44 pages • 1 hour read
Paul RabinowReflections on Fieldwork in Morocco
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Ali: An Outsider’s Insider”
In Chapter 3 Rabinow introduces Ali, possibly the most influential informant he maintains while in Morocco. He is first introduced in the Sefrou medina, where he and his friend Soussi own side-by-side shops. Ali is a traditional healer and, along with his friend Soussi, the coordinator of a large sex work operation. In many ways, Ali is the perfect anthropological informant. He is well connected, smart, adventurous, and willing to talk about anything. He is also supremely controversial, especially in his tiny home village. This point will complicate Rabinow’s research later in the book, but at first Ali’s openness is a welcome break from the guardedness Rabinow feels from other Moroccans. Their first meetings act as an introduction to the Sefrou medina.
In contrast to the mid-20th-century Ville Nouvelle, the medina in Sefrou has existed since the ninth century AD and remains largely unchanged. It is a labyrinthine district enclosed within tall outer walls, which are shut at night. Within these walls a maze of narrow streets is packed with people, shops, mosques, cafes, and hidden residential courtyards. Motorized vehicles are not allowed within the medina walls, so pack animals are used to transport goods around the district. The population is almost exclusively Muslim Moroccans. Since the departure of the Jewish community, the mellah has become a thriving sex worker community, home to most of the women whom Ali and Soussi employ.
Rabinow enjoys the medina’s vibrant street life. It reminds him of New York City, where he grew up. Rabinow notes that the experience “was immensely ‘ethnographic’ and fulfilled all of my images of myself as anthropologist sitting in the heart of a thousand-year-old walled city with my turbaned friends, notebook on my lap, drinking tea and being the participant observer” (35). He feels at home but is occasionally jolted out of this comfort by confusing situations that clearly define him as the cultural outsider. One day he is relaxing in front of Ali’s shop when a woman approaches with a crying baby. After a quick ritual involving Ali sucking on the baby’s mouth, the child stops crying, the pair exchange money, and the woman leaves happily. Rabinow understands that he has seen some kind of curing practice but has no further context with which to explain what happened. No other bystanders even seem to notice the event; to them it is part of everyday medina life. Rabinow is already the Other, and he has barely even scratched the surface of Morocco.
Strong feelings of Otherness and a challenging cultural gap are evident several other times in Rabinow’s encounters with Ali. Ali and Soussi invite the anthropologist to a village wedding in Sidi Lahcen Lyussi. Rabinow is excited to go but comes down with a stomach virus the day before and questions whether he should attend. Ali convinces him he can’t back out. Rabinow makes Ali promise that they will leave if he starts feeling sick, and Ali agrees. After several hours, the anthropologist gets antsy; he can’t understand the songs or interpret the dances, he is not feeling well, and guests are preoccupied socializing with the people they actually know. Ali is still happily dancing and clearly not ready to leave. Rabinow tells Ali he wants to head out several times, and Ali agrees but goes back to dancing. Rabinow finds Soussi and angrily tells him to go find Ali if they want a ride back to Sefrou. Both men arrive at his car, and Ali is in good spirits, apparently happy to leave.
On the drive back to Sefrou, Ali continuously asks Rabinow why he seems unhappy. Rabinow, feeling frustrated, exhausted, and angry, refuses to answer; to him it seems obvious that Ali should know why he is unhappy. Eventually he gives in and admits to being upset that Ali did not keep his promise to leave early. This response prompts Ali to insist that Rabinow pull over, saying he will walk the rest of the way back; he can’t ride in his guest’s car if he made him unhappy. After a period of argument involving Ali walking down the highway with Rabinow and Soussi driving slowly alongside him pleading with him to be reasonable, they give up. Ali walks the last five miles to Sefrou, and Rabinow spends the rest of the night trying to figure out exactly what happened and worrying that he alienated his best informant.
Later on, Ali takes Rabinow to a night, a healing ceremony of the Aissawa brotherhood to which Ali belongs. The Aissawa is a non-hereditary sect of Sufism that focuses on mystical healing and control of wild animals, the two specialties of its founding saint. The ceremony involves snake handling and trance-inducing songs and dances and is intended to cure an ill young boy. Rabinow observes the ceremony and finds that although the rituals are far from anything he can relate to, they are relatively easy to interpret anthropologically since the history and practices of the Aissawa are well documented. Although Sufism and other forms of cult Islam were practiced clandestinely under French rule, large sects like the Aissawa are still popular and publicly accepted by the Moroccan people.
Near the end of his time in Sefrou, Rabinow drives Ali and his girlfriend, Mimouna, to visit her parents in the town of Marmoucha, high in the Atlas Mountains. Along with Mimouna’s sister, the group hikes to a remote hot spring where everyone but the American skinny dips and dances. Rabinow describes this as his best day in Morocco, the one time when it felt like his companions were totally free from the strict gender rules that apply in daily Moroccan life.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Entering”
In Chapter 4, Rabinow finally sets out for his “real” study area, the village of Sidi Lahcen Lyussi, where he went for the wedding in Chapter 3. He outlines his reasoning for choosing this particular village: It retains an active religious tradition and shrine, has a populace that largely speaks Arabic rather than Berber, and is Ali’s hometown. Rabinow hopes he can help convince the population to let him work there.
It immediately becomes clear that Ali’s involvement is controversial. He has a wife in Sidi Lahcen Lyussi whom he has mostly abandoned in favor of running his businesses in Sefrou, and the village residents judge his involvement in the sex industry. Rabinow delves further into what makes Ali one of his best informants and concludes that he is able to view things more objectively since he is marginalized, an outsider in both his home village and the medina.
Possibly because if his connection to Ali, Rabinow encounters pushback from the local community members, some of whom want to forbid him from working there. He is never sure exactly what happened or how it was resolved, but he is eventually allowed access to the village. This difficulty causes Rabinow to question his assumption that they should let him in and what exactly they will gain from his presence. Once deciding to allow the anthropologist to move in, the village leaders welcome him into the Sidi Lahcen Lyussi and offer him their protection.
Rabinow frames his journey from Sefrou to the Sidi Lahcen Lyussi as another look into how colonial history shaped the landscape. Outside Sefrou, former grazing land with a long history of collective use by nomadic groups had been transformed into large French-style farms. Dams were built to provide water to these farms, changing water access throughout the country. Once past Abazza, described as a hot and dusty government outpost, the foothills of the Atlas mountains begin, and the road becomes progressively narrower and rougher. Rabinow describes the sweeping views he encounters on his drive and the ancient, fortress-like Berber outposts that are visible in the desert. Sidi Lahcen Lyussi itself is high in the foothills of the Middle Atlas, in a narrow valley carved by tectonic shifts. It is ecologically diverse and well irrigated, with thousands of olive trees growing on the high ground behind the village. These olive groves are the main source of income for the village, and Rabinow knows that they have complex ownership rules that pique his interest as an anthropologist.
At the time of his fieldwork, Sidi Lahcen Lyussi is home to around 900 inhabitants, about half of whom trace their ancestry through one of four lines going back to the town’s founding Islamic saint, Sidi Lahcen. These Arabic-speaking descendants are the most powerful members of the village, which is home to an ornate shrine to the saint and a bi-annual festival attended by local tribes. Apart from the saint’s descendants, the village is home to a number of Berbers who were displaced from other locations as well as a group called “the children of the slaves,” locally classified as an indigenous population with no real internal unity. Rabinow’s goal is to study the saint’s lineages and how membership in, and exclusion from, these lineages effects land use rights and social status.
The first person Rabinow tries to work with is Mekki, a young farm worker who is Ali’s cousin. Mekki is friendly and happy to talk about anything, but Rabinow struggles to discuss complex topics with him. He quickly learns that Mekki is widely understood to be unintelligent. He hears other people laughing that the only person who will talk to him is the “village idiot. Shortly into Rabinow’s stay, Mekki takes a job herding sheep in the mountains. Rabinow sees this change as a blessing; he can distance himself from Mekki without upsetting him.
The second main informant introduced in Chapter 4 is Rashid, another young local and cousin of Ali. Rashid is smart, creative, and eager to gossip about any aspect of village life. His father is a shopkeeper who is rich by Sidi Lahcen Lyussi standards. Their family does not belong to the saintly lineages, and both Rashid and his father hold strong negative opinions about them; his father leads the main opposing group to the strict saintly hierarchy, though he wields no actual political power. The first time Rabinow meets Rashid, he is warned away by another of Ali’s cousins, who calls Rashid “a wild animal and dangerous” (96). Rabinow assumes this warning is either a statement of jealousy or a political move to keep him away from anti-saint ideas, so he decides to work with Rashid anyway.
Their first task is to make a map of the village, something Rabinow tried to do with Mekki without success. Rashid takes Rabinow on a walk, descriptively interpreting the landscape for him in clear, unhurried Arabic. As they become more comfortable with each other, Rashid begins to tell Rabinow that the village will slander him when they see them working together and that the anthropologist should trust no one but him. As soon as they return to the village, the slander continues, and it eventually becomes clear to Rabinow that the saint-descended residents are terrified that Rashid will reveal embarrassing or inflammatory details about Sidi Lahcen Lyussi politics to further his father’s oppositional efforts. Although Rashid is a supremely useful informant, Rabinow decides that continuing to work with him will harm his trust with other villagers too much. Fortunately for Rabinow, Rashid soon hears of a “shady scheme” in southern Morocco and, like Mekki, is suddenly gone.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In Chapters 3 and 4, Rabinow becomes more acclimated to Moroccan culture and describes his encounters with the native Moroccans. Chapter 3 introduces Ali, an informant recommended by another anthropologist. Ali is a very good informant; he has both insider and outsider status within a number of Moroccan communities. He is from a rural village, where his family and wife still live, but he has an unsavory reputation there and rarely visits. Although he is ensconced in the medina, he is not a native, and his businesses are not all viewed positively. He is Muslim but more dedicated to the ritualistic practices of the Aissawa brotherhood than more standard modern Islam. He has in-depth knowledge of many important cultural phenomena that Rabinow wants to study but is removed enough that he can view aspects of his community objectively and enjoys riling up his detractors by discussing topics that they avoid.
The anthropologist uses encounters between himself and Ali to explore his increasing exposure to the less public sides of Moroccan life, which furthers his familiarity with the culture while at the same time make him feel more distant from it. Three specific events are presented in depth: the village wedding in Sidi Lahcen Lyussi, the Aissawa healing night, and the trip to Marmoucha. Each of these stories highlights hidden aspects of Moroccan culture.
The wedding can be viewed as a parallel to the trip to Marrakech, albeit a more complex cultural transaction. On a basic level, the story highlights Rabinow’s misinterpretation of his relationship with Ali; Rabinow sees the wedding trip as a friendly invitation, while Ali sees it as a transaction. In exchange for helping Rabinow access a private Moroccan space, he will get a ride to Sidi Lahcen Lyussi and the bragging rights of bringing the most interesting guest.
In addition to Rabinow's misunderstanding Ali’s motivations for inviting him to the wedding, this incident highlights the different value systems that the men hold. To Ali, Rabinow is not serious about leaving unless he is forceful in his request. When Soussi finally does insist that he leave, Ali is happy to do so and does not understand Rabinow’s frustration. When Rabinow finally admits that he is unhappy, he is admitting that Ali has failed as a host. In Morocco, generosity and taking care of guests is one of the most important virtues. Ali has not only failed to uphold this virtue, but he also has not upheld his end of the bargain. His choice to walk back is a move to keep his dignity.
The Aissawa night and the trip to Marmoucha are a different type of cultural encounter. They both occur after the wedding and show an important development in Ali and Rabinow’s relationship. The circumstances of the wedding have forced both men to think from the perspective of the other, and they respect each other more afterwards. The night is the first experience Rabinow has with the private side of Islamic practice in Morocco. In many ways, it is a classical anthropological setting; Rabinow knows the general history of the Aissawa and structure of the ritual, so he is able to interpret it more fully than, for example, the healing ritual performed on the baby in the medina. The night is an example of a common but still largely underground mystical Sufi culture that exists across the Muslim world. The Aissawa have been performing healing rituals since the Middle Ages and have retained a large believer base. Most followers of the Aissawa also practice “standard” Islam, and the discrepancies between the two belief systems are not seen as incompatible.
One of the main inconsistencies Rabinow sees is the role of women in the Aissawa as compared to in other parts of Moroccan life. Women fully engage in the night, dancing and entering trances alongside men. This event contrasts with the wedding, where the crowd is separated by gender and men dance while women watch and call out encouragement from their dining area. The dichotomy between a strict public segregation of genders and more intimacy in private sectors is found throughout the text. This idea is explored in Chapter 3 through the lens of prostitution as well in as the interactions within the group on the hike in Marmoucha.
Rabinow notes that prostitution is surprisingly un-taboo in Sefrou and other Moroccan cities. Most workers are young Berber women from local villages who see the job as the only means to pursue a self-sufficient lifestyle. Most of them appear happy; they are treated well by other medina dwellers, are often fairly wealthy, and live alongside their peers within the safety of the mellah, which has its own gate. After a few years of sex work, most women get married, often to divorced men looking for a more worldly second wife. Although the sex workers’ “impurity” will affect their bride price (the amount the groom’s family pays the bride’s family for the marriage), the income the job provides and the freedom it allows makes it an attractive option for many village girls.
Marmoucha provides a close-up look at the way one Moroccan family navigates gender dynamics. Rabinow meets Mimouna’s family, and he is surprised at the ease with which they seem to accept their daughter openly dating a married man. However, even in the mountains, genders must be divided in public. When the men leave for the hike with Mimouna and her sister, the women make a show of walking out of the village while the men drive. As they hike further from the village, they become visibly freer to express themselves, finally ending with a naked soak in a hot spring. Although the interactions are strictly platonic, the anthropologist is too shy to join. Rabinow, who until that time has considered himself the openminded counterpart to the strictly traditional Moroccans, is now the conservative one.
Once Rabinow feels he has been accepted into Ali’s circle, he begins to prepare for his move to Sidi Lahcen Lyussi. Although he is feeling more at home in Sefrou, feelings of Otherness come up again before and during his move. Since Rabinow is not yet aware of the complex social dynamics of the village, he is alarmed when he hears that some residents do not want him there. When he first gets to the village, his first few informants are less than ideal, which frustrates him but also teaches him important factors that make a “good” informant.
Ali is a good informant; Mekki and Rashid, on the other hand, are not good informants, for very different reasons. In Mekki’s case, his limited scope of experience prevents him from viewing his own life from the outside. To Rabinow, the most important aspect of a good informant is the ability to put oneself in the anthropologist’s shoes. Since Mekki has trouble with this, he is unable to convey information in a way that Rabinow can understand. Rashid, on the other hand, is very creative and has no problem describing his life in a relatable way. Instead, his bad reputation in the village is what interferes with his abilities as an informant. This reputation is not in itself a dealbreaker; Ali is also reasonably disliked in Sidi Lahcen Lyussi. However, Ali has moved away from the village, so his information is less directly influential on Sidi Lahcen Lyussi society as a whole. Rachid and his family not only live in the village but are also actively engaged in fighting against the town’s traditional social hierarchy. Rachid’s involvement with the anthropologist is an immediate threat to social norms, so those who benefit from those norms have a strong reason to discredit him.
Although he describes the Middle Atlas’s beauty in detail and is excited for “real” field work, at first Rabinow feels isolated from Sidi Lahcen Lyussi’s residents. The controversy surrounding his arrival still weighs on him. He is the Other more than ever before, and “doing anthropology” means forming close working relationships and analyzing the complex social structure of the village. He begins to wonder why anyone would help him since he has very little to offer them in return. This predicament helps him expand his argument that anthropology is inherently unequal. He can offer individual informants money for helping with concrete tasks but cannot offer the entire village anything other than teaching English, which most have no need for. His first few informants in Sidi Lahcen seem to be helping him out of boredom and loneliness.
