redistributed power among the various sharifian lineages endowing them with privileges but confining them to the religious


field though such shurfa sometimes expanded their regional powers to exercise some civic responsibilities. To some extent still today, the world of shurfa is divided into sharifian groups induced by means of prerogatives to find comfort in spiritual leadership while the Alawis enjoy the prestige of both spiritual and secular dynastic rule (El-Mansour 1999).

[9] Historically, with considerable influence extending to present days, the rural world was organized in an even more hierarchical manner with land owning groups of shurfa at the top also joined by members of the

Makhzen (a traditional form of the State in Morocco )

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and rural notable families. Below this strata were various forms of Estate “rising urban bourgeoisie” who purchased and managed land or invested money in growing crops. At the bottom were a huge mass of peasants labouring for their bread in servitude and destitution. Traditional contracts based on oral agreements known as l-khumus were pacts in which typically the landowner provided the land, fertilizers, animals, and cultivation, the khammas peasant provided his labour in return for which he received one fifth of the harvest. Pacts varied and vary greatly with heavy domestic tasks for the benefit of the landowner often included producing virtually a form of bondage (Halim 2000). Still existing today are contracts in which the peasant receives one third ( talta ), or one fourth ( rab’a

) of the harvest.

In many cases the peasants toil in servitude and debt. For the whole year they borrow from their master to cater for the needs of life and being indebted do absolutely anything to please the master. During harvest, the peasant has to reimburse his loans and thus may get out of the whole operation penniless or indeed in a position frequently where he is obliged to start the next agricultural cycle in debt. According to Halim (2000, 40), the exploitation of the masses of peasants in the past was not only conducted by landowners but also by the agents of the Makhzen, like qaids , acting as local landowners and also for the central state in demanding tributes of various kinds heedless of the religious legitimacy of the taxes (see also Schroeter 1999). This social hierarchy underwent social and economic change with the advent of colonial capitalism. The latter partially shifted agriculture from subsistence to investment farming with the advent of a new proletariat class alongside the peasantry working under the control of the settlers who became new landowners alongside the long-established local dignitaries. Exploitation was deepened with the introduction of modern methods of cultivation. To this day, both in the countryside and the city, it is observed that the masses of workers have little access to the fruits of their labour and the vast majority continue to languish in poverty and subordination albeit the government speaks of an economic boom in Morocco.

3 The crucial question for us here: what kind of interpretative frameworks continue to sustain the astonishingly polarized social relations and structures which provide such a promising ground for capitalistic forms of economic exploitation?

[10] Important answers can be found by examining three inter-linked religio-cultural institutions which help

Moroccan society to sustain shared social representations between rulers and ruled facilitating communication between dominant and subordinate classes whilst simultaneously fixing highly unequal social roles. Firstly, sharifism on which we have touched contains important elements for understanding the legitimization of subordination in Morocco .

The shurfa claim a lineage to the Prophet and rely on their traditional but now also state mandated symbolic capital to stress social distinction from the commoners. Royal decrees of consideration and respect ( tawqir wa l-ihtiram ) were issued to support the class of shurfa and, historically, freed them from paying taxes and made of their vicinities asylums for the oppressed. They were granted the right of sanctuary

( hurum

), by decrees of immunity, extending over vast lands surrounding saints” lodges, declared impregnable to assault, “which meant that it lay outside

Makhzen jurisdiction, and any fugitive who took refuge in it was immune from pursuit” (El-Mansour 1999, 53). Land grants ( in’am )—sometimes with occupant workers— were offered to the shurfa in return for supporting the sultan’s policy. Up to now, membership cards edged in green and red resembling official police passes are issued by the Ministry of Tashrifat wa al-Awsima (Honouring and

Insignia), at the local level by the Qaid’s administration, to shurfa who own decrees of consideration and respect, granting them special privileges to help open doors for them and expedite their transaction with local authorities.

[11] Like colour and religion, sharifism is thought to be based on inherent characteristics that mark the shrif’s fixed and lasting social status unresponsive to change. As Hammoudi states: “social status was based on criteria which individuals theoretically could not modify; birth, skin colour, religion, and to a certain extent occupation” (1997, 60). By virtue of their lineage, the shurfa were located at the top of the social scale. Their


sharifian lineage bestowed on them the right to rule, to have prerogatives and to own khuddam (servants). This was an inherited social standing that was very difficult to change. A person’s status was clearly defined. One might attain a high social rank by virtue of social capital, wealth or knowledge, but “in practice status emphasized difference while individual effort tended to bring about equality. Such was the rule in a society keen on “ontological inequality”“ (61).

[12] Second of our three inter-linked religio-cultural institutions organizing the very unequal relations of

Moroccan society is the Sultanic ruling system. This is an historical and ideological constant in Morocco containing archetypal means of subjectivation of the common people. Again we refer to Hammoudi: “God ordains that the community never remains without leader ( imam ) and indicates to everyone through the consent of the community which candidate is his elect” (1997, 13). There is a primordial relationship between the ruler and the ruled in the political history of Morocco. It is sanctioned by Divine Will. In order to guarantee its continuity of monarchic rule, the “Alawi dynasty, for instance, sustained a form of reproduction through the ritual of al-bay’a (ceremony of allegiance). The bay’a

to the sultan echoes the “allegiance of benediction ( bay’a ridwan

) granted by God to the Prophet … when Muhammed was sent by God as a messenger, thus forging a link between the accession of the sultan to the throne and the archetypal events of bay’a ridwan ” (Bourqia

1999, 245). Generally, in Moroccan mythology, Sultans like saints are believed to be endowed with the hereditary powers of their holy lineage. The authority of sultanic rulers is aureoled with social representations endowing them with supernatural attributes. Deep-rooted in cultural imagination is the belief that Kings descend from a sharifian lineage, have inherited a spiritual force ( baraka ), and are endowed with saintly attributes. Hassan II was regarded as the symbol of the nation, the definer of its identity, the commander of the faithful; his father, the popular king Mohammed V was endowed with further divine properties when many

Moroccans claim to have seen his face on the moon when they ran out in streets on the night of his exile by the

French colonial authorities (Combs-Schilling 1989, 308-9; Bourqia 1999, 248). Twice in mortal danger at gun point, King Hassan II miraculously survived two remarkable coups d’état in 1971 and 1972. Combs-Schilling interprets popular accounts of these historical events as illustrations of “the power of the human body to encode cultural perceptions” (1989, 307). According to her, the conspiring soldiers did not dare to deliver the lethal blow because they held their reigning prince in such awe and respect. She adds that “most Moroccans were enormously impressed by the trajectory of the two coup attempts…A prince of the Faithful who survives attacks by armies and planes must be taken seriously” (308-9). Some Moroccans claimed that Hassan II’s death defying abilities came from his fortification by baraka and blood descent from the Prophet. Others attributed his escape to his body immunity. They said he was immunized by miraculous powers to resist gunshot. Many myths were spun out of those historical events displaying the deep-seatedness of the king as a cultural symbol of the nation and as an institution profoundly ingrained in cultural imagination.

[13] The rooting of the mythic Sultan with superhuman attributes in the popular imagination is also accomplished through the consecration of symbolic objects and places of worship. The Sultan’s horse may be sacred. The palace where he lives may also be sacred. Other royal rituals put restrictions on the food he should eat and his mode of dress. Sometimes, the rituals aim at producing divine kingship. As a symbol of the country, the Sultan should neither fall ill nor die. His powers are stressed as unique.

[14] A third and profoundly important site for the spinning of ideological forms of the naturalization of subordination lie in the maraboutic structures of popular Islam.

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Maraboutism

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is derived from the French word

“marabout” which is in turn derived from the Arabic word murabit : a religious disciple or military volunteer.

Today a marabout is a tomb of a saint very often with the particular name of the saint given to a specific site.

Whole regions and cities in Morocco are named after local marabouts. The predominant belief is that the sites enjoy the saints’ protection/sanctuary ( hurum

). Hence the popular name of saints: “Men of the Land/patronsaints” ( rijal l-blad )—the slogan “Morocco is the land of one hundred thousand saints” would not be an overstatement. In the past descendants of saints were known as marabouts and were seen to be endowed with the baraka

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(blessing) of God. Like shurfa , they enjoyed considerable privilege and symbolic capital almost as a separate social group. The fever of sharifism in the fifteenth century incited a lot of saints or their descendants to root their legitimacy in declaring themselves as shurfa (Bel 1938; Geertz 1968; Eickelman 1976). Hammoudi maintains that the social class of marabouts was “complex; in practice its members could be classified either on


top of the ladder, right below the shurfa , or lower than the masses of ordinary men and women, depending on the authority of the charisma they inherited”(1997, 61). This means that unlike the category of shurfa depending on their predetermined social origin, the category of marabouts was open to new members’ admission depending on people’s will, either electing them to the status of sainthood or treating them as worthless misfits.

[15] Unable to have some measure of control over their lives and convinced of weakness, many Moroccans look for a saviour with charismatic powers to save them. Possibly projecting their unfulfilled desires, they may imagine saints to wield all powers that they so conspicuously lack themselves. According to Hijazi, the dominated under their influence see saints as possessing miraculous powers including: resurrecting the dead; talking to them; walking on sea water; talking to animals and inanimate things; traveling outside time; foreseeing the future; abstaining from food and drink; knowing where treasure is buried; and being immune to poisoning (1986, 149-50). Historically speaking, saints have been considered legendary rescuers of the masses from situations of misfortune and disaster. Historiographers state that some have used their riches to house the poor and help the needy; some have helped in digging out wells and springs to water the land, and some have used their charisma to form alliances of murabit s to fight invaders and despotic regimes (see Attadili 1984; al-

Bazzaz 1992; Boulqtib 2002).

[16] Legends surviving to the present represent saints as sultans at a small scale in their own regions. A number of saints, as the mythic tradition states, rose against the Black Sultan (Sultan l-Khal) and defeated him. The

Black Sultan was a symbol of terror and oppression in the popular mind. Up to now, the binary opposition— saints vs. the Black Sultan—structures the worldview of the maraboutic society. Its legends convey the war between the Black sultan and such saints. Sidi Mas’oud Ben Hsin, for instance, is said to have aborted the

Sultan l-Khal’s attack by sending bees and stinging flies ( na’ra

) to set upon him. The Black Sultan seems to be a mythic symbol of any Sultan whose rule has been oppressive in the history of Morocco. That a lot of saints have vanquished him symbolizes that their power is greater than his and thus should be held in awe. This is a political expression of sainthood whose historical roots we can still trace in Moroccan saints’ legends and maraboutic practices. If one visits a saint’s tomb, like Ben Yeffu or Bouya Omar, for instance, one may have the impression that one is in the presence of a real Sultan. At Ben Yeffu, the Sultan-saint has left sacred places metonymically associated with his baraka . There is a dome, palace, cairn [hill], and a horse’s hoof print all endowed with mythic attributes. The ceremonial rituals performed by saint-goers at these sites mainly follow a schema of submission to the Sultan-saint. A variety of symbols, rituals and myths combine with each other to mold a mythic sultanic institution.

[17] Fieldwork research conducted by Mohammed Maarouf (2007) reveals that the maraboutic institution is a process of naturalization that operates to mask social inequalities. By constructing an ideological discourse naturalizing the supplicant’s submissive attitude to the shrif and the saint, the maraboutic institution domesticates its followers and disciplines them into docile identities. It seeks to pacify saint goers and persuade them to hold faith ( niya ) in the saint and his miracles to change their social conditions. Maraboutic centres also operate as “distributing centres” providing aid and charity on an organized and sometimes large scale basis.

Saint-goers already drilled by virtue of myth and ritual to submit to the power of the Saint also hope for an intertwined material salvation from the “distributing centre”. It seems the latter can endow them with baraka at any time. These ritualized discourses, practices and expectations function as an opiate legitimizing the power of the “distributing centre” (saint/Sultan/ leader) and drill the saint goers into a blind reliance on its miracles. This reproduces relationships of dominance and submission already existing in society and perpetuates people’s hope for a miraculous improvement of their social conditions. Maraboutic discourses draw upon a cultural system of magical beliefs that help the subaltern groups to continue to hope for a better future and endure their present deprivation in silence. Under the benevolent veneer of providing a source of security, maraboutic performances serve to domesticate the subaltern groups socializing them to perceive the hierarchies and dominant systems that shape their social interactions as “natural”.

[18] We argue that these three institutions, sharifism, sultanism and maraboutism, share a common ideological/social formation which, following Hammoudi (1997, 8) we term a cultural schema , a collection of


common experiences and knowledge shared by cultural groups that guide the social interactions of their members. Thanks to these schemas, social situations become familiar and communication possible. Think of a simple western example: someone meets a friend in the street and sticks their hand out to them. The latter may immediately activate the hand-shaking schema and stick out his/her hand to shake it—because both live in a social context where hand shaking is familiar and both have stored this as a cognitive structure from their past personal experiences or the collective experiences of the cultural group to whom they belong. In traditional

Maori greeting (the Hongi) in New Zealand and old Bedouin greeting in some societies in the Middle East, people activate nose-to-nose touching schemas in situations of greetings and salutations. In the Moroccan case we are identifying a much larger scale and socially momentous authoritarian cultural schema which reproduces authority and a particular response to authority where social actors acquiesce to, and see as legitimate, a particular formation of power. Both dominant and subordinate groups follow the cultural schema of domination. The cultural foundations of the authoritarian schema are thus legitimized by ritual collective performances in society that have to do with sharifism, sultanism and maraboutism.

[19] To illustrate the idea that social actors revert spontaneously to submissive manners in their social interaction with the elite ( khassa ), and that their conduct emanates from social schemata of domination, we quote the example given by Hammoudi in his book, Master and Disciple :

When ‘Allal al Fasi went to visit the largely rural town of El Kelaa in the first few months after independence, the jubilation, affection, and deference that greeted him showed the love the masses felt for a man who had done his country an invaluable service. As a bystander, I saw the shapes that this respect took among the militants—the shapes of bodies and their skill at improvising the aesthetic and social forms their submission to al Fassi required. Such forms differed little from those sketched above in my discussion of the meeting with the caid. The za’im did not demand abject forms of submission. He in fact discouraged the kissing of his hand and did not demand other such displays of ritualized affection. No coercive means were used in the encounter with him; his action and courage alone had invested him with auctoritas. Thus, although the za’im never resorted to the coercion that was l-Haj Thami’s stock-in-trade, he was met with the same forms of submission as the “Lord of Atlas” (1997, 130-131).

Here Moroccans have welcomed the leader Allal al-Fasi in the way that they used to welcome the qaid of the

Atlas. As bystanders we have witnessed many times the patterns such respect takes among Moroccans in their quotidian life. When you go to the qaid’s office or the office of the head of the rural or urban councils—not to mention the governor’s office—you see subalterns displaying all the paraphernalia and rituals of submission, even though no coercion is visible in the encounter.

[20] The sultan-saintshrif incarnates the schema of domination in people’s politico-religious imagination. To accept the Sultan or his surrogate is to accept the system of authority he validates; the social hierarchies that shape the social interaction go virtually unnoticed. Of course the sultanic relationship is central in Morocco but the religious foundations of it and the massive supports supplied through the religious practices around maraboutism make the religious carriers and symbolic/social systems here of immense importance and, mutatis mutandis , show a basis of similar cultural schemas across the Muslim world, especially those Sunni varieties across North Africa carrying Saints traditions in one version or another.

The Occult in Popular Islam

[21] The reservoir of the Islamic spirit of capitalism available to lubricate the way to the acceptance of capitalistic wage labour relations is also fed by surprising and major tributaries of magic and the occult. Magic is thought to be about the other world. In Morocco it very much concerns transcendence of this world’s ills and impediments, offering what we term a magical emancipation from them. Crucial here is to understand a transfigurative potential. Some dignified or at least minimally human social space is secured, a human scoping of impersonal historical force. Even as it understands itself in non-human terms, a human grace and patrimony is created in highly unpropitious and precarious material circumstances. Popular lived culture in Morocco is weft with the beliefs and practices of the miraculous, augury, and divination. It is moved by ghostly dances


with unseen jinns who sometimes take possession of humans. Though merging and overlapping with it, much of this predates the arrival of Islam. All classes are involved but particularly the poor in the mountains, countryside, and in the ramshackle cities whose shanty towns and popular neighbourhoods ( ahya’ sha’biyah

) swell ever larger with rural migrants joining day labourers from nearby regions in the daily search for work.

The panoply of magic provides some protection from misfortune and apparent means to gain some control over those numerous impediments to a better life and constant thwartings which seem to litter the path of ordinary

Moroccans. Magic seems to produce some salvation for the subject, some displaced sense of agency which if not quite capable of wholly overcoming impediment still offers some escape from the encompassing black cloak of hopelessness. This is what we think of as magical emancipation . Not least, while given some scope for action, the self is absolved from responsibility for producing its own dire straits. The responsibility for life has been moved onto a different plane where some kind of daily intervention is possible [unlike within the material world] but where no great shame is attached to failure, pitched as you are, a mere human, against spectral forces. At least oppression is not suffered twice, once as material want, second as abnegation of the self as agent. You are not to blame.

[22] It is important, then, to understand that Moroccan society is not organized in a rationalized and bureaucratized manner for those at the bottom of social space. The western dichotomy of the supernatural vs. natural does not weigh upon Moroccans’ worldview. They rather grapple with their social realities in terms of the sacred vs. profane, or the lawful ( halal ) vs. unlawful ( haram ). In important ways the struggle for survival takes place in and through private forms of magic and superstition: the evil eye ( al-‘ain ), luck ( zhar ), the doings of the female hindering jinni pursuer ( tab’a

), jinns in general, cold ( l-berd ), magic ( shur

), and humans’ ill will or envy ( sem l-bashar/l-hsed ). All these are powers believed to steer the wheel of fortune. They may affect health, work, family and social life as a whole. According to the traditional healing system, people should equip themselves with prophylactic concoctions like talismans, incense ( bkhur ), omens and sacred relics ( baruk ) to shield themselves from the cast of the other’s evil eye and machination.

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[23] This symbolism is embodied in rituals the average Moroccan regularly performs to protect themselves from the evil eye. Some may fortify their houses with sacred relics ( baruk )—frequently sacred soil, salt, water or other ingredients—from shrines to ward off evil spells. Some may hang dried scorpions on walls or emblems in the shape of a hand (the hand of Fatima) at the threshold of their dwellings to chase away bad luck. Others may fumigate their houses every Friday with incense including alum ( shebba ) and gum-ammoniac ( fasukh ) to chase away the evil spirits. In the mornings, when you walk by shops, you may come across some sellers sprinkling water—frequently sea water—in front of their stores to purge them from perilous impurities and bring about prosperity (see also Westermarck 1926; Pascon 1986).

[24] Belief in magic and the power of magic also leads, however, to its own kinds of precariousness. If you can use magic, so can others. Caution is the rule of social survival in a jungle where the “other” lies in wait to relieve you by means of magic spells of the little you own. The other is held responsible for doing magic, casting the evil eye, and unleashing jinns/spirits. Though individualism hardly rules either, nor does solidarity.

It is as if there is a fear that if left to their own devices individuals will dissolve into “tumbling chaos” in need of an authority to keep them under control.

8 This authority may be the sulta incarnated in the qaid at a smaller scale as well as in the police or gendarmerie forces, or may be the Makhzen represented for them by the court, or diwan / qsar [the bureau of the King].

[25] Dominated groups are affected by the internalization of cultural schemas that indicate that the guide, ruler, or leader, should not be an ordinary man from their own group but should belong to a superior human calibre and come from a high ranking cultural group. Doubting their own leadership abilities subalterns may question, criticize, or seek to invalidate each other. When someone of a dominant social rank rules over their meetings and gives his/ her instructions, they may blindly yield to them precluding any possibility of criticism. Since s/he belongs to the authority that intimidates them, and evinces the values of which they have been brought up to be in awe, these subalterns hold him/her in esteem and yield to his/her leadership. They evince no radical challenge to the right to lead, only a bickering over ritualized details of performance. Hijazi (1986) argues that something like these attitudes to authority hold across the Arab world.


[26] Subject to superstitious fear of each other, individuals often explain their ongoing suffering and meeting of impediments in terms of envy or the successfully deployed magic of others. Further, the feeling of being envied, as Hijazi maintains, endows the dominated individual with self-worth and self-confidence. They think that they are envied because they have access to some privileges inaccessible to others. You are envied because you have a well-paid job, beautiful wife, son working abroad, or heritage. It seems that this belief helps to compensate for the actual mistrust of the self since this provides an incentive to cherish the illusion that something is owned or occupied which is worth envying. This may also be another fundamental psychic response attempting to boost the self in the face of its abjection by elemental forces of authority and domination.

[27] Living in such a social world marked by conflict, envy, and mutual incrimination, as well as practicing rites of magic at home and in the neighbourhood, many ordinary Moroccans frequent shrines in an attempt to seek further forms of magical emancipation to discharge the hostilities they have accumulated from the constant abuse to which they think they have been exposed. They regard themselves as victims of each other’s machinations. In shrines, the healers help them exteriorize their tensions by relieving them from any sense of responsibility regarding their problems and blaming it on scapegoated others. Supplicants for cure are urged to hold on to the belief that there is an evil other lurking in ambush to harm them. The other becomes a targeted scapegoat onto whom supplicants project aspects of their experiences, fantasies, memories and anxieties. The process of projection may be directed towards stereotypical figures of contempt. As Stallybrass and White argue “[This] process whereby low social groups turn their figurative and actual power, not against those in authority, but against those who are even lower”, can be understood as displaced abjection (1986, 53). Saintgoers who predominantly come from the subaltern groups enduring all sorts of frustrations project their problems and handicaps on other lower members of their social strata. Instead of blaming the dominant social classes who really wield wealth and power, the subalterns direct their hostilities towards those who are even lower. Ironically, they project on them the stereotypical aspects of the master: brutality, violence, deceit and cunning.

[28] In the maraboutic culture, the other seems to be a negative formless lump—an evildoer who cannot be known or represented except as foreign, irrational, mad, bad, different, strange, unclean and unfamiliar. He/she is an archetypal figure whose radical difference from the group threatens its stability and collective fabric. Their

“outlandish” behaviour should be exorcised and reformed into a recognized identity. The paradigm of the other includes both human and jinn agents who are held responsible for producing a destructive magic effect on the individual. There is further relief from self-blame in this complex folk theory of causation. The self is seen as a passive social actor subject to the brutality and cunning of the other so that the individual is released from selfrecrimination, though still able to act, finding absolution from accountability for their deeds.

[29] Jinn-possession is an important specific arena for these processes. The other literally enters your body. It is a social reality in which the individual is brought up to believe. It is part of the collective frames of perception that form the core of her or his social identity. Unable to fight against materially and rationally perceived forces producing their domination and limiting their life and freedom, they may try to canalize their dormant hostilities through Jinn-related rituals of trance dance, possession and eviction. These are privileged moments where the social and religio-cultural symbolic world meet giving apparent scope, though thoroughly displaced and mystified, to agency at the same time reproducing religious beliefs and orders, and through that, invisibly legitimizing and reproducing stark social and economic inequalities.

[30] Fanon writes of similar groups in Algeria he calls “subjugated natives” and claims that they are of an

“hysterical” type. They discharge their acute aggressivity through ritualized, expressive and protected channels like dance and possession. As Fanon puts it:

Men and women come together at a given place, and there, under the solemn eye of the tribe, fling themselves into a seemingly unorganized pantomime, which is in reality extremely systematic, in which by various means—shakes of the head, bending of the spinal column, throwing of the whole body backwards—may be deciphered as in open book the huge effort of a community to exorcise itself, to liberate itself, to explain itself.


There are no limits—inside the circle … for in reality your purpose in coming together is to allow the accumulated libido, the hampered aggressivity to dissolve as in a volcanic eruption. Symbolical killings, fantastic rites, imaginary mass murders—all must be brought out. (1963, 44)

The trance dance seems to be a licensed outlet through which the dominated discharge their accumulated hostilities. By dancing, they exteriorize their tensions, fall into ecstasies and deliriums, and return home more calm and unmoved. Dancing helps them endure their ongoing paralysis and despair. Fanon argues that possession is a mechanism of self-defense the subalterns have unconsciously conjured up to unleash their imprisoned ruthless violence and alleviate their state of paralysis through an act of transcendence and catharsis.

He says:

Possession by djinns, by zombies, and by Legba, the famous god of the Voodoo — this disintegrating of the personality, this splitting and dissolution, all this fulfills a primordial function in the organism of the colonial world. When they set out, the men and women were impatient, stamping their feet in a state of nervous excitement; when they return, peace has been restored to the village (1963, 45).

There is something to be added to Fanon’s account not least because possession practices have survived well beyond the colonial epoch which Fanon thought would terminate such “irrational popular forms”. It is clear now that de-colonization did not reduce the internal structures of oppression which we considered before and traditional popular religious cultural forms still flourish in complex articulation with continuing forms of domination, not least now capitalist ones (see also Stoller 1984). These long continuities and their encounter now with the widening and deepening reach of global capital make a more nuanced and sympathetic form of analysis necessary. Unlike Crapanzano (1973, 1980) and Naamouni (1995) who focus on those who are obviously troubled, we pursue the line of argument that possession and its concomitant rituals are situated in “a wider context of meaning” as an integral part of the cultural system of communication whether one is distressed in the western sense or not.

9

Taking our cue from Lewis (1989, 11), we emphasize that their belief in the existence of jinns is a priori for most Moroccans’ belief in possession. As long as they believe in jinns (for it is mentioned in the Qur’an) and in the possibility of being possessed by jinns, we try to find how such social phenomenon of possession can tell us something about economic or socio-political concerns apart from the customary concern with sickness and its treatment—albeit entirely alert to the fact that this is not the sole aspect in the social meaning of possession. In the continuing contemporary maraboutic institution it has to be understood that the beliefs and practices associated with jinn possession go to the roots of social behaviour and, along with the allied practices discussed before, supply popular models of social causation and socialization, which allows the preservation of some basis of self-respect, or at least release from self from blame.

Misconduct or moral default is attributed to jinns not to the self. People who fail in marriage, trade, exams, or employment can persuade themselves that their failure is the effect of a work of magic or may be caused by the cast of the evil eye. In most maraboutic cases, patients are not liable to blame. Very little guilt appears to occur.

The individual and the collective are set free from accountability. Shame and disgrace are inflicted upon the other who is believed to cause the jinns’ assaults upon the individual. The stereotype of the other—be it a jinni or the evil eye—resembles the goat that is symbolically burdened with the sins of the Jewish people and sent to die in the wilderness to cleanse the Hebrew nation. The burden of shame may be thrust upon some stereotypical figures living in the individual’s environment and thought to threaten his/her family by casting upon it the evil eye or charming it with magic spells. These figures are usually blamed for being the inciters of jinn attacks.

[31] We are arguing that the dominated individual unconsciously projects their failure and helplessness onto anonymous agents such as Jinns so as not to be liable for their own acts. He or she plays the role of a victim, and thus the Jinni is ascribed the responsibility for human deeds. Jinn-possession becomes a mitigating selfdefense in cases in which the dominated individual is unable to assume responsibility. It is a projection of the unconscious power of agency upon the other. The other here seems to be epitomized in unseen anonymous agents able to fulfill frustrated wishes though in a distorted form. In short, Jinn-possession produces a particular kind of magical emancipation in providing a mechanism for shedding blame, a self-defense for the dominated to unconsciously veil what would otherwise be to their dishonour and shame.


[32] The “cure”, providing at least one victory in life for the dominated, is customarily Jinn eviction ( sri’ ), a local cultural form of exorcism (see Maarouf 2007) that serves as a vivid and ritual catharsis providing further means helping patients bear the injustices of social life. Jinn eviction is a discursive encounter between the healer and the “jinni” who speaks in the voice of the possessed patient, an encounter intended to settle the conflict between the jinni and its host. Within the maraboutic institution specialized for this intent, Jinn eviction takes the form of a trial in which there is a lawsuit with the participation of judges, lawyers and sometimes witnesses. Unlike the trance dance, no special musical instrument is needed during the proceeding of jinn eviction. Healers are free to deal with the Jinni in their own way. To use Foucault’s terms, we can say that the maraboutic ideology is not repressive or exclusive. It is rather productive. The process of “cure” gives further psychic space for magical emancipation.

The projection of agency allows for a return of the repressed. The ritual is constructed as a face-to-face encounter between the healer and Jinni. If the “jinni” rebels against his or her position of servant, or claims not to be under the shrif

’s rule, he or she is beaten into obedience. The individual uses Jinn possession unconsciously as an alibi to explain their irrational fears and anxieties. When she or he falls sick and gets into a state of altered consciousness, social representations of Jinns emanate from the dark areas of the unconscious and vocalize all the unsocialized thoughts the patient has repressed during their waking life.

[33] In other words, it is the return of the repressed; unsocialised thoughts concerning the social can erupt.

Female Jinns may assume antagonistic personalities to all male standards and voice anger in reaction to patrimonial and patriarchal social relations. Anti-hegemonic male jinns may sully the Koran and withstand the authority of Allah invested in the Father figures including parents, kings, police agents and shurfa , and jinns who speak clairvoyant words during fits of possession—hosted in majdub s

10

(itinerant maraboutic pilgrims)— may resist all types of exorcism and treat with contemptuous rudeness all forms of domination, thus challenging the standard cultural schema . Hegemonic jinns such as Jewish Jinns ( Ihudi s) are the most plentiful to be encountered in possessed patients. They are very difficult to exorcise because they do not keep their vows. The

Jew whom the Arabs cannot defeat in the real social and political world is conjured up as a jinni very hard to subdue in the imaginative world. A good illustration of this argument is the world of possession in Palestine.

Many curers come on Arab TV channels and the Internet to speak about the difficulty of treating traumatized

Palestinian prisoners suffering from possession by Jewish jinns ( ihudi s).

11 In refusing often for long periods or even permanently to do the bidding of the healer the Jinns show evident resistance to dominating powers and to the hardships imposed on ordinary people in everyday life. These are moments of licensed paroxysm that may enable the discharge of accumulated hostilities. In a nutshell, the Jinns can tell something like the social truth whereas conscious dominated subjects cannot. In most cases the power of the healer prevails and the Jinn[s] agree to leave, the possession ceases, the individual feels better and wakes into a serene state and for at least a time to live in a calmer world, for a time the internalized results of oppression, whether emanating from the evil

“other” or the social system are magically shed. There is a kind of freedom unimaginable in a materialist conceived picturing of the unrelenting and anonymous weight of economic domination.

[34] Though the eviction is marked by and experienced as a person-making, agentive and productive moment in ways not properly recognized by Fanon and others, we argue that through this very production there is an important social reproduction taking place which connects directly to the authoritarian cultural schema discussed before. The authoritarian schema does not proceed from the dead weights of history but is reproduced in active and contemporary ways offering stakes of meaning, creative plays and agency too for the subordinate.

The cultural is not simply a dead or inert symbolic framework. To understand how the schema of domination embedded in Moroccan religio-cultural forms remains a dynamic force really and continuingly helping to constitute subaltern subjectivities as well as reproducing the social fabric supporting domination over time it is necessary to pose and probe such contingent ethnographic moments as jinn possession, trance dance and eviction where the social and the symbolic meet reproduced both in living, palpable forms.

[35] Whatever the psychic space levers out, social reproduction is accomplished anew because the acceptance of the eviction rituals is also an acceptance of the system of authority they arise from and validate—a reproduction of the cultural schemata of subjection. If the maraboutic client assimilates the domination of the shrif curer over the “jinni” as it is enacted in the ritual of Jinn eviction, she or he will automatically assimilate


similar relations of power in real life situations. The schema of domination and submission is patently actualized in the ritual of Jinn eviction, an encounter in which the shrif ensures his position of domination over jinni and patient , so reproducing the existing social hierarchies. The ritual is a disciplinary process that veils the existing social inequalities, enacts them in asymmetrical rapports and instills in the maraboutic followers all possible forms of compliance with these inequalities. In fact, the ritual is a form of dressage for those patients who unconsciously use possession to rebel against and cope with the impediments of daily life. When the patient awakes, she or he resumes his social role in society with a fresh disposition to endure more pressure and frustration.

[36] You could say that the maraboutic centre of jinn eviction outdoes by far the prison institution Foucault delineates in Discipline and Punish

. As he maintains: “The human body [is] entering a machinery of power that explores it breaks it down and rearranges it” (1977, 138). The maraboutic discipline remodels adherents into docile subjects who display the most abject forms of submission in front of power symbols. They are drilled into kissing heads and hands, into bowing or prostrating themselves on the ground in submission to the saint, and into murmuring their wishes in silence. They are also drilled in being patient, acquiescent and unrelenting in their faith in the power of distributing centres of Baraka , a technique of dressage that excludes every sign of indocility. After being exorcised, the patients display an obedience which seems to be prompt and blind. The majority of patients who are said to be cured become devotees of the saint and either settle there forever, make periodical visits, organize occasional hadra s (trance-dances to establish peaceful covenants with jinns and manage their mollification [cf. adorcism as a magical ritual which accommodates spirits in a medium]), call for the healers whenever they do not feel well, or make annual pilgrimage tours of saints, as in the case of majdub s , oblivious of their worldly concerns and family obligations. At bottom, despite some resting places, this becomes an increasingly vicious circle without permanent cure.

[37] We should not close the ledger too quickly here though. Magical emancipation is a means of invisible social reproduction but it works so well because it seemingly releases subjects, partially at least, from the sufferings associated with their crushing conditions of existence and offers some psychic space between immediate oppression and immediate suffering. This transfigures aspects of their pain and gives room for some measure of relief and dignity as well as a means of expression and displaced sense of control. There are also some anchors down into material and progressive human meanings.

The spectral court assembled during jinn eviction is at least a court—more than most Moroccans get in normal life for the many economic injuries to which they are subject. Contrastingly with the crushing economic forces, at least the human hosts stand in some equal capacity with what invades, or in the same scope of the present body. If not controlling your fate, at least in an unlikely swallowing, there is a condensation of outlandish and truly frightening structural force into the more amiable personification of the jinn, mischievous, answering back and at least partly controllable. The ingestion of wider social forces as an internal habitation at least recognizes the importance of a human scaling of impersonal forces. Further, the dual occupation of the body at least opens up, practically if not philosophically, just what the “autonomous” subject is supposed to be and to whose tune or to what discourse it is supposed to dance, all closed matters in the dominant register of how subalterns are supposed to comport themselves. The trance dance is a strange spiritual-cum-structural cultural hybrid which in its concrete but simultaneously spectral performances show the forgiven self in mystic jerking communion with the universal powers of Fate rendered in aesthetic human as well as occult ways. Let us not forget the upwards and collective generation of much of the forms: the asymmetrical rhythms of the trance dance come not from the shurfa but from and express the wider feelings of the grassroots maraboutic community. The trance dance shows tension with, rather than annihilation from, the freight of history. This religio-cultural aesthetic grappling with unknown powers may be preferable to being crushed, imagination and all, by unmediated economic powers like insects under a stone. As these religio-cultural forms encounter wage labour on a routine scale they will enforce an understanding that there is a much wider array of ways of being “modern”, or at least of normatively dealing with “modernity” whilst meeting its exigencies, than are encompassed in the still conventional view of a one track western route to “flat earth” modernity.

Wage Labour: A Report from the Field


[38] The data reported on below concerning popular Islam and wage labour result from interviews, intimate cultural knowledge and immersion,

12

natural conversations, and personal observations of the social context of work in different Moroccan regions (Rif, Atlas, Doukkala, Shawiya) ever since we started work together on the topic in 2008. Interviews and observations were conducted in cafes, streets, private homes, working places, market places and maraboutic institutions. Workers come from different sectors. They are selected in a small snowball sample including more than five interviews and conversations per week from January 2008 to August

2009 from the following professional groups: masons, traders, agricultural labourers, farmers, industrial workers, industrial managers, mechanics, entrepreneurs, governmental workers, public transport drivers, caretakers, day labourers, freelancers, roaming sellers and the unemployed. Our focus has been principally on urban rather than rural regions.

13

Furthermore, the focus in this study has been drawn upon a category that may be termed “the intermediate group”. In Moroccan society, this group constitutes young married fathers and mothers whose age varies between 25 and 50 years. They seem to bear magical beliefs in their modern forms and their assumptions may be valid for a number of decades. Thanks to their marital status that their opinions are socially believed to be more credible than those of single people. As it is long observed under a patriarchal social order, single people’s opinions are usually discarded as unreliable and immature because such bachelors are stereotypically represented as neither able to shoulder conjugal family responsibilities nor have any social obligations towards their natal family, which makes their opinions occupy marginal positions in society. In other words, single people are often regarded as detached from the impending concerns of their own families and short of life experience even if there may exist today thousands of single youths who assume economic responsibilities for their families. Most exchanges noted below took place in social groups. Pseudonyms are used for the main interlocutors during conversations and interviews recorded shortly after in field notes.

[39] What seems to be at stake in the practices of popular Islam is the attempt to influence life’s general course not so much work relations per se. Nevertheless the implications for the meaning of work and especially for acclimatization to capitalist wage labour are profound and have been overlooked. We argue in particular that the transferred authoritarian cultural schema discussed before as well as the various practices associated with what we have called magical emancipation help to facilitate an adaptation to capitalist wage labour and mollify its pains and discontents. One of our main findings is that the two realms, work and magical thinking, are not generally experienced as overlapping, but for that, all the more profoundly influence each other not least in destressing the centrality of work relations to the basic meanings of life whilst encouraging, unexamined, a basically fatalistic attitude to the sufferings and oppressions of work.

[40] As we have seen before, Moroccan popular life it seems is dominated by misfortune and impediment. In very important ways life is about fending off the misfortune hurled at individuals from the fateful and dangerous off-centre spinning of the capricious wheel of fortune. There are two basic and interconnected ways to hope for a better life or at least shelter from the clods thrown off from the swiveling gyrations of life’s unstable Ferris wheel. First is to look for “charity” by buckling to authority whether of the sultan, saint or shrif .

The subordination seems inevitable but enacting it with heart or apparent heart may bring material benefits.

Accepting lowly positions in the courts of powerful others, performing ritual obeisance to better wheelmen might produce in exchange some of their baraka rubbing off on you as well as some obligation for material protection. In the case of employment relations, the boss may become the focus for this informal contract and so acquire some of the privileges, as well as obligations, of the sultan/ shrif/ saint. Second, though, is to seek to

“acquire luck” through your own efforts, to try to be your own fragile wheelman, and in the use of a whole panoply of miraculous instruments, magic, augury and superstition to try to control luck for yourself, to encourage baraka or to deflect, at least, misfortune directed at you by evil others. In the extreme case of jinn possession, to at least ingest a persona of fate’s ogre, a humanization of kinds.

Seeking Charity

[41] Among Muslims, charity is not a matter of courtesy. It is a religious injunction. God enjoined all believers to help each other and his Prophet appeared in different hadiths urging Muslims to be generous and kind to the


poor.

14 Historically, and to some extent at present, the religious obligation of charity has not only been implemented by individual Muslims but also by institutions. The rising capitalistic economic relations of the twentieth and twenty first centuries have been incorporated, transgressed and refashioned to be grasped by

Moroccans within their inherited religious and maraboutic framework through which they interpret the events of their daily life. The equivalences of charitable compulsion, the two way street between material support and moral debt, permeates all commercial exchange in Morocco. As supplicants expect the maraboutic distributing centre or saint/sultan to be charitable with them, feed them, protect them, or smooth their life course, workers

(mechanics, taxi drivers, traders) expect their customers/clients to be charitable with them. Tipping workers in different sectors is part of the consumption contract between worker and client. Some may say thalla fina / (be generous with us), t’wan m’ana

(help us), or bghina naklu m’ak trayf dyal l-khubz

(we want to eat with you a crumb of bread). After being tipped a worker may answer with Allah y-khlef (may God compensate you!), a phrase also used in the cultural context of entertainment as guests rise from the table. Beggars without exception use the expression when receiving alms from donors.

[42] Main car dealers such as Renault or Peugeot are organized in a formal way and, as in the West, a customer must pay their bill to a white collar worker in the office but when collecting the car it is necessary to offer some money— thalla fi (be generous with)—to the mechanics. If you do not tip, next time the garage will be unaccountably busy or the job may be bungled or your car damaged for no apparent reason. If you do tip, then you are taken as a “son of the people” ( weld nas ) [a charismatic considerate person who dispenses charity] and next time services will be added without asking and your car will be cleaned and polished to perfection.

[43] When brick layers and masons are working at your property it is also wise for the householder to tip. They will add work or strengthen walls and avoid rough and clumsy looking finishes—an ever present danger with construction work in Morocco. A day labourer mason explains that he likes to be tipped beyond the formal contract price his employer has obtained. He says that his income is very low, he needs help. Those people who help him deserve to be served well and sincerely: huwa ithalla fia tta ana nthalla fih (“he has been generous with me, I will be generous with him”). The gift may start with 20dh or even reach 100dh depending on the service done; for “foreigners” (work not included in the original contract) it may go to 200dh. The worker and his client/patron interact within the cultural framework of gift exchange, which according to Hammoudi

“allows for an increase in rank and subsequent modifications in status” (1999, 138). The gift exchange reproduces the marked unequal status of each participant, the worker under the obligation of service and obedience to the boss (the client being also a short-term contract employer), and the patronage and favor of the latter. Through the specific signs exchanged (money, clothes, food, words of welcome or blessing), the two parties display their consent to the terms of authority that confirm the inequality of their status.

[44] The same regime holds true in the public sector especially when you need a signed document from an administrator. Matters are sheathed in the gift exchange cultural schema so that one hears only of reference to a hlawa (sweetener), gwimila (lit. saucepan; metaphor for food) or qhiwa (coffee), but if you do not participate in the social game you will not be served in a timely way and may fall victim to hindrance or extended delay. If you are stopped by the police for speeding, money “for coffee” is certainly cheaper than an official fine or penalty. The very choice and range of euphemisms show the formations and historical sedimentations of culturally accepted channels for the understanding and practice of atavistic reciprocities which defy the name of

“corruption”.

[45] Within this whole universe of meaning it is hardly surprising that bosses can expect and be expected to function as a maraboutic-like “distribution centre” or at least have to operate in relation to its expectations.

They can develop and enhance their status as being a genuine “son of the people” boss by adopting a range of charitable practices including:





Tipping workers for extra-work

 Helping them financially in moments of crisis: sickness, death of a relative

Helping them in observing rituals like Ramadan, and the Great Feast.

 Helping them at the beginning of the school year by buying their children school books






Sending them to pilgrimage

 Employing one of their relatives

Using their social capital to save a relative from prison or to get into public hospital

By adopting this range of practices the boss can assume that the loyalty of his (usually) workforce will follow.

The workers work willingly and even undertake extra tasks without complaint. They feel that they are under the obligation of his virtues and they have to pay allegiance to him. It is a bond. We argue that average Moroccans activate the schema of submission once they think they are in the presence of authority so that authority derived from capitalist relations is likely to produce similar effects.

[46] It would be naive and simplistic to say that the boss literally occupies the position of the saint/healer, but just as the jinn world is mapped like the social world which Moroccans live in, so too can companies be structured as miniatures of the social world in which the worker lives. This may be done consciously but is achieved anyway through general cultural continuity and isomorphism. Certainly multinationals try to adapt themselves to the local Moroccan cultural forms with respect to specificities of superficial and external appearance and politeness but whether deliberately or not, so are maintained and transferred the same hierarchies and instances. Moroccan-born employers operate in the maraboutic and religious world which encloses both them and their workers and so are likely to be seen and see themselves as constituting something of a special kind of “distribution centre”. Here the terms and relations of the western legal “employment contract” matter less than what might be thought of as an unwritten covenant which binds individuals together in social and cultural relations of moral compulsion, dignity, respect and integrity—part of the Moroccan lexicon of such a covenant is the Good Word ( l-kelma ) or sincerity ( l-ma’qul ). This is an employment relation which is a cousin of the authoritarian cultural schema discussed earlier and should be understood as an archetypal embedding of an economic relation within a complex indigenous cultural form. The employee is hired not so much on the basis of a rational or bureaucratic assessment of skills but on the basis of “charity”, of an “honourable work”. From the employee’s side it follows that there is a duty not of an economic or legal kind but of a binding social, religio-cultural and ethical kind, a gift-exchange cultural model characterized by the obligation not to “bite the hand that feeds you”.

[47] In our interviews it is clear that for a certain kind of Moroccan worker these moral and religio-cultural binds are of great importance and also overlap in quite specific ways with wider systems of belief, dependence and religion. Here is a construction worker interviewed in El Jadida on a previous boss that he rated highly:

Said The boss was just paying your hours, the hours we actually worked, no holidays or benefits … but he was a good boss, a son of the people, he gave me money for the Great Feast, he bought for me the sacrifice of the

Great Feast … if he sees you working and you are early he may put his hand in his pocket and give you twenty dirhams, it is nice when they tip you like that.

Hicham, a supervisor of mason workers currently working on the gigantic Mazagan holiday complex development at El Jadida, speaks of his past experiences as a Moroccan migrant worker in Gabon:

-Interviewer: how did you find African workers?

Hicham: I was not chief only to African workers but also to French workers. They could not accept it at first but

I squeezed my place with them till they accepted me as a chief.

Interviewer: how did you that?

Hicham: I turned a blind eye on occasional absenteeism and helped those who do not know to be integrated in work. Developed relations with the powerful guys who can support me face the rest of workers and other chiefs, and superiors.


Interviewer: let us now compare what you saw in Gabon and here, how do you find workers here, is there a team spirit?

Hicham: there I was about to create it, here it is impossible, you always have in your group at least three or four who do sabotage and look to destroy you. In a group of twenty you have three or four to rely on as your right arm without them the work does not go, the rest are just there they may work they may not, they may get absent, and there are about five or more cunning doers, sabotage professionals.

Interviewer: how do you select your right arms?

Hicham: you never select them, they come to you. Once you get to work, they come to you and present themselves, usually they are more than four but you select the first weeks these people to rely on, believe me he who does not make this jma’a (solidarity group) of his own, can never stay one minute in the setting; it is important to do it.

Interviewer: how do you keep it going?

Hicham: I give them responsibility, for instance, there is a wall like the one in front, I tell them I want it to be ready by so and so and I want this quality and measure…but between me and them I give them more money than the others. I have to but the others should not know it. If you do not do like that you will have all the work mkharbaq (bungled). The work cannot go on.

Interviewer: can we say you should be son of the people?

Hicham: yes, that’s the word, son of the people?

Interviewer: can you define for me the son of the people?

Hicham: son of the people is someone who shows humanity. He corrects people’s work instead of throwing them away. Kay tsettar ‘lihum (he covers them) in bad work or absenteeism. I give you an example if I have forty workers thirty per cent are present the rest are absent, I do not need them. The work is going fine, why shall I disturb myself?

Interviewer: wait but there is money to pay by the company for people who do not do their jobs?

Hicham: and where is the problem?

Interviewer: the gwer (foreigners) do not realize that?

Hicham: they realize it but I try to convince them and explain that this is normal in work. Sometimes, I have to penalize but I never mention the exact days off.

Interviewer: do you sit with the workers in cafes and socialize with them outside work?

Hicham: no I have to keep a chief, a chief is a chief, he does not have to consort with his subordinates they will be disrespectful ( ydasru ‘lik

). To control the work you should not do that. You should keep above.

Interviewer: but how can you build rapports with your supporters

Hicham: by what I said before, by asking after them if they are sick, by helping them in case of sickness or having a problem. What really upsets me Si Mohammed is that they think you are able to solve problems for them. They really believe it; they never doubt it, how can you tell them you cannot solve the problem of your ass.


Interviewer: do not you think you are solving part of it?

Hicham: but there are serious problems like full-contracts, pay-rises, holidays….

Interviewer: you have been working in Rabat as you said with Berbers and Sahraoui can you draw a comparison?

Hicham: look, wlad l-mdina (children of the city) (Azemmour and El Jadida) do not want to work; they are uncontrollable especially in this project because of many sites; they will tell you I do not work with you and they go to another site to work into. Let me tell you the truth. City boys do not work. They want to be in security jobs or doing some easy job. Masonry is for countryside people Berbers and sahraouis. Even if you do not want a machine to work and ask somebody to move stones with his hands he will do it. They work and stay at work late with no complaint. The only difference between Arab rurals and Berbers and Sahraouis, Berbers and Sahraouis accept your leadership if you are human with them but once your term comes to an end they deny you. Arab rurals keep relations going.

Interviewer: is there team work?

Hicham: there is shit! No team work nothing, chaos. If other chiefs of other groups find you better than they are they do not only envy you or sabotage you, it may go to killing! Same thing about workers, spying on each other grilling each other. If you are absent nobody cares. They can only say: “we have heard he is sick”. But if you are the relative of one of the superiors, they collect money for you and send a delegation to visit you at home or in hospital showing to the superior their solidarity. I could not create team work here. Impossible to do it. People are eyeing others, envying others and looking for the suitable moment to attack. It is war, this domain of masonry.

These are typical remarks about the son-of-the-people boss and the culturally gift-exchange embedded employment relation. There are certainly a wider range of employment types than this with multi-nationals more likely to offer contractual employment relations with stated benefits and holiday entitlements but also a more distant social/cultural relation though still massively benefiting from the expectations associated with the traditional covenant . An ex-dish washer at one of Mazagan (multinational hotel institution) restaurants says that he has left his job because of its disorganized hard work. He was employed via Adecco. He is an electrician graduate but was employed at Mazagan as a dish washer. He explains the system of work:

There are two teams, a team that gets in at 7 and go out at 4 and a team that gets inside at 4 and gets out at 1:00 after midnight. There is one hour pause. The problem is when there is too much work, the 4 o’clock team stays till 7 o’clock and then gets out helping the waiters in the restaurant. We never get out at the exact time, too much work and we do free overtime. So I quitted. What is bothering me and I don’t understand it, the directors of the institution are gwer (foreigners) and they know the law of work and rights of people. Why when they come here they do not practice them? They do like Moroccans?

Such recurrent statements collected from the field evince the premonition that multinationals may also pick up from the Moroccan common cultural ground the seemingly predominant pirate labour representations to deal with Moroccan workers. Moroccan “pirate bosses” simply hire day labourers for the lowest possible wages and exploit them to the hilt, though even here there may be the trappings of a charitable relation echoing or trying to echo some aspect or another of the traditional cultural schemata. Fieldwork on labour models reveals the existence of three main categories of bosses:

al-patrun al-mustabid (authoritarian boss): respondents claim that this model is declining in the case of declared workers. But undeclared labourers without job security, who make a considerable number may still suffer the coercion of an authoritarian boss.


al- patrun dimoqrati ( the democratic boss) is the one who applies the law but is also weld nnas (son of the people). He helps workers and shows understanding. Hamid, an administration director, for instance, regard workers as collaborators ( shuraka’

). He says: “I try to implicate them in work and decisions. I help them in solving social problems and problems at work and cover them in case of working errors, those acceptable of course”.

-al-patrun ntihazi (the pirate boss) is an opportunist, the one who seizes the most favourable conditions to strike and get benefit. He does not care much about work or workers. He craves to strike benefit.

Unfortunately, respondents’ opinion in addition to field observations display that the pirate model is the most predominant labour model. Lots of respondents plague us with the question if there is any solution of change looming in the horizon. Suffice it to say that our ongoing work aims to fill out these types and passages between the categories described above especially under ever heightening pressures of marketisation and

“modernization”.

Seeking Luck

[48] God’s will in Moroccans’ worldview is not a static category as colonial anthropology has interpreted

Islamic Fatalism. That inequalities are attributed to God’s will ( qudret Allah ) does not deny personal initiative for men and women are free to act and plan their future on the basis of their social experience. But as

Eickelman maintains “provisionality is the very essence of the cosmos” (1976, 126). Attempts to control one’s fate are always conditional. God’s will legitimizes the present social hierarchies and any future outcome of social action: “It attenuates speculation on why particular projects succeed or fail and blocks metaphysical reflection on the fate of man in the world” (1976, 126). Eickelman cites an elderly salaried Qur’an reader who formerly collected alms at the shrine of Bu’bid Sharqi. He explains: “God created the world. He decides and knows everything. You have a car and I don’t. That’s God’s will [ qudret Allah ]. One day it might be taken away from you. That’s also God’s will” (1976, 127). Thus l-maktub or l-mqayed (the written or recorded) is legitimating the status-quo (social and economic inequalities) and minimizing the accountability of one person for the moral and economic destiny of others. However, Moroccans influenced by maraboutic culture do not usually rationalize their plights solely in terms of their own actions overlooked by Allah’s will.

Between the transcendental realm of God and the mundane realm they imagine intermediate positions occupied by saints and jinns where a kind of partly controllable luck pertains.

[49] Without denying that individuals have to rely on themselves to some extent, it is thought in the popular classes that luck helps [ zhar kay ‘awn ] to negotiate life’s impediments.

Zhar [luck] is the machinery most

Moroccans rely on to realize their wishes; people are even categorized according to their luck: there is the lucky person ( mezhar ) and the unlucky person (

‘andu l-’kes ). Luck is important in succeeding in exams, in finding a marriage partner, in being healthy. In the face of severe unemployment and lack of job security, so too, luck is important in getting a good job, or just getting employed, and in getting promoted. As an industrial worker says: “every day I get in through the door of the factory without being pushed back by the supervisor, I say it’s a lucky day”. Another one says: “If people are lucky, the doors are opened for them. If not they have to run after their luck”.

[50] How can people acquire luck, how can they “run after” it? Facing the aleatory, Moroccans have developed the art of tinkering with symbols (Bourqia 1993). They want to increase their chances. Shopkeepers are great believers in the work of magic. There are traders who may resort to fuqha to do them talismans of tissir

(facilitator spells). There are others who may use incense to undo spells and smooth their business. As we saw before, shopkeepers indulge in rituals like sprinkling sea water in front of the shop early in the morning.

Kissing the money they receive from the first client saying some wish prayers is also common. If you are the first client, the tradition is not to charge you more even if the profit margin is small; they say: khasna n-stafthu m’ak/n-tsfalu bik (“we begin our trade with your auspicious purchase”). Collected “wish prayers” said early in the morning when leaving home or opening the shop run as follows: Ya fettah ya rezzaq ya mudabbir l-arzaq

(“Oh You who opens all doors for us, You who supplies us with provisions!”);

Ya fettah ya rezzaq ya musahhil


l-arzaq (“Oh You who opens all doors for us, You who smoothes our provisions!”); Ya fettah ya ‘alim (“Oh

You who opens all doors for us, You the all-knowing God!”).

[51] Similar things hold for public transport drivers: including lorries and taxies. Talismans are hung inside cars and lorries. The hand emblem of silver and other emblems are hung to chase away the evil eye. They also write words of God on their vehicles: Bismi allahi majraha wa murasaha (“in the name of Allah, whether it move or be at rest!”); Tawakkaltu ‘ala Allah (“ I put my trust in Allah”).

[52] Our case here is that spiritual elements of popular Islam can easily supply values compatible with and adaptable to the mundane requirements of capitalist production, whether in the “north” or the “south”, and for opening up access to docile labour power. Capitalism can benefit from religio-cultural forms it finds “by accident” which have adapted only too well to accommodation rather than transformation. From immersion in these wider cultural expressions and expectations workers are immured to the notion of constant thwarting at work. Stories of people being fired from their jobs or failing their exams because of l-’kes (“obstruction”) abound. Workers may well be ready to consult sources of the miraculous in moments of crisis at work though they may not routinely attend Saints’ centres for help in seeking preferment at work or direct consolation for its pains. All workers would know, though, that tab’a

, for instance, refers to rags, underclothing, combs, and molted hair thrown by women or men in sacred places specialized for this intent to cure themselves from

“constant thwarting”. They have their own experiences of constant thwarting at work.

[53] Though they may be experienced as “private” and separate from the realm of work, the realm of what we have called magical emancipation— the worlds of magic, Jinn possession, the cathartic releases of trance dancing, and the subjective empowering of Jinn eviction—can serve to mask and deflect the misfortunes arising from capitalist contradictions and oppressions just as they may deflect the oppressions arising from traditional orders. Just as impediment in general is understood through the occult, impediment, in particular arising from capitalist wage labour, can be understood in the same way. Imagining maraboutic holy figures bursting forth water from the ground, evoking food from nowhere and healing incurable diseases, breaking the fetters of reality, time, and place can help subalterns to cope with the open sores of maimed dignity arising from capitalist as well as other sources. Saint-goers taking it for-granted that the evil eye, jinns, or the work of magic has the capacity to ruin their lives will not lay the blame for their misfortunes and social malaise on the employer’s doorstep. An individual who fails in their job may attribute their failure to colleagues, relatives” or neighbours” envy and, thus submerged in a world of divination, possession and magic; they do not hold their bosses or work superiors accountable. Even the individual subject is exempt from being accountable for their own deeds. Some workers even attribute accidents at work or getting the sack to the evil eye or an evil eye-casting man ( quwas ); mechanics told us about people they did not like to set eyes on first in the morning. They knew that day would be one of their off-days; something bad would happen, at least one of their fingers might get injured.

15

Here is the earlier construction worker recounting some of his later employment experiences:

Said I do believe in the evil eye. The eye is in the Koran. They say it is real, and then it is real.

MM can you give me an example?

Said Someone has riches and if they eyed him he’d be turned to be poor, he would become penniless.

MM Have you ever become a victim?

Said I was working in a factory and somebody came and said “oh! You got the job fast”. Not a week passed, and then they told me, “Fuck off!”

MM are you kidding or is it real?


Said No it’s real. When I got my current job as a building janitor I didn’t say a word to anyone, not even to my family. I told my wife that I’d moved from grand toil to a job where there’s not much working though when my sister was dying I did tell her. Even if you are a wall they [i.e. the “Eye”] will crush you down.

Omnipresent envy is often evident at work sites breaking up any nascent solidarity and also fuelling potentials for someone to put the evil eye on you or to spoil your fortunes. The same man on his experiences on the building site:

Said Most of the workers with me were from the countryside. At work there is strong envy, you do something and someone comes and spoils it, he wants to queer your pitch with the boss, he wants to stitch you up so that you will be sacked and his brother will get the job. One time, there was a piece of iron badly welded, the wrong two pieces were put together and the supervisor asked me to put it right. I knew whose work it was but I put it right, re-welded it, without telling the supervisor who had done it wrongly in the first place.

MM Usually people tell though?

Said yes, of course, they do spy at work to get close to the supervisor, people are always gossiping to the boss about you.

Workers generally confirm the existence of envy and they are afraid of its danger. An industrial worker says:

People have one ear. They are ready to believe what they first hear. They do not inspect things. I had problems with a supervisor in a company who was always eying me. He was jealous of me. I never cared about him; I did my job well. One day, the boss came to me called me to his office and threatened to call the police. I asked him why. He said the supervisor reported that he saw me folding a piece of fabric to steal it. None of my colleagues would bear witness for me against these false allegations. They knew my accuser would take revenge on them; so I quit.

In small businesses especially an atmosphere of mistrust and selfishness often reigns. A number of Moroccan proverbs and popular songs warn people about friends and colleagues. A well-known proverb in Moroccan culture runs: khuk fi l-herfa ‘duk [your brother in the same job is your enemy]. Workers frequently complain using derogatory words against their colleagues saying that they are victims of betrayal/divulgence. We are told that it is common to find workers spying on each other and telling their supervisors about each other, betraying each other. Usually, the one who goes and betrays the others is classified as “not a man” ( mashi rajel ), i.e., unmanly ( shmata ) . Such classifications stem from a cultural group feeling called ‘ asabiyya (see al Jabiri 1992,

Ibn khaldoun 2006, Maarouf n.d[b]) that works by mutual interest and defense of the group’s collective identity. Workers like a family tribe try to defend their interest against the possible power abuse of bosses. As

Hicham explained earlier, the work cannot go along smoothly provided that the boss settles compromises with such ‘asabiyya s (clans of workers) or is smart enough to handle the conflict between contesting clans. Those who go against the grain within a ‘ asabiyya may be cast out or even career destroyed, Hicham maintains.

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A worker was repairing a car. His colleague came late. The work started in the company at 8:30. He came round 10:30. When asked about the absence of his colleague he complained, hadak weld l-qahba , weld l-hram,

‘ref kayna l-khedma rah slet

(“That son of a bitch, that bastard knew that there was hard work so he sneaked off’). When the absent worker showed up the customer asked him where he was. Apparently he had been to the

Turkish bath the night before so he overslept. No one bothered him for being late, work routines were flexible and they were not well paid usually being without official papers. When the work was finished, the customer paid the bill; returning he tipped the main mechanic 50dh, and asked him who was working with him on the car so that he could tip them round 20dh. He was expecting the mechanic to deny the new comer though he worked with him the day before on the car. But bravely enough, and though he gossiped about him during his absence,


he pointed him out to the customer, indicating the late comer. This was a brave gesture of manliness ( rejla ). He did not want to be caught out for being mean in front of his colleagues, for being shmata , not a man.

[54] The belief in jinns is tied up with stereotypical patterns of envy. We have found that people are abashed or embarrassed if you ask them about their belief in jinns. They think you want to laugh at them. If you show that you are a believer or you are asking questions in a maraboutic context, things are different, people start talking.

An industrial worker is married to three women and is living with his third wife unhappily. He keeps referring to women’s cunning. He mentions a lot of stereotypes about women: women are sorcerers, or qhab (bitches).

When asked about jinns in work, he says “if you are bewitched by a woman you do not only lose your job, you can lose your life” and gives many examples of functionaries, schoolmasters, and industrial workers going crazy or tajju (running away bewitched) because of the work of magic. Usually it is, he says, the work of the wife: “Sometimes it is neighbours or friends but the wife, if she is ignorant, she may destroy you.”

[55] Mason work is also associated with inherited magical rituals to chase away jinns. In Moroccan mythology, it is thought that except for those which are sanctified, all houses and places are haunted. The construction of houses is impregnated with the aura of magic; rituals are performed as work is commenced on ceilings, roofs, or foundations; salt is thrown in the foundations to chase away evil spirits (for a full treatment of “salt” see

Paque 1984; Rachik 1990). Sacrifices are offered when the house is finished; before one settles in a newly built house one has to perform ma’ruf (alms-giving ceremony) by immolating a victim. Blood has to be shed to pacify the spirit masters of the place ( mwalin l-mkan ).

[56] The masons say that jinns are mentioned in the Koran, no doubt about them. They gave examples about jinns who helped sorcerers dig out treasures; jinns that revealed people’s secrets like those of diviners, and jinns that spoke in different languages. Some of them visit saints’ tombs with their families. They respect saints for their baraka

. “Baraka exists and thanks to it that we continue to exist. No land is devoid of baraka

,” says one.

[57] In Moroccan folk mythology, it is risky to be alone in a Hamman [Turkish bath], especially by night or at dawn. It is believed to be haunted. Turkish baths, like gutters and sacrifice places, are associated with dirt. They are profane not sacred. So jinns are believed to live in these places. People are warned not to step over gutters, not to wash in the Hammam alone. Also it is thought unwise to whistle in the Hammam or sing, comportments believed to awaken/ evoke spirits. One mason remembers going to the Hammam early in the morning: “I found a man in his 60’s waiting in the gulsa (“dressing room”). He did not want to go inside the bath rooms to wash alone. He was afraid of jinn attack. I smiled and told him those things were in the past. “Now with electricity you do not have to be frightened”. On being pressed whether he, himself, believes, he says “I never saw anything but I was told that people got possessed in the Hammam, even disappeared, sometimes only some body parts left”. Showing the general climate of superstition where jinns are a serious topic for consideration, others chime in to protest that they have built and demolished walls of a Hammam at 2 o’clock in the morning.

They did not care about it. On being pressed again: “No! It is not that I do not believe, these things exist but nothing thank God has touched me. And if someone is married to a female jinni [ jinniya ] and usually such female jinns help their husbands financially, she may give him money and he would not tell it. He may be too shy to say it in public [ rah may rdash ygul ha lik

].” The mason in this case activates the honour-shame-code schema in interpreting someone’s marriage to a spirit. For him, hiding such conjugal relations is a matter of living up to one’s self-image as a normal human being in society, without being wounded in their virility and manliness.


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During his ethnographic work at Ben Yeffu published in 2007, Mohammed Maarouf met an industrial worker from Casablanca; he used to work in the industrial sector. He came to Ben Yeffu because he was called to. The call was in the form of a dream. The saint appeared to him ( wqaf ‘lih

) as a Shaykh dressed in white riding on a white horse and holding a spear. When he dug it to the ground water burst out. He summoned him to come to him. When he asked relatives about the saint and the vision, one recognized the saint and told him it was Ben

Yeffu. (In his founding myth and patients’ visions, Ben Yeffu is represented as such). The worker came to Ben

Yeffu and still kept seeing the vision. He had been suffering from possession. He said that he went to see doctors but they did not understand his sickness. His sickness manifested as follows. The day he got his salary and went home, he could not find the money. The first time he thought someone was stealing from him. But he watched for that but nothing happened. Still the money could not be found in his pocket. If he went shopping the same thing happened. He could not find the change. He was sacked from his job. When he started speaking about his problems to his colleagues, one day the overseer stopped him by the door. He told him he was not needed any more. They would call him again if they wanted workers. With the help of his aging mother he started a business of a roaming seller. He sold fruits on a small handcart. The evening when he went home, the same thing, he could not find the money in his pocket. Convinced that he was haunted, he went to Ben Yeffu in search of cure. At the shrine, he appeared very nervous, agitated and fragile. After more than a month, he left

Ben Yeffu saying that he felt better. But the enigma of the money was not resolved still pending!

Masons also believe in augury. One says he is frightened of black cats in the dark; they may be haunted

( maskunin ). Another says that salt is important in the foundations, “It protects us from work accidents. If the masters of the place ( mwalin l-mkan ) do not want us to be there, they may cause obstruction ( l-’kes ) for us or harm us”. Workers dream about a lot of things. They see in their dreams that they are becoming rich. One of them says in laughter: such dreams are results of l-hazqiya (lit. farting, in Moroccan vernacular connoting/ pennilessness). They see in their dreams that one of their children succeeds in the exams. A worker says: “I want my children to be better than me and work with degrees; I do not have a degree, I am a slave living at the mercy of crooked bosses [ shmayt

]”.

Zhar is connected with dreams. Workers agree that from one’s dreams, one may detect if one is lucky or he can succeed in some transaction. To explain the matter from an orthodox religious point of view: “if you have a problem, you do not know how to decide, what to do, what action to take, or you need to predict something, you can pray two cycles ( rak’at

) in a prayer called istikharah (prayer for guidance) and then God will guide you to the right decision, either to do what you wanted or not to do it”.

[58] This prayer can be repeated over and over pushing the limits of mental endurance until a vision occurs.

Islamists use it a lot to look into the future. They refer to the Prophet who used this technique so demonstrating its orthodoxy. Usually the vision arrives in the night that follows the prayer. Not all Muslims can succeed with this technique though it is open for all to try. But the vision is believable for devout Muslims. They claim they can see the Prophet in person in their visions. But this is not available to the common people. The latter may see themselves in their dreams traveling to desired places and see symbolic referents for particular meanings or future events. Face complexions, dress, posture, driving, running, walking, gardens, are all symbols to be read in favor or against the journey or transaction the dreamer tends to undertake (see Maarouf 2007).

[59] For the workers we spoke with, watching over all work relations is that general sense of fate and separation of the self from causation which rules so much else in popular cultural life in Morocco. Even when it is possible to see a human hand in what drives things forward or causes problems it is only ever part of a larger tapestry which somehow relieves the self of duties of action, feelings of guilt or remorse. Said again:

MM What do you think about someone who works hard but does not succeed or, by contrast, someone who succeeds without effort?


Said Sometimes these people are not doing the work but they have the know-how or perhaps they know someone, but whatever, you will get what is written for you.

Even the boss shares this worldview. A mason entrepreneur rationalizes the income of his day labourers thus:

“it is Allah who wanted them to be as such (poor)! Even if we give them money, they remain poor! Oh! We do not need to put our oar in Allah’s choices!” 16

There are many linguistic constructions for this sentiment but all bear the same meaning. The distribution of wealth is thus not the effect of the uneven distribution of resources and exploitation. It is rather thought to be conferred by God’s will ( qudret Allah ). Allah created the poor as he created the rich. If he wills, he can turn them upside down. The view that poverty and wealth have divine origins obfuscates the need for intervention or organization. The pain of labour even when multiplied beyond any traditional limit by capitalist intensification can thus still be deflected in a myriad of traditional psychic and cultural maneuvers.

Capitalism as Guest Not Host

[60] For the purposes of argument what we present in this article is organized to make a strong and uniform case for our basic contribution to the emergent debate. There are, however, important caveats and countertendencies which our ongoing work explores. Of course, direct coercion, fear and overwhelming economic necessity also encourage or sometimes enforce the capitalist wage labour relation and are elements on top of or running parallel to our religio-cultural arguments. We are anyway not arguing for a static cultural axis tilting the balance permanently towards a seamlessly submissive conduct. The dynamics of social interaction and the complexity of Moroccan popular culture, not least the projections and longings of magical emancipation and the license given in the antics of mischievous jinns, have taught us that revolt against authority is always peeping through, phobic inversion of the roles of master and slave track cultural relations like the negatives of photo prints, possibilities of storming the barricades can loom up in the subaltern’s mind at any time. Subalterns can challenge the master and subvert the schema. So far as the schema of sainthood (assistance and protection) is activated in labour contexts where cultural power is legitimate and productive, thus interpreted as a distributing centre of charity and security, relations of domination and submission are likely to be sustained but with lurking potential seeds of resistance. It is perfectly possible, though, that when power becomes greedy and is tempted overly to expose itself as coercive and exploitative and is perceived as such by workers it may risk being challenged. Though not yet mature, Trade Unionism is an authorized long-standing presence on the organizational scene in Morocco, albeit the survival of abusive power schemas in the cultural imagination may prevent pure collectivism. In some manner still in search of social justice, workers may sometimes resort to individual reactions such as aloofness, looting and criminality at work, including sabotage. We are interested to explore in future work how, once finding such material footings, yearnings for social justice may find glimpses of, and connect with, truth concerning what is warm and caring in the traditional religious cultural terrain, an inherent open-ness and challenge albeit clad in claustrophobic and mystified but still human warmth and care - lost landmines of meaning which might yet be detonated by the disturbances of capital’s violent turning over of the inherited soil. The religio-cultural grapplings with unknown powers keep alive the human dimension and so always have the potential to be connected up to more practical struggles for emancipation. The latter, in their turn, may also help to expose the shortcomings, short circuits and illusions of purely religious handlings of injustice.

[61] For the moment, though, what we wish to indicate is an awesome potential for atavistic cultural systems and traditional schemas of power/domination to be quite literally cashed in as “modern” systems of specific economic exploitation, further exquisitely equipped to hide their own operations with no western style burdens requiring the contortions of legitimation. For cultural-religious Islamic systems we have to fully understand that capitalist-driven “modernity” which we are used to seeing in the West as transforming our abodes time and again from the ground up is merely but a strange guest uncomfortably accommodated, tolerated only in the lesser and often screened-off rooms of unchanged, ancient and rambling mansions. Not the upstart Western ransacking of their own houses every half a generation, but Timeless Islam is at the centre of history.

17 Not a


western “takeover”, but the collisions of history enable a profane meeting of the different systems and factors of capitalism—capital, entrepreneurism, systems of accounting and control, labour, willingness of labour—with quite different etiologies of elements, produced in separate geographic and cultural continents. We must understand hybrid, heterogeneous and unforeseen effects rather than look to intertwined endogenous strands carefully producing a centred capitalist history. Even in the “north”, living capitalism, its actual social relations and meanings, especially in the bottom half of social space is not, or not only, orchestrated from above but is also accommodated to from below in profane ways which only ethnographies from below can uncover. It is one of the ruses to be unraveled of late modern capitalist globalization that the eccentric and accidental formation of labour power accomplished in the Islamic spirit of capitalism will aid rather than impede its ferocious, relentless economic exploitation by capital, quite unfettered by the conventional concerns with individualism, free will and consent registered by western writers in recent debates.

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Notes

1.

Let us first spell out the implications of the use of the heuristic device “subaltern(s)”. The subaltern population has been described by Gramsci (1990) as a socially subordinate group. Although poverty is the most important determinant of subaltern status, our use of the term draws upon our understanding of multiple sources of social hierarchy and subordination in Moroccan society, such as holy lineage,

‘asabiyya

(belonging to a powerful or subordinate social group and being dissolved in its collective social identity), region, gender, age, economic capital, and occupation. Appreciating all of these barriers is necessary to transcend an economic class-based perspective. The term “subalterns” here also holds ethnographic attributes by its reference to those who live at the bottom of social space and call themselves maqhurin (oppressed) or mahgurin (subordinated). They are observed to reside in poor areas in Moroccan cities and exist all over Morocco in the plains, mountains and Sahara but in rural communities their percentage raises very high. This socially insecure population has several characteristics. In the city, they more often than not tarry unemployed or semi-employed in low-skill jobs. In the countryside, they live in impoverished marginal conditions often as tenant farmers or wage labourers in the fields. They are largely illiterate. Many only work seasonally or when labour is available. Their life toil seems very hard and sometimes cruel. In squalid conditions and neglect, either in popular neighbourhoods ( ahya’ sha’biya

), in shantytowns or rural shacks and in extended families in poor nutrition, they endure their miserable life with no job security, no health insurance and with a high rate of delinquency and poor educational opportunities for their children. The common toil work from which they endeavor to squeeze a meager income ranges from their donkeywork such as bu’ara/habbasha (hewers in garbage heaps), mwaqfiya (day labourers tinkering round in different lowwage activities), taleb m’ashuwat

(lit. daily bread beggars; fig. carters) to roaming sellers and weekly

( swamniya ) skilled hand labourers and shop-floor workers of different sorts.


2.

One of the monopolizing abusive political forms of the Makhzen spread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is what Pascon (1983) neologistically termed “caidalism”, a feudal-like social form— though Pascon insists on the distinction between Makhzaninan caidalism which is tribally based and standard Makhzen institutions that are governed by a centralized state appointing its servants at the head of dominated social groups irrespective of the tribal formations—with specific modes of production and institutions of qaids. The best example of caidalism is the Pacha Thami l-Glawi. In the Haouz, the popular mind, Pascon maintains, set down the figure of l-Glawi to mythic dimensions ranking him either as Sidi Rahhal (a protective saintly figure), or the Black Sultan (an oppressive mythic figure) [for the full treatment of caidalism, see Pascon 1983, 293-369]. The history of the Makhzen and its legitimated /contested power accumulated a cultural legacy that is still part of the collective representations shared by Moroccan people. As Bourqia maintains, the popular idiom of power is the

Mahkzen. “A Moroccan saying goes: “three things cannot be overcome: fire, flood, and the Makhzen”

… [another one says] “only God and the Makhzen can defeat you”… the notion of the Makhzen and the meaning it conveys are still part of the Moroccan lexicon of power” (1999, 244).

3.

In 1982, “about 70.3% of the total Moroccan population was classified as inactive by the General

Census of Population and Habitat, that is 14 million people, a good proportion (up to 75%) of people classified under the “‘housewife’ rubrics or other inactive rubrics. These may be engaged in undeclared activities but their economic production is not taken into account” (Chekroun 2005, 18). In 1999, 50.4% of active women were employed in the undeclared sector or tinkered in domestic work. The Bureau of

Statistics conducted a survey in 1988 that put at 122,350 the number of people implicated in undeclared or non-structured enterprises, which represents 25.6% of the employment force in urban areas. In 2007, the Moroccan government announced a fall in unemployment from 13.9% in 1999 to 9.8% and 9.6% over the first quarter of 2008, according to the High Commission for Planning. The government is pleased with these achievements declared to be due to efforts made by the State across all sectors. The state has introduced incentives and policies on major infrastructure developments in tourism, housing and industry, and a national initiative for human development is launched under the monarch’s supervision. However, these official figures do not seem to unveil the enigma of the ethnographic observations that the country breeds unemployed subalterns; look at graduates, for instance, who continue to organize sit-down protests outside the Parliament and ministry buildings in Rabat. Does it mean as some unemployed graduates maintain, the figures published by officials don’t reflect reality given that a number of graduates, particularly license-holders, are working as labourers or small traders.

They’re counted as having jobs, but this is just unemployment in disguise.

4.

The concept “popular Islam” refers to the popular culture of Islam that embraces cultural fragments and denials within Orthodox Islam. Islamists and ulema , whose interpretation of the oneness of God extends to the unity of His community, refute the division of Islam into fragmented practices and represent

Islam as one. The cultural practices that do not conform to the Great Tradition are thought heterodox.

Popular Islam incorporates the aberrant views and activities of the illiterate though the boundaries between notions of “popular” and establishment are not as clear-cut as they may first appear. Popular practices may collide with establishment practices in some social and historical contexts, and reinforce each other in other contexts. Let us remember that almost any organized Islamic practice that is antiestablishment claims its authority is rooted in Islam such is the case of maraboutic practices (Peel and

Stewart 1985, 363; see also Eickelman 1976).

5.

There is a substantial literature on maraboutism. Brunel (1926), Westermarck (1926), Dermenghem

(1950), Crapanzano (1973), Naamouni (1995), Maarouf (2007), Hermans (2007) have been concerned with the practice of traditional healing in maraboutic shrines, that is with the curative role of zawiyas like Isawa, Gnawa, Hamadsha, Ben Yeffu and Bouya Omar. Pandolfo’s work (1997) deals with healing in relation to mental illness. Boukari (1989), Drague (1940), Hajji (1988), Michaux-Bellaire (1921),

Morsy (1972), Pascon (1984) deal with the religious, social, political and economic roles of maraboutic institutions in different historical periods. None of them has considered maraboutism in relation to the requirements of capitalist wage labour.

6.

According to Clifford Geertz, baraka is “an exemplary centre, it is a conception of the mode in which the divine reaches into the world. Implicit, uncriticized, and far from systematic, it too is a ‘doctrine’”

(1968, 44). Baraka appears as an endowment, a talent, a spiritual force or special ability bestowed on


particular individuals. As Geertz explains, baraka manifests its presence in men like any other natural qualities such as courage, strength, dignity and intelligence. But unlike them, it is a gift bestowed on people in degrees. Some may acquire baraka in greater degree than others. Like mahano for the Nyoro, and mana for the Polynesian, baraka for Moroccans is not something that can be measured and weighed; the idea of doing so would be absurd to them. But like mana and mahano , it is something semi-substantial in that Moroccans speak of it as a real quality inherent in certain beings and things. It is embedded in the words of God, sacred places and things, productive animals like cows and horses and people endowed with piety. Moroccans think that if baraka is not inherited, there are recognized means of acquiring it. baraka manifests its presence in material prosperity, physical health, luck, plenitude, and power. It is descriptive of the possession of power and not itself the source of power. It is inextricably related to the belief in saints, the distributing centres of baraka . The major sign of its existence and one of the seminal sites of its customary operation is the zawiya (pilgrimage centre).

7.

Most of the ideas discussed in this section derive from our re-analysis of the data collected over a period of two years (2001-3) by Mohammed Maarouf, a fieldwork research already published in 2007 updating our findings with recent fieldwork conducted by the same author on Chamharouch in the Atlas between

March and July in 2009.

8.

A proverb in this respect goes as follows: “by the name of God if the Makhzen ceases to exist, we will devour each other ( wa llah u khtana al-Makhzen ala klina ba’diyatna )”.

9.

In recent decades the literature on possession has treated it as a cultural idiom of communication that should not be reduced to naturalized or rationalized western forms for it intersects with various cultural domains including medicine and religion but is reducible to none (Obeyesekere 1970; Lambek 1981;

Boddy 1994; Masquelier 1997). As Lambek maintains, it has to be likened to a text or genre with its own conventions, a mode of knowledge realized in specific and personal socio-temporal contexts. Lewis

(1966, 1989) focuses on possession as a ritual protest of subaltern groups—though always conducted from weakness. Stoller (1984), Comarrof (1985), Ong (1988), and Sharp (1995) see it in various ways as an indirect critique of domination, colonial, national or global. Boddy’s work on zar (1989) stresses the point that possession is a subaltern discourse. Masquelier (1999) notes the emergence of a new group of spirits in Niger who contrast with the avaricious bori in stoically repudiating Western commodities and modern comforts. McIntosh (2004) speaks of hegemonic Muslim jinns tormenting

Giriama people of coastal Kenya intimidating them to succumb to the Islamic faith. According to our ongoing research on jinn possession (n.d[a].), the practice can no more be reduced simply to questions of immediate power, hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, than it can to a conformity with un-reflective institutional reproduction. Our argument here is that the question of agency (self vs. other) can be transferred from the moral context to this social contexts as one of many avenues of exploring the cultural knowledge of possession as a complex, meaningful formation articulating with the complex geologies of Moroccan economic and social context.

10.

Majdub (f. majduba ; pl. majadib ): a person who becomes attracted towards God and fascinated by maraboutic orders; they apply themselves to touring saints and become itinerant maraboutic pilgrims who lead a bohemian life and practice augury.

11.

Jewish jinns are often required to give seven vows in order to quit the body. To count their vows, the healer usually uses a rosary during their eviction. Normally they scheme by giving less or more than seven promises. The most dexterous healer would ask them to give more than seven vows, and then when they reach seven promises, he would stop them and thus trick them into accepting his bond and leaving the body in peace.

12.

Mohammed Maarouf utilizes here his both structured and unstructured field knowledge compiled over the period of fourteen years ever since 1996. Many observations and some interviews were conducted with Paul Willis sometimes present over the span of one year (2008), in the latter case receiving occasional fast updates from MM in English and PW posing new directions or issues for MM to take up in Moroccan.

13.

There has been relevant work on rural youth in country settings and their attitudes to labour. Pascon and

Bentahar (1978) interviewed 296 Moroccan rural youths about various themes including the labour theme and came to the conclusion that Moroccans embrace a mercantilist spirit of work. Typical answers cited by Pascon and Bentahar give evidence for the fact that youths preferred rather to steal and


go to prison than to work at 3 dh per day in 1969: “if I have to work in order to get money, I will work, if I have to steal, I will do it”. The rural worker never separates himself from his social origins and allegiance to his family. His attachment and allegiance to his parents (in the form of gift-exchange) fuel his moral obligation towards them. He goes to work to help the family and fulfill his moral obligation towards his parents who have brought him up. Most of Pascon and Bentahar’s respondents say that working for the family or outside the domestic sphere to help the family is a must. It is part of their moral worldview to keep attached to their kinship solidarity. These findings are consistent with our own but Pascon and Bentahar do not consider the specificities of capitalist wage labour as it is embedded in traditional forms.

14.

Allah says: “Of their wealth take alms, that so thou mightest purify and sanctify them; And pray on their behalf. Verily thy prayers are a source of security for them: and Allah is one who heareth and knoweth”

( surat a-TTawbah [repentance], aya 103). Allah enjoined his Prophet to take alms-tax from the Arabs and wish forgiveness for them (especially for the sinful). According to the prophetic tradition,

Mohammed used to make wish prayers for the tribes and the faithful who offered alms. It was narrated that he said: “Allah enjoined alms from the wealth of the rich to be collected and offered to the poor”

(Sahih al-Bukhari).That is what is known in Islam as alms-tax (zakat) distributed by the rich Muslims to the poor annually. Secular taxation and its re-distribution is a factor now but individual choices and practices under the dictates of God remain highly pertinent.

15.

The collective representations of agency in Moroccan dialect are constructed in a passive mode in which the doer of the action is positioned as an affected participant (see “Transitive Options”, Halliday 1985).

Wrong doings or accidental occurrences are rendered in the passive to obfuscate agency. Moroccans say: “who/what caused you that?” ( shkun/ash sbabek

); “the bus runs from me” ( hrab ‘liya tubis

) instead of I missed the bus. The window pane hit me, or the glass dropped from me. Linguistic constructions of this kind may reflect the lack of a feeling of positive agency.

16.

The Arabic version reads as follows: ( ra Allah bgha lihum hakkak! Ra wakhkha n-‘ttiw-hum ibqaw fuqara! Aw hna n-ddakhlu m’a Allah )

17.

It is widely argued in the Islamic world and recorded in fieldwork accounts about Muslims that they see in their religion the expansion of the world and objectification of truth claims. What modern science discovers is already predicted in the Book. It is all written. Previous societies could not interpret it.

Science could but explicate, interpret and comment on what is already embedded in the Qur’an. When science discovered the moon, Muslims incorporated the discovery in their Scripts. It was written in the

Book that humans will ascend to another universe with the power of science (cf. Pascon 1986, 84-85).

During Maarouf’s fieldwork in 2006 and 2007 on Islamism at the grass-roots level, a religiously committed student told a well-known story to prove that the ascent to the moon was predicted by the

Koran. She said that Armstrong heard the call for prayer when he first stepped on the surface of the moon—needless to refer to CDs and DVDs, these audio-visual material records of western media documentaries about scientific discovery and animal life dubbed into Arabic to reconstruct religious discourses about how the Qur’an incorporates all such scientific proofs within its linguistic symbols.


The Islamic Spirit of Capitalism

Paul Willis, Princeton University and

Mohammed Maarouf, Chouaib Doukkali University, El-Jadida, Morocco

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Paul Willis, Princeton University and

Mohammed Maarouf, Chouaib Doukkali University, El-Jadida, Morocco

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