Making a Living on and off the Land

Abstract

This chapter investigates the profound transformation in the meaning and practice of labor — on and off the land — over the previous half century as the Moroccan southeast was integrated into capitalist markets. The chapter takes the personal experiences of work, familial ties, and social change as a window into the profound transformation in the meaning and practice of labor in the Mgoun Valley. It then links an ethnography of work to agrarian practice, tracing how new labor relations simultaneously transformed and sustained the social reciprocity that undergirded moral economies in the valley. The chapter presents a snapshot of the transformations in livelihoods and agriculture through the initially deceptive results of the author's household survey. It also discusses the exclusions produced by the communal orientations that framed both agriculture and wage labor, from the gendered experience of work to the marginalization of households without access to certain kinds of labor.