Clifford Geertz on Morocco's Suq

April 7, 2006

A memorable, if maddening, aspect of visiting the Middle East is the constant need to barter. Everything, from a taxi ride to a shirt to a sandwich, is subject to negotiation. As a westerner that means the sellers size you up and quote a price they believe you could pay.. not the price that would be expected from the last person who walked out the door. A visitor must mentally store up a spreadsheet of past prices in order to distinguish between the reasonable and unreasonable.

This past week I had the students in my Islam and Africa class read an article by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, “Suq: the bazaar economy in Sefrou.” (Sefrou is a small city a little ways south of Fez in Morocco.) The article brought together a couple of points that had existed separately in my mind. First, after the initial burst of conquering Islam spread primarily along commercial routes. When we imagine Christianity in Africa, the first image that comes to mind is that of a missionary. If we want to imagine Islam, this is the wrong image.. as the figure should instead be a merchant. Second, the experience of the Middle East—as a visitor—is dominated by the experience of bartering. This is not simply a result of poverty (as I might have said after my first trip to Morocco), but an integral part of a cultural system. Geertz provides examples as to how specific religious institutions such as the habus and zawia help to support the bazaar economy. The upshot of these two points is my realization that the market is not simply a fascinating part of a trip to the Middle East, but an important aspect of a distinctively Islamic culture.

The difficulty in bartering is always that one has no idea how much something is really worth. What was the price for this item for the last customer in the shop? My rule of thumb is to low ball as much as I dare, to gauge the response of the merchant. But I never know for sure the location of that invisible line that represents the lowest possible price for the merchant.. the point below which the merchant will actually lose money. Geertz describes exactly this feeling of helplessness in regards to so many important facts:

The search for information—laborious, uncertain, complex, and irregular—is the central experience of life in the bazaar, an enfolding reality its institutions at once create and respond to. Virtually every aspect of the bazaar economy reflects the fact that the primary problem facing the farmer, artisan, merchant, or consumer is not balancing options, but finding out what they are. [125]

In other words, I am not the only person feeling a lack of information. This is the central fact of a bazaar economy.

Compare this to our own economy in which information is often the least of our problems. I can get on the internet and find sample prices for a computer or car or jacket.. so that I know I am in the ballgame when I shop.. Books come with a suggested retail price on the inner label. Various stores run advertisements that list their prices. Success in our economy comes from outdoing your competitors in terms of price.. which means lowering your own overhead or shipping costs to the point that you can advertise your own bargain-basement prices.

Why is it that anthropologists have an easier time with comparative work than textual scholars? Geertz writes:

As a social institution, and even more as an economic type, [the bazaar] shares fundamental similarities with the Chinese, the Haitian, the Indonesian, the Yoruban, the Indian, the Guatemalan, the Mexican, and the Egyptian—to choose only some of the better described cases. But as a cultural expression, it has a character properly its own. And one of the advantages of looking in depth at so particular a case as Sefrou is that it is possible thereby to discern something of what that character is: what is Moroccan about Moroccan commerce, and what difference it makes. [140]

Granted, his goal is to describe this particular case of a market.. not just a Moroccan market, but the market in the town of Sefrou. But it is obvious from this paragraph (and in other references throughout the essay) that Geertz would not dream of speaking at length about what is unique to this market without knowing a lot about other markets.

For textual scholars it is a different matter altogether. It is common to go through a graduate program focusing on one national tradition. What scholars of Chinese or Greek or Persian traditions have written about a problem is rarely invoked. unless that is one’s particular field of study. To introduce a text from another culture demands an instant disclaimer, to the effect of “ahem, yes, this is a bit different of a case, but it is nevertheless interesting for the comparative light it throws on a particular detail that I am examining..” My sense, however, is that scholars in individual traditions are hurt by this lack of confidence in the admissibility of comparative leaps.

My future project on Arabic descriptions of cities is a case in point. As I survey literature on cities, I am struck by books coming from the field of anthropology which examine the city and its history in a comparative fashion. And that makes sense. People need food, water, shelter.. they need space for social institutions such as the family and government.. they need security from outside forces. Since every human city, from ancient Ur to modern Los Angeles, must deal effectively with such universal needs, it makes sense that they would also share many features.. and be liable to comparative approaches. If I am studying various attempts at setting down a city on paper.. through writing its history and describing its institutions and topography.. would it not make sense to examine the way other cultures have gone about that same textual process? I think so, but this would not be a standard way of examining a body of texts from a particular cultural tradition. And in many quarters it would call for a disclaimer..