Political Pluralism, Local Politics, and the State

This chapter expands the account of rural political life to detail how state involvement in the valley sustained political pluralism as a central feature of local politics and social mobilizations. The chapter tracks how the colonial history of indirect rule shaped contemporary state strategies for asserting authority in marginalized rural zones. These strategies buttressed land and communal identity as the basis for rural governance and collective action. Although implanting a territorializing modern state in Morocco certainly involved dismantling many aspects of communal governance, the chapter then argues that state actors often seemed as invested as many nonstate actors in preserving the political pluralism of the rural southeast, including nonstate forms of communal authority. Ultimately, the chapter details how after independence in 1956, the practice of cultivating heterogeneity continued to inform state strategies for control and shaped the quotidian political life.