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Change at Shebika;: Report from a North African village
English, French (translation)
303 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1970
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July 22, 2020
Jump-starting the transformation
I came to this book upside-down! What I mean is, I bought it back in 1972, probably in a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. It sat on my bookshelf. Some thirty-odd years later, in our film group, we watched a movie called “Ramparts of Clay”, a most tedious, drawn-out flick with incredible numbers of slow pans from left to right (never the opposite). It showed the people of a Tunisian village. When the credits came on, I realized that I owned the book written by the film maker. The film did not encourage me to read the book. A couple of years later, I actually visited Shebika. My wife and I had wandered down to Tozeur, a largish Tunisian town at the edge of the Sahara, but, not having a car, we took a “desert tour” which by chance, took us to Shebika. I realized that, yes, this was the village written about in “that book”. And now, 21 years more along the line, I have actually read the book. Talk about doing stuff backwards!
A French sociological research team picked Shebika to study back in 1961. Tunisia had become independent five years previously. They wished to know about rural life, far from the capital. The team kept returning for the next four years with young Tunisian researchers. The results of that study are what you find in the book. The text alternates between poetically-written description and that style of French anthropology in which vague theories are built on who-knows-what-data. As far as I know, the best French education encourages students to build theories, but collection of data takes second place. Levi-Strauss, the old master, is a prime example. In my life I have run into one or two other, lesser, lights of this style. I would agree that overarching theories are indeed necessary, for what good is a mountain of data if you don’t plan to do anything with it? However, if you haven’t got good research, your theories are just hanging from no visible hook. Clunk! There was a discussion of “authenticity” which I found a most vague and useless idea. On the other hand, I really liked the way Duvignaud took apart orthodox Marxist insistence on lumping together all societies as lying somewhere on a progression of “social stages” from primitive communism to Socialism.
The society the team found had lost its way. The villagers had lost control of their own lands to outsiders. Islam was pretty much form only. Pessimism and hopelessness seemed to rule the day. The new government in far off Tunis wanted to bring social and economic change and had substantial ideas on what they wanted to achieve. They had no way of actually achieving it. The new urban elite had already begun to congeal and ignore the conditions outside the capital. Yet, tradition, such as it was (if there really is such a thing as eternal “tradition”) had been devalued. An elementary school and military service, as well as a number of radios, spoke of coming change, but Shebika had not seen very much in reality. The effect of the team’s stay in the village is one of the most interesting things in this study. The author and team realized that “Tunisia would become a truly modern country when Shebika had SPONTANEOUSLY found the social forms of its adaptation to change”. (p.285)
In short, this is a mixed bag sort of book. You can get an idea of what an isolated Tunisian village was like back almost 60 years ago. You can wonder what happened there during the long dictatorship that only ended in the Arab Spring of 2011. And you can see if you agree with the ideas on social-economic-political development presented by the author. It’s a thoughtful book, but sometimes overly wordy.
I came to this book upside-down! What I mean is, I bought it back in 1972, probably in a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. It sat on my bookshelf. Some thirty-odd years later, in our film group, we watched a movie called “Ramparts of Clay”, a most tedious, drawn-out flick with incredible numbers of slow pans from left to right (never the opposite). It showed the people of a Tunisian village. When the credits came on, I realized that I owned the book written by the film maker. The film did not encourage me to read the book. A couple of years later, I actually visited Shebika. My wife and I had wandered down to Tozeur, a largish Tunisian town at the edge of the Sahara, but, not having a car, we took a “desert tour” which by chance, took us to Shebika. I realized that, yes, this was the village written about in “that book”. And now, 21 years more along the line, I have actually read the book. Talk about doing stuff backwards!
A French sociological research team picked Shebika to study back in 1961. Tunisia had become independent five years previously. They wished to know about rural life, far from the capital. The team kept returning for the next four years with young Tunisian researchers. The results of that study are what you find in the book. The text alternates between poetically-written description and that style of French anthropology in which vague theories are built on who-knows-what-data. As far as I know, the best French education encourages students to build theories, but collection of data takes second place. Levi-Strauss, the old master, is a prime example. In my life I have run into one or two other, lesser, lights of this style. I would agree that overarching theories are indeed necessary, for what good is a mountain of data if you don’t plan to do anything with it? However, if you haven’t got good research, your theories are just hanging from no visible hook. Clunk! There was a discussion of “authenticity” which I found a most vague and useless idea. On the other hand, I really liked the way Duvignaud took apart orthodox Marxist insistence on lumping together all societies as lying somewhere on a progression of “social stages” from primitive communism to Socialism.
The society the team found had lost its way. The villagers had lost control of their own lands to outsiders. Islam was pretty much form only. Pessimism and hopelessness seemed to rule the day. The new government in far off Tunis wanted to bring social and economic change and had substantial ideas on what they wanted to achieve. They had no way of actually achieving it. The new urban elite had already begun to congeal and ignore the conditions outside the capital. Yet, tradition, such as it was (if there really is such a thing as eternal “tradition”) had been devalued. An elementary school and military service, as well as a number of radios, spoke of coming change, but Shebika had not seen very much in reality. The effect of the team’s stay in the village is one of the most interesting things in this study. The author and team realized that “Tunisia would become a truly modern country when Shebika had SPONTANEOUSLY found the social forms of its adaptation to change”. (p.285)
In short, this is a mixed bag sort of book. You can get an idea of what an isolated Tunisian village was like back almost 60 years ago. You can wonder what happened there during the long dictatorship that only ended in the Arab Spring of 2011. And you can see if you agree with the ideas on social-economic-political development presented by the author. It’s a thoughtful book, but sometimes overly wordy.
Displaying 1 of 1 review