Exploitation, cooperation, collusion: an enquiry into patronage

Abstract

Anthropology has become aware that its analysis of communities, no matter how small and isolated they might be, must reckon with the context of the nation-state. Many cultural phenomena that anthropologists confront on the local level thus are often seen as a reaction to and, to an extent, a consequence of the socioeconomic processes associated with the larger nation-state economy. In the Mediterranean region, patronage appears to be one of the most prominent features of any given community, because patronage resists changes engendered by the nation-state. It has been a constant target at which various anthropologists have expended their polemical ammunition. This essay examines the nature of the link between patronage and the nation-state.