Essential Readings on Morocco by Abdeslam M. Maghraoui

Essential Readings on Morocco by Abdeslam M. Maghraoui

Essential Readings on Morocco by Abdeslam M. Maghraoui

By : Abdeslam M. Maghraoui and Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI)

[The Essential Readings series is curated by the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) team at the Arab Studies Institute. MESPI invites scholars to contribute to our Essential Readings modules by submitting an “Essential Readings” list on a topic/theme pertinent to their research/specialization in Middle East studies. Authors are asked to keep the selection relatively short while providing as much representation/diversity as possible. This difficult task may ultimately leave out numerous works which merit inclusion from different vantage points. Each topic may eventually be addressed by more than one author.Articles such as this will appear permanently on www.MESPI.org and www.Jadaliyya.com. Email us at info@MESPI.org for any inquiries.]

Selecting ten books that might be considered “essential readings” in English on a traditionally Arabophone or Francophone country is by necessity an arbitrary exercise. Beyond the question of language, “essential” in what field and for what general purpose?  Is it even possible to qualify one specific work as “a must” in isolation from its extensive, multi-linguistic pedigree of intellectual production?  What I am proposing here then, is a list of essential readings, for a particular purpose, and by scholars interested in Morocco’s distinct transition to a modern polity and society. I selected books that together highlight a paradox in contemporary Morocco: the great and persistent overlap of ideas and interests between the French colonial project and the traditional power structure known as the Makhzan. It is fitting that in social science research on Morocco, regardless of language, interpretive works by hisotrians and anthropologists occupy a privileged epistemological status.  From studies of macro agrarian and urban systems to examinations of micro religious and social interactions, the works below tell stories of people, institutions, cultures, and spaces trapped in the sordid colonial-Makhzan nexus. Envisioned as a set of intersecting topics across fields and disparate epochs, the books converge nonetheless on a commitment to unpack and scrutinize connections to the colonial era that still affect daily lives today.

Abdallah Laroui, The History of the Maghreb: An Interpretive Essay.  Translated by Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)

Although this seminal work is about the entire Maghreb, Laroui’s treatment of Morocco merits special attention.  In Morocco, Laroui’s study of pre-colonial social formations – along with Abdelkebir Khatibi’s treatment of language and culture or Muhammad Abid Al-Jabiri’s examination of faith, reason, and ideology - was the first to problematize the application of Western conceptual categories to explain Morocco’s political and historical trajectory. Contrary to French ethnography and historiography, Laroui argues that the Makhzan was not simply a despotic authority.  Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Laroui shows that the Makhzan functioned as a multi-layered structure of power with semi-autonomous actors who could at moments seal a Sultan’s destiny and weigh in on dynastic succession. The colonial modernization of the army and administration augmented the Sultan’s powers and reduced the impetus to compromise. 

Robin Bidwell, Morocco under Colonial Rule: French Administration of Tribal Areas, 1912-1956 (London: F. Cass, 1973)

From a quite a different angle but equally revealing for our purpose, Robin Bidwell’s book examines the conquest strategy of Marshal Lyautey, Morocco’s first and legendary résident-général (1912-1925). The book clearly says more about French colonial designs in Morocco than about the Makhzan. In fact, Bidwell reproduces uncritically the same colonial categories and clichés about Moroccan society. Still, the book documents meticulously Lyautey’s imperial policies, personnel profile, and institutions of managing people, territory, and development – strikingly similar to those that inform the Monarchy’s today.  The conservative Makhzan, like Lyautey’s imperial administration, owes its endurance to a balanced dose of force, surveillance, pacification, technocracy, and elites’ cooptation.

 Edmund Burke III, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of a Moroccan Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014)

Perhaps the most pertinent book in this topical list on Morocco is Edmund Burke III’s The Ethnographic State.  An astute historian of pre-colonial and colonial Morocco, Burke takes aim at the very foundation of monarchical legitimacy: the notion of a distinct and coherent Moroccan Islam. Drawing on an extensive corpus of Moroccan colonial archives, Burke connects the French ethnographers’ fixation with inventing a “Moroccan Islam” to French domestic preoccupations with religion as much as to a justification for colonial conquest. But this invention proved resilient in postcolonial Morocco as it reinvogoriated the Makhzan’s religious claims and continued to dominate Moroccan political discourse. 

Henry Munson Jr., Religion and Power in Morocco (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993)

Also interrogating the notion of a “Moroccan Islam,” dominant in Amercian anthropology since Clifford Geertz’ Islam Observed (1968), Henry Munson takes aim at the Makhzan’s religious legitimacy myth across centuries.  An anthropologist, Munson “ventures” successfuly into historians’ territory armed with textual evidence and critical reading of oral traditions. Munson goes over a series of complex conflicts and tensions in Moroccan history to conclude (with King Hassan’s rule) that fear and violence has progressively replaced sacred religious status as the sources of dynastic continuity. 

John Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elites, a Study in Segmented Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970)

John Waterbury’s study of the relationship between the monarchy and Morocco’s elites is the most important work on contemporary Moroccan politics. The relevance of the book almost a half-century after its first publication, speaks to its great theoretical insight and predictive power.  Waterbury describes and analyzes an enthralling social world of intimate, volatile, anxious, and profit-seeking family, political, tribal, and professional networks. More often than not, the political elites, whose norms and behavior Waterbury studies, reveal connections that fermented during the colonial era in colonial institutions.      

William Hartman, ed., The Political Economy of Morocco (New York: Praeger, 1987)

Although this is an edited volume, its different parts and chapters read like a single coherent thesis on the monarchy’s early “hostile takeover” of the most profitable sectors of the Moroccan economy.  During the last few years, a number of books have scrutinized what some call the “makhzanization” of economic activity and its linkages to the former colony (most recently, for example, Omar Brousky, La République de sa Majesté: France-Maroc liaisons dangereuses, 2017). But the takeover began much earlier and the rationale goes beyond wealth accumulation.  The Political Economy of Morocco traces the genesis of the “economic Makhzan” as well as its political underpinnings. 

Will D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912-1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987)

Beyond religious claims, elites-focused politics, and a closed economy, the imprint of the French colonial vision and its enthusiastic application by the modern monarchy spans several social sectors. One of the most remarkable legacies of colonial rule in Morocco is the folly of investing in grandiose capital-intensive farming at the expense of the traditional agrarian sector that provided food and employment to a great majority of Moroccans. In this book, Swearingen documents and anticipates the disastrous social fallouts the colonial-Makhzan agrarian scheme would have on Moroccan economy and people.

Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); Kenneth L. Brown, The People of Salé (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976)

With similar concerns, urban sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod and separately anthropologist Kenneth Brown investigate in these books the connection between French urban planning and social segregation in Moroccan cities. Lughod argues that colonial urban policies established social and spatial cleavages along class and ethnic lines that future Moroccan planners adopted.  The continuing trend resulted in housing shortages, unaffordable housing, shantytowns, and social exclusion. Brown examines how key aspects of Salé’s urban space, demographics, cultural life, and family networks were transformed by the colonial encounter. He notes that the transformations of the city maily benefited the great families who moved to the European quarters for better schools and social status.

David A. McMurray, In and Out of Morocco: Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001)

Morocco’s extensive connectivity to France and Europe in general provides a political safety valve for the Makhzan and a social opportunity for young Moroccans abandoned by their native country. This theoretically sophisticated and ethnographically rich book examines how the daily lives of Moroccans on Europe’s frontiers are affected by rapidly changing consumption habits, smuggling products, and the hope of leaving their homeland one day.

Education in the Time of Virality

Widespread access to the internet has facilitated means of acquiring news and information at rates unseen in earlier eras. As individuals, we have the ability to post and spread political information, social commentary, and other thoughts at will. This has caused an information overload for users of social networking sites. In a fight for views, reposts, and clicks, creators, both corporate and not, have been forced to develop new tactics to inform their audiences. This response to a new mode of information consumption also forces a reconsideration of how we understand knowledge production. Much of the information put forth into the world is absorbed passively, such as through characters’ storylines in books, films, and television - and this information accumulates over a lifetime. What, then, happens when knowledge is actively consumed (as is done when reading, watching, or listening to news stories), but the manner through which the information is presented still conforms to the brevity generally associated with more passive knowledge intake?

Pew Research estimates that over 70% of Americans use their phone to read the news. This is nearly a 25% increase since 2013. The constant barrage of advertisements in online articles does not make consuming news easy to do on a phone, thereby forcing media outlets and their competitors to change and adopt new tactics. Applications such as Flipboard have tried to mitigate these frustrations by simply providing the full article without the ads on their own platform, but many people still turn to sources like The Skimm. In attempting to distill a day’s worth of news coverage on domestic affairs, foreign affairs, pop culture, and sports into a few quips, undeniably both texture and nuance are lost. To compete with these services, CNN, the New York Times, and other mainstream news sources are doing the same and producing articles that give the, “Top 5 News Moments to Start Your Day,” or a, “Daily Brief.” Of course, looking at the language differences between the New York Times daily summary versus The Skimm’s, one can tell which is a more comprehensive news source. Even so, slashing the word count still takes a toll on clearly informing the public. The question then becomes, after quickly skimming through these summaries, are people doing more readings to cover what was lost? Or has “the brief” become the new standard for knowledge production and awareness?

It is more than likely that a significant portion of The Skimm’s subscribers do go on to read the full article linked in the email, but the growing popularity of similarly quick and fast news sources has had an impact on how much information viewers and readers actually understand. Between 2011 and 2014, The Skimm was founded, along with AJ+, Now This, Upworthy, and BuzzFeed News’ more serious journalism section. Undeniably, all of these sources produce and publish very important information, and make this information accessible to a larger audience. However, their production and marketing strategies hinge upon condensing very nuanced topics into videos that are, on average, only seven minutes long, as well as optimizing their materials for social media audiences. Now, it is ridiculous to expect highly textured and complicated issues to be thoroughly represented in these videos or posts. Even research based texts do not touch upon all of the complexities of a topic. The problems arise when looking at how viewers perceive themselves and their level of knowledge after actively searching out the products of, for example, AJ+ and Buzzfeed, for information. Carefully refining their materials to fit the shortened attention span of people scrolling through Facebook, social media news organizations have found their niche audience. Their products provide a simple way to deliver information to those who want gather knowledge on the “hot topics of today,” but do not what to do the leg work to be truly informed. These videos are spread throughout Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in a manner that says, “Watch this, and you will know what is going on in the world.”

Understanding how information is being pushed out into the world is almost as important as the content of the information. None of these outlets claim to provide comprehensive knowledge, but in being popular sites for information, the question becomes: do they have a responsibility to encourage their viewers to continue to inform themselves about these issues? Having a well-informed society is phenomenal, but if in informing society we are also forever altering how we consume knowledge to favor brevity over nuance, what consequences could come with this change? We must ensure that the consumption of these videos does not become a license for people to see themselves as truly informed and thus appropriate for them to take the microphones at protests and speak over those who have a solid and textured understanding of the issues. Information content is incredibly important, as is spreading knowledge, and AJ+, Now This, and the like have become important role models in showing how issues should be accessible to everyone and not clouted in jargon. But we must simultaneously consider the unintended side effects that these styles of videos have on knowledge production. Ultimately, it is a mutual effort. Just as producers must be watchful of their content and method of dissemination, we as consumers must be mindful of how we digest and understand the news we take in.


[This article was published originally Tadween`s Al-Diwan blog by Diwan`s editor, Mekarem Eljamal.]