Abstract

MULET, Pascal. Relocating and setting up authority: issues about domestic units of Hight-Atlas. Etnográfica [online]. 2020, vol.24, n.3, pp.683-702. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.9427.

This article attempts to question the speeches about domestic government in agropastoral Hight-Atlas in Morocco. Based on an ethnographical research, the article questions the conditions of possibility of speeches about group cohesion symbolized by father’s authority. It aims to shed light on practices by which cohesion and authority are implemented, and to question units of analysis used by researchers. Comparison of domestic groups’ morphological characteristics or member’s practices and trajectories leads to observe that cohesion and authority are subject to tensions (and are therefore endangered). Doing so, one can see that a group (and the authority within it) is actualized by its membres’ permanent work on its social, economic and spatial characteristics, such as for instance matrimonial and residential practices, or acquisition and devolution of inheritance. This approach allows to question the “house” as an object of speeches about domestic government, within agropastoral Hight-Atlas in Morocco.

Keywords : agropastoralism; economy; kinship; territory; mobility; house.

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