Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 84)

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Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation (ص 84)

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and adopted a communal system of cultivation whereby they could defend
themselves as a community against the raids (Firestone,1975).
Firestone's geographical reasoning was, how@ver, rejected by other
writers, who argued that geograpny alone cannot explain a particular
form of production. Instead, it is suggested (Owen, 1981) that one
should look at the structure of production in that region in order to
find out why it, in particular, developed the Musha'a form. An
examination of the structure of production in the Marj suggests that
an important reason for the emergence of Musha'a there lay in th2 mode
of cultivation employed in the area. The predominant crop produced in
the Marj was cereal. Peasants relying heavily on this type of crop
were often in need of places for storage, of water when rain fall was
Short as well as other supplementary requirements such as grazing land
and grain mills. In the absence of private property in this area, it
{4s logical to conclude that the peasants would adopt a collective
system whereby all of them could gain access to such facilities. The
Musha'ta, in other words, can be seen as a supplementary source of
income employed by peasants in grain-producing areas.
Nevertheless, despite its presence in this area, Musha'a in the
Marj never stood as an obstacle to the regions's development. On the
contrary, when objective conditions for the development of capitalism
ripened, the Marj was the first, after the Maritime Plain, to develop
capitalist forms of production.
To sum up, production relations on Amiri land, including the land
use 9£ the Matruka category, were to a large extent organized around
the village commune, with the head of the village/Hamula assuming full
responsibility over the distribution of land and the collection of
70
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Colonial Capitalism and Rural Class Formation

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Nahla Abdo-Zubi

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