MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Libya
Index
To a great extent, the cities have been crucibles of social
change in modern Libya. The Sanusi brotherhood drew its strength
from the tribal system of the desert, and the cities were marginal
(see The Sanusi Order
, ch. 1). More recently, however, they have
become centers of attraction, drawing people out of the tribal and
village systems and to some extent dissolving the bonds that held
these systems together.
Before the arrival of the Europeans in the 1920s, urban centers
had been organized around specific areas referred to as quarters.
A city was composed of several quarters, each consisting of a
number of families who had lived in that place for several
generations and had become bound by feelings of solidarity.
Families of every economic standing resided in the same quarter;
the wealthy and the notable assumed leadership. Each quarter had
leaders who represented it before the city at large, and to a great
extent the quarter formed a small subsociety functioning at an
intimate level in a manner that made it in some respects similar to
a country village.
Occupations had different levels of acceptability. Carpenters,
barbers, smiths of all kinds, plumbers, butchers, and mechanics
were held in varying degrees of low esteem, with these kinds of
work frequently performed by minority-group members. The opprobrium
that continued to attach to the occupations even after
independence, despite the good pay frequently obtainable, has been
attributed to the fact that such jobs did not originate in the
pastoral and agrarian life that was the heritage of most of the
population.
The arrival of the Europeans disturbed the traditional equili-
brium of urban life. Unaccustomed to the ways of life appropriate
to traditional housing, the newcomers built new cities along
European lines, with wide streets, private lawns, and separate
houses. As growing numbers of Libyans began to copy Europeans in
dress and habits and to use European mass-produced products, local
artisans were driven into reduced circumstances or out of business.
European-style housing became popular among the well-to-do, and the
old quarters gradually became neighborhoods of the poor.
Urban migration, which began under the Italians, resulted in an
infusion of progressively larger numbers of workers and laid the
basis for the modern working class. The attractions of city life,
especially for the young and educated, were not exclusively
material. Of equal importance was the generally more stimulating
urban environment, particularly the opportunity to enjoy a wider
range of social, recreational, cultural, and educational
experiences.
As urban migration continued to accelerate, housing shortages
destroyed what was left of quarter solidarity. The quarters were
flooded with migrants, and old family residences became tenements.
At the same time, squatter slums began to envelop the towns,
housing those the town centers could not accommodate. In place of
the old divisions based primarily on family background, income
became the basic determinant of differentiation between residential
neighborhoods.
Italian hegemony altered the bases of social distinction
somewhat, but the change was superficial and transitory; unlike the
other Maghribi countries, Libya did not receive a heavy infusion of
European culture. As a result, the Libyan urban elite did not
suffer the same cultural estrangement from the mass of the people
that occurred elsewhere in North Africa. At the end of the colonial
period, vestiges of Italian influence dropped quickly, and Arab
Muslim culture began to reassert itself.
Before independence rural Libyans looked upon their tribal,
village, and family leaders as the true sources of authority, and,
in this sense, as their social elite. Appointments to government
positions were largely political matters, and most permanent
government jobs were allocated through patronage. Local governments
were controlled largely by traditional tribal leaders who were able
to dispense patronage and thus to perpetuate their influence in the
changing circumstances that attended the discovery of oil.
The basic social units were the extended family, clan, and
tribe. All three were the primary economic, educational, and
welfare-providing units of their members. Individuals were expected
to subordinate themselves and their interests to those units and to
obey the demands they made. The family was the most important focus
of attention and loyalty and source of security, followed by the
tribe. In most cases, the most powerful family of a clan provided
tribal leadership and determined the reputation and power of the
tribe.
Various criteria were used to evaluate individuals as well as
families in the competition for preeminence. Lineage, wealth, and
piety were among the most prominent. Throughout Libya's history,
and especially during the period of the monarchy, family prominence
and religious leadership became closely intertwined. Indeed,
religious leadership tended to reside within selected family
groupings throughout the country and to be passed successively from
generation to generation. By the 1960s, local elites were still
composed of individuals or families who owed their status to these
same criteria. Local elites retained their position and legitimacy
well into the mid-1970s, by which time the revolutionary government
had attempted to dislodge them, often without success.
Rural social structures were tribally based, with the nomadic
and seminomadic tribesmen organized into highly segmented units, as
exemplified by the Sanusi of Cyrenaica
(see The Sanusis
, this ch.).
Originally, tribe members had been nomads, some of the beduin
tracing their origins to the Arabian Peninsula. Pride in tribal
membership remained strong, despite the fact that many nomads had
become sedentary. At the same time, tribally based social
organization, values, and world view raised formidable obstacles to
the creation of a modern nation-state, because there were virtually
no integrative or unifying institutions or social customs on the
national level.
In the mid-1970s, the nomads and seminomads who made up most of
the effective tribal population were rapidly dwindling in numbers.
Tent dwellers numbered an estimated 200,000 in 1973, less than 10
percent of the population, as compared with about 320,000 nomads in
1964. Most of them lived in the extreme north of the country.
By this time, the revolutionary government had come to look
upon tribal organization and values as antithetical to its
policies. Even Qadhafi, despite his beduin roots, viewed tribes as
anachronistic and as obstacles to modernization. Consequently, the
government sought to break the links between the rural population
and its traditional leaders by focusing attention on a new
elite--the modernizers who represented the new leadership. The
countryside was divided into zones that crossed old tribal
boundaries, combining different tribes in a common zone and
splitting tribes in a manner that weakened traditional institutions
and the force of local kinship. The ancient ascriptive
qualifications for leadership--lineage, piety, wealth--gave way to
competence and education as determined by formal examination.
Tribal leaders, however, scoffed at efforts encouraging members
to drop tribal affiliations, and pride in tribal lineage remained
strong. This was remarkable in light of the fact that many tribes
had long ago shed their beduin trappings and had become agrarian
villagers. In effect, the government had brought about the
abolition of the tribal system but not the memories of tribal
allegiance. According to a 1977 report, a survey of tribes had
found that more than three-fourths of the members canvassed were
still proud of their tribe and of their membership in it. Yet the
attitude shown was a generally mild one; there was little
opposition to the new programs and some recognition of the
government's efforts on their behalf.
The conversion of nomads into sedentary villagers was
accompanied or followed by the selective depopulation of many
villages, as a disproportionate number of men between fifteen and
forty-five left their herds, farms, and villages to seek urban
employment. Their defection was a decisive factor in a decline in
agricultural production during the 1970s. As a result, the
revolutionary government adopted a variety of measures aimed at
stemming the migration. Of particular importance was an extremely
ambitious 10-year agricultural land reclamation and farmer
resettlement scheme initiated in 1972; its aim was to reclaim 1
million hectares of land and provide farms for tens of thousands of
rural families. The hold of tradition showed in Cyrenaica, however,
where farmers chose to resettle only in projects located in their
tribal areas, where they could preserve both tribal and territorial
linkages.
Still, many of the most energetic and productive were leaving
the countryside to seek employment in cities, oil fields, or
construction work or to become settlers in the new agricultural
development schemes. In some cases entire farm villages considered
by the government to be no longer viable were abandoned and their
populations were moved elsewhere; thus, the social and political
influence of local leaders was ended forever. At the same time
modernization was coming to villages in the form of schools,
hospitals, electric lights, and other twentieth-century features.
In an increasing number of rural localities, former farm laborers
who had received titles to farms also owned a house in which
electricity, water, and modern appliances (including a radio and
perhaps a television set) made their residences almost indistin-
guishable from those of prosperous urban dwellers.
Data as of 1987
|
|