As Nomadism Ends

The Israeli Bedouin Of The Negev

Avinoam Meir

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429711121
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

As pastoral nomads become settled, they face social, spatial, and ecological change in the shift from herding to farming, toward integration into the market economy. This book analyzes the socio-spatial changes that follow the end of nomadism, especially in the unique case of the Bedouin of the Negev. The culture of the Negev Bedouin stands in shar

1
Introduction

This book is concerned with processes of change among pastoral nomads as they sedentarize and shift away from the pastoral production process. It takes a subsistence-oriented society, which is highly marginal to the market economy and urban systems—although maintaining some symbiosis with them—and follows its various phases of development and change to the other extreme of these systems. The socioeconomic and geographical range of this continuum is extremely wide, and the effects of the transition upon this society may be highly substantial. Many pastoral nomadic societies have gone through this transformation in recent history. Others, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, are presently in the midst of such a process. In many cases it has been spontaneous, taking place along a time span that has been sufficiently long for these societies to adapt to its consequences.

Yet, the process has not always been voluntary and spontaneous nor has it been always eased by the passage of time. The closer we approach the present, the more evidence is available to suggest that this transition of pastoral nomadic societies is increasingly constrained by the temporal dimension and by the extent of external intervention. Such constraints have often applied considerable pressures to the nomadic pastoralists, hampering their ability to adapt smoothly to these changes. Scientists from a range of social and natural science disciplines have recently begun to investigate how this adaptation can be facilitated and this awakening of scientific interest attests to the degree of stress which pastoral nomads are experiencing worldwide.

The process of sedentarization of pastoral nomads is essentially one of spatial and ecological change. This change is manifested not only in settlement in fixed locations. More significantly, it involves a shift away from a pastoral mode of production towards agropastoralism and farming, often associated with integration into the market economy, and perhaps also subsequently into the urban labor market. Following sedentarization and settlement, however, structural sociospatial changes ensue, and these are the focus of this book. Its objective, therefore, is twofold: first, to analyze these processes as they take place in general among pastoral nomadic societies so that a general conceptual framework is put together; second, to examine the particular case of the Bedouin society of southern Israel in light of this framework so as to provide relevant input.

The Bedouin of the Negev, the semiarid desert of southern Israel, began their trek along the continuum from nomadism to urbanism in the early nineteenth century, and have proceeded at a particularly high pace in the past half century. Studies undertaken in recent years have focused primarily on the Bedouin’s traditional pastoral mode of living and on processes of sedentarization and even semiurbanization. The perspective adopted by most studies has been idiosyncratic, with relatively little consideration given to the context of pastoral nomadism in general. Furthermore, most studies have concentrated on sedentarization and the ensuing semiurbanization, resulting from previous political, economic, and geographical processes, as their main objective. Consequently, they have overlooked significant dimensions of contemporary processes that have taken place within this society.

This book explores these processes from a different perspective. Its approach centers on two principal assumptions. The first assumption is based on the notion that processes taking place within a system assume roles of both cause and effect simultaneously. In other words, processes of sedentarization and the shift away from pastoralism are consequences of ecological (i.e., economic, social, or political) processes. Yet, subsequently, the resultant processes of sedentarization and the shift away from pastoralism themselves become generators of change in similar areas within the now denomadizing pastoral society. Hence, the major focus of the present book is the processes that occur as nomadism ends rather than those causing the end of nomadism.

The second assumption on which this book is based relates to the general and specific contexts. The international literature provides abundant evidence of change among pastoral nomads from which some generalized dimensions, relevant for explaining the processes specific to the Bedouin of the Negev, may be extracted. Yet, in most cases, the Third World cultural context within which pastoral nomads are usually embedded does not differ significantly from their own context except insofar as their mode of livelihood is concerned. In contrast, the westernized modern and perhaps post-modern urban-industrial cultural milieu within which the Israeli Negev Bedouin are situated is diametrically different from the cultural context of the Third World. Furthermore, the Bedouin of Israel are an Arab Muslim minority situated within a Jewish state which, until very recently, was embroiled in political conflict with the surrounding Arab world.

Thus, the case of the Negev Bedouin is a unique situation for pastoral nomads, particularly Bedouin in the Middle East. The degree of “subcultureness” and the extent of the cultural, social, and political gaps between them and the larger Israeli society is considerably more radical than that experienced by their kinsmen in most Middle Eastern countries. Such a gap is likely to generate conflicting forces that can drive change in different directions to those taken by similar societies elsewhere. However, it also provides a wide array of hypotheses to explain processes at work within this particular society. This is the second and major focus of the book: highlighting the uniqueness of the Bedouin society of the Negev within the general scope of the sociospatial processes following on the end of pastoral nomadism.

In order to clarify first the general scope of these processes, an extensive conceptual framework is provided in Chapter 2, which accounts for the possible sociospatial changes following the process of sedentarization. This framework attempts to extract from the vast international literature the relevant general dimensions concerning these processes among pastoral nomads in the Middle East and Africa. The purpose is to tie the major issues of sociospatial change with which this book is concerned into a coherent construct. This framework is anchored in the assumption that the processes of sedentarization and settlement expose pastoral nomads more intensely to avenues that bring them closer to social modernization and economic development. One key process ushers in all the processes with which this book is concerned regardless of whether they originate in external pressure, internal adaptation, and response, or both. This process is the ideological shift of members of the pastoral nomadic society away from tribalism towards individualism. As a result, individuals within the sedentarizing pastoral nomadic society gradually become independent of the particular social bonds that commit them to the traditional social organization. Instead, they are motivated increasingly by their newer, more personal, complex, and varied value-system.

This ideological change entails several sociospatial processes and issues. The major ones with which this book is concerned are successively interrelated and progress from the micro to the macro scale. These are territoriality, demographic change, social wellbeing, and conflict with the state. The issue of territorial behavior is perhaps the earliest manifestation of these processes. The tendency of pastoral nomadic societies toward territorial behavior is, in principle, rather weak. Abandonment of pastoralism and a concomitant shift toward farming, and perhaps even further toward integration in the urban-industrial labor market, carries with it a growing tendency toward territoriality. This tendency filters down from the tribal level to the individual, household level. The implication is that pastoral resources (land and water)—which were previously managed on a tribal basis—become privatized and are managed on a household level. Although this is the major manifestation of territoriality, there are others, for example, sociospatial separation between small subgroups.

The next relevant concern is the issue of demographic patterns, particularly fertility behavior. Pastoral—and now also agricultural and perhaps labor-market—resources become the concern of the individual household or even of the extended family. The rationale underlying fertility behavior may begin to change accordingly. In general, although the direct result may be lower fertility, there is still the possibility of an interim period of increased fertility before lower fertility becomes manifest. Pressures for a higher standard of living and improved literacy and education evolve through exposure to structures of social modernization and economic development. When this happens, the pressure for continued decline of fertility is reinforced.

This process ushers in the issue of social wellbeing, which is related to the changing roles and status of individuals within the family and community. On the one hand, there is a decline in the role of children as producers of resources and an increase in their role as consumers of resources. On the other hand, the status of elderly men declines as they lose their control over family resources. Women are also caught within the dialectics of this process. The critical notion here is that—once the roles and status of these individuals change in the complex course of social transformation—the society begins to lose traditional social institutions and structures, whose communal role was to provide for the wellbeing of its individual members.

With the deterioration of traditional institutions and modes of providing for wellbeing of members of the group, alternative ones are sought. Within the context of the modern state, public social services (education, health, and welfare), may begin to fill the void, transforming gradually the postnomadic society into a public service-dependent society. From the perspective of the state this could be regarded as a step toward its centripetal integration. From the formerly nomadic society’s perspective, this may signify the beginning of a political conflict with the state over maintaining its traditional centrifugal tendencies that stem from its nomadic ideology.

This is, of course, only a sketchy description of complex processes. The purpose of Chapter 2 is therefore to discuss each of these four dimensions (i.e., territoriality, demographic transition, social wellbeing, and conflict with the state) in depth within a coherent conceptual construct and thus to serve as a framework for the discussion of processes taking place within the Bedouin society of the Negev.

In modern times the Bedouin society evolved within three different political contexts: the Ottoman Empire (until the end of World War I), the British Mandate over Palestine (until 1947), and the State of Israel (since 1948). Each of these political contexts had its own impact upon the gradual denomadization of the Bedouin. However, there were also forces beyond the political sphere—primarily economic ones at the local and regional levels—that contributed to the drive toward sedentarization. Yet, in macro-historical terms this process, which commenced in the early nineteenth century, assumed two major stages. Until the formation of the State of Israel in 1948, early stages of transformation of Bedouin society were largely a consequence of Bedouin choice. More advanced stages under the state of Israel were largely compulsive and took place within a relatively shorter time span. Thus, unlike other observers who refer to sedentarization of the Bedouin in the Negev during the 1950s and 1960s as spontaneous, I maintain that genuine spontaneity and voluntariness of this process were manifested only in earlier periods.

From a Bedouin perspective, the change in political contexts reflects not just a change in political regime (in itself significant). It has also entailed a shift in cultural orientation away from the Arab culture of the Middle East toward a more modern Western culture. In addition to this shift across cultural frontier lines, the shift at the local level took place within the context of a settlement frontier. Settlement within the frontier between the desert and the sown in the Negev was not the sole prerogative of the sedentarizing Bedouin. Early attempts in modern times to transform the edge of the Negev desert into a settlement frontier had already begun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. However, major settlement of outsiders in this region begun only with Jewish Zionist settlement in the 1920s and 1930s and was intensified during the 1940s and 1950s. During this period the region became an arena for competition over land resources and for an encounter between the two cultures. It is here that the major roots of exposure to modernization and development can be found.

Chapter 3 analyzes this initial encounter between the two cultures. It illustrates the change in the nature of the encounter and its impact upon the production of space and the path of development taken by the Bedouin. The main thesis is that the frontier encounter between the Bedouin and the Jewish settlers went through two major stages: a voluntary, symbiotic, and relatively peaceful encounter followed by a compulsive, coercive, conflictive, and relatively violent one. The divide line between these stages is the intervention of state and other core political forces (Jewish and Arab alike) in local affairs. The change in the nature of the frontier encounter is considered the major catalyst of the processes to be analyzed in the chapters that follow.

Yet social and economic changes did not commence only upon this frontier encounter. As noted above, the drive toward sedentarization and toward shifting away from pastoralism began about a century earlier. Therefore, some of the sociospatial consequences of these processes began to manifest themselves earlier too. Chapter 4 discusses the gradual transformation of Bedouin society from a nonterritorial to a territorial one. Obviously, these are ideal types along the nomadism-sedentarism-urbanism continuum (which is itself an ideal construct). Nonetheless, the Bedouin of the nineteenth century Negev desert were beginning to shift away from nomadic pastoralism and thus also from nonterritoriality. More specifically, when the society was still nomadic, social relations shaped spatial ones, and therefore territoriality was not as necessary a strategy for its spatial organization. As the society became sedentarized and shifted gradually away from pastoral to agropastoral engagements, the need for territoriality increased in order to reshape social relations. The process of territoriality is thus highly dependent upon that of sedentarization and settlement but is also related to the growing exposure to modern value systems within the settlement frontier. This process is consistent with the notion concerning the gradual ideological shift from tribalism to individualism.

The shift toward territoriality is manifested in various ways. First, there has been a trickling-down of forms of privatization of tribal pastoral and agricultural resources (pasture, land, and water) from the tribal to the extended and nuclear family levels. The process was initiated voluntarily but later became unavoidable. Second, within the semiurban environment, there has been a process of “privatization” of space per se in the form of spatial segregation between various subgroups. Again, this process has trickled down from the tribal to the extended and nuclear family levels. It is argued that the present phase of settlement in the form of semiurban towns—itself achieved by the state with much difficulty—would not have easily occurred had prior territorialization not taken place. This process is examined within the framework of the nomadismsedentarism-urbanism continuum. Analysis begins on the eve of sedentarization in the early nineteenth century, continues through embryonic sedentarization during the late Ottoman Empire and then goes on to more advanced stages during the British Mandate, eventually ending with the semiurban stage under the Israeli state.

The gradual shift from tribalism to individualism is reflected even more acutely in the demographic regime of the Bedouin society as its mode of living is transformed. Chapter 5 has four objectives: (1) to describe the process of demographic transition within Bedouin society at the macro level; (2) to analyze the process of change in infant and child mortality; (3) to explore fertility behavior at the micro, household level, and; (4) to discuss the eventuality of an emerging aging process of the Bedouin population. Emphasis is given to the most recent five decades as this is the period of the most significant demographic transformation.

The macro process of demographic transition among the Bedouin of the Negev contains an element that is unique to sedentarizing pastoral nomads. In terms of mortality, the Bedouin rate, at least since the early 1950s, has declined persistently, consistent with the pattern characteristic of western societies. Unlike the latter, however, birth rates increased from a moderate to an extremely high level in the early 1970s, and only then begun to decline. This tendency of the Bedouin to adopt demographic patterns that gradually approach those of more developed Western societies is what sets them off from the pastoral nomadic context of the Third World. The analysis shows the macro processes of sedentarization and semiurbanization to be the overriding explanatory factor in this unique process.

The macro demographic transition process reflects an accumulation of more specific demographic processes. The methodological approach adopted to analyze these and some of the other processes discussed in this book is based on the concept of nomadism-sedentarism-urbanism continuum. This concept assumes that from spatial, economic, social, and often ethnic perspectives, a pastoral nomadic society differs from a sedentarized one. With sedentarization, however, a continuum emerges gradually along which the society may now become stretched and which may eventually reach from nomadism via rural sedentarism to urbanism. This continuum contains socioeconomic and spatial dimensions that can be regarded as stages in development. True, postulating a continuum with entirely distinct stages or phases violates reality as there are no ideal types. Nevertheless, for analytical purposes, it is assumed that these stages can be regarded as distinct throughout the process of change. The method will involve primarily a crosssectional analysis of processes within Bedouin society across the nomadism-sedentarism-urbanism continuum.

At the micro or household level, child mortality—a well-known indicator of change and development—is analyzed first. The analysis will demonstrate the unique pattern of this process not only among the Bedouin but also among sedentarizing pastoralists in general. It thus adds a further dimension to theoretical knowledge on child and infant mortality within societies in transition. This analysis is followed by that of fertility behavior. This is the most significant demographic issue from the perspective of individualization in terms of changing values and behavioral norms. The key to understanding fertility behavior is analysis of changes in fertility rationality as they relate to the notion of ideal family size. There are two major effects: a considerable decline in infant mortality rates, but primarily the diversification of norms due to the processes of individualization of the nuclear family. The latter is itself a consequence of processes that are discussed in previous chapters, including economic development and emergence of western economic rationality. It is argued that the combination of these effects results in an emergence of a latent surplus of children. This in turn leads to changing norms of the desired number of children at the family level and thus to changing fertility behavior. The final issue is that of elders. Its discussion will reveal another indicator of the general demographic change within Bedouin society, namely, an onset of an aging process of this population and a relative and absolute increase of the elderly population.

The geographical and demographic processes outlined above entail social implications that are related to the issue of status and wellbeing of individuals within this society. This is the concern of Chapter 6. The dynamics of mortality—but more significantly of fertility rationality and behavior—bring to the fore the issue of the changing value and status of children within the household economy from producers to consumers of household resources. This process is an outcome of the loss of agropastoral opportunities on the one hand and the introduction of modern schooling and education on the other. This generates a dilemma with regard to children’s contribution to the family resource production process and therefore their status and wellbeing. The same processes, in conjunction with that of demographic aging, have also raised the issue of the changing status and wellbeing of elderly men and women. In these processes, within the complex course of sociospatial transformation, the special and central economic and sociopolitical roles assigned traditionally to these individuals, which previously guaranteed their status and wellbeing, have changed quite considerably as the Bedouin society has begun to lose its traditional communal social institutions and mechanisms that previously provided for the wellbeing of its members. Special ...