Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism

As a foreigner living in Morocco, this book explained behavior which I had not previously been able to understand. For example, I have witnessed employees (even in tears) who were poorly treated by their superiors, who after promotions in subsequent years, turned right around and treated their new underlings even worse. Why would they do this? I have witnessed several husbands transform from friendly, open-minded young men, into angry, dissatisfied tyrants within the family setting. Why this odd transformation? I have witnessed people of many different ages be verbally abused by people who are older, only to witness them turn around and behave the same way to people who are younger. I have witnessed people in businesses, who instead of being helpful to each other, working together ans a team and sharing information in order for the business to run smoothly for the benefit of all, are working against each other, seemingly in competition, obstructing the flow of information and backstabbing each other. Again, why?This book really helped me to understand all of this behavior, through reading "between the lines" and comparing it with my own experiences in Morocco. The book is actually about the topic of why Islamic societies all seem to end up with authoritarian forms of government, and looks at Morocco as a microcosm of this larger question.However, this book is most definitely not for the casual reader. It uses a difficult vocabulary and some of the concepts are obscure to the casual reader. Nevertheless, it goes into great detail about Moroccan history in three phases: traditional authoritarian practices in the pre-Colonialist period (two-thirds of the book); authoritarian practices as they developed during the Colonial period; and the continuation of authoritarian practices in the post-Colonialist period.The book goes into great detail about the pre-Colonialist historical practices of gift-giving; how taxation was conducted through tax-farming methods; how taxes were extracted first from the populace by the caids, and later by the sultan from the caid by the sultan sending his army in order to obtain them; as well as the uses to which the funds were put. It also goes into a good amount of detail regarding the French occupation, and allowed me to understand it from the Moroccan point-of-view.Reading about all of these historical behaviors, I felt as if I could see those behaviors reproduced today in nearly every family, in every office, in every company, and in the way people make decisions and treat each other.I DO highly recommend this book, but not to the "average" reader. I recommend it to anyone with experience living in Morocco, who is a REALLY SERIOUS reader who is interested in a REALLY SERIOUS ethnography of the origin of power and authority in Morocco. I also highly recommend it to anyone who does business in any country and wonders about where the practices of giving gifts to officials and employees are the usual mode of doing business or getting things done would have come from. I suspect that the dynamics described in this book are applicable to many countries in Africa, perhaps to countries like Russia (although I've never been there), and certainly any countries with tribal backgrounds, or countries where democracy or business relationships do not seem to work well due to nepotism and loyalty considerations with various groups.This was an excellent book, but a difficult read. It's more oriented to scholars (professional anthropologists) than to lay-readers. This style of academic writing lends itself to obtuseness, particularly in the introduction. This is the main reason I am giving it four stars instead of five. However, following the introduction, starting with Chapter 1, the book becomes much more readable.If you are thinking about ordering this book, definitely go onto Amazon and use the "look inside" feature to read some of the text and be sure it is for you, first. The text is only 158 pages, but it takes about the same amount of effort as a typical 400-page book would, so just be prepared for that. Furthermore, this book is difficult, so if French is your first language, DO order it in French from Amazon.fr.

The book was free of annotations. It was in excellent condition overall.