“The Voices of Marrakesh”

and others, I have embarked upon the anthropological case studies. Lawrence Rosen did field work in Sefrou in the 60’s and 70’s - and I thought he would give me some glimpses behind the scenes of the souks and the walled houses. I borrowed from the library “Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community” and was fascinated by his account of how the Sefrawi (people from Sefrou) construct their social identities through constant bargaining for reality.

I believe we all do - bargain for reality - very few people have fixed orbits from birth. However, the role of the language and context in fixing your identity, and the absence of questions to your inner qualities as an individual, was revealing and Rosen made some of my own observations fall into place.

Two reflections, which are partly conflicting (?):

1. Lawrence Rosen draws a picture of people that are very “different from us”: You are your relations and your deeds, and you are in a constant struggle to re-negotiate these relations with the use of a language that gives you some fixed categories (relations, origin, lust, reason, etc.). These categories are spun into the rich semantic web (!) of the Arabic language that gives you the tools you need to keep on bargaining for every reality you can think of. Fixed and fluid at the same time. (Did you know that the fundamental unit of Arabic language is constructed as a group of consonants, usually three in number. You can take this word root or “consonant shell” and by tracing it through a variety of inflections and transmutations, capture the semantic realm of the word. All the word meanings play in the background when you for example discuss the fitna: chaos, discord, civil strife. Among the root meanings are “to tempt”, “seduce”, “entice” or “enthrall”… Guess which sex is associated with chaos!)

In this setting the individual is a very different being from the self promoting Western personality with his or her privatized value system.

We are used to think of the Moroccan society as traditional, in contrast to our modern or post modern society.

2. However, after having read this study I am not so sure any more.

For the Cristian West, intent became the primary concern, consequence a secondary factor. In Islam, intent and consequence were inseparable and knowledge of the latter gave one direct insight into the former.

This has bearing on the construction of social reality. And then we are, at last, coming to my search for a solid methodological base for my Mind the Gap research. Rosen discribes the Moroccans he meets in Sefrou as “Homo Contextus: Situating Actors in the World”. Sound familiar? There is more:

The individual is the embodiment of contextualized features. You get access to a person’s character and mind through accounts of the person’s actions. When you describe a person, you do not explain his feelings and intentions. You explain his (!) actions and contexts.

Rosen states that the interplay of context and person is “nowhere (..) shown with more clarity than in the way the people of Morocco narrate accounts of action and event.”

As one listens to Moroccan narrative accounts, three characteristics stand out: (1) that people are known by their actions - thus an account of what people say or do, rather than what lies within them, is the fullest and most coherent form of describing them; (2) that the perspective sought is that of the reliable witness, to whom a privileged viewpoint is necessarily accorded; and (3) that since individuals can be know by the contexts in which they are placed rather than by any development they undergo, time is of secondary importance to the revelation of more or less invariant character through more often than not changing circumstances.

I think the gist of Discourse Analysis is captured here. Social construction is epistemic: “it is about the constructive nature of descriptions, rather than of the entities that (according to descriptions) exist beyond them” (Edwards, 1997) The Discursive Action Model is not interested in what people meant, felt, thought, intended in the bottom of their hearts. The discourse analyst asks for actions in discourse, looks at facts and interests and the way the facts are produced (ref. the Moroccan narratives), and agency and personal accountability is attended to through a discursive practice, e.g. through the action of blaming and exoneration. (Oh yeah, the “reliable witness” in the Islam tradition).

In retrospect, is it so that Lawrence Rosen has revealed the true nature of the Moroccan people as being the cultural embodiment of post modern and post positivist discourse analyst practice? Or is it more that Rosen has chosen that theoretical position himself and has used that lens to study his North African “tribe”, just to find what he was looking for? As we all do….