The Invention of the Moroccan 'Terres Collectives,' or the Retardation of a Rural Society

Abstract

"At the beginning of the French Protectorate in Morocco, jurists thought they had discovered farming groups bearing the same archaic features of what they thought to be collective property. They elaborated a new legal creation, a distinct land category endowed with a special legal statute, named 'Collective Land.'

"There were three phrases in the creating of that standard legal and sociological ideal: (1) the wording of the organizational 'pattern' of collective lands combining the main archaic features of exotic societies according to social sciences at that time; (2) legal protection effective through land statutes that made lands inalienable; and (3) an attempt to make these communities traditional through a 'sharing regulation' which gave uniform and equal access to the land.

"This process of institutional creation illustrates what Bourdieu calls 'juridism,' i.e. an analysis pattern confusing norms and habits. Thus, the bled jmaa farmers had a great variety of farming practices and there were various levels of legitimacy. It is clearly an example of 'anthropological objectivism,' i.e. crediting reality with assumptions which belong to a pattern initially built to describe reality.

"The consequences of such a creation were that: community lands were rather well protected, at least against private occupation; the will to maintain 'traditional institutions' within communities previously able to evolve and adapt led them to crystallization and crisis; and today, these farmers are very individualistic and they clearly long for private property.

"This example should be reflected in order to avoid locking agents into supposed rules, to be able to offer them an open cooperation and to allow them to keep their full adaptation abilities."