ABSTRACT
Clientage implies action from below, from people seeking some kind of protection from a patron or sponsor. A client is one who seeks aid or advantage from another person who is wealthier, more powerful, or better connected. Webster’s Dictionary traces the word to the Latin clinare, meaning “to lean.” A client has someone to lean on. A client might seek from his or her patron a job, land, housing, money, information, aid in a legal matter, or other things. In return, the client might give political backing, labor, or other forms of support. The relationship is dyadic (twosided), between unequals, contains an expectation of reciprocity, and is private rather than public. Historically, in many farming areas of the world, poor peasants and the landless have been bound to better-off landholders. In pastoral societies, the receipt of cattle or other animals has afforded clients with subsistence and the well-to-do with political loyalty. Chains of patronclient ties have connected villages and towns to national centers, while clientelist politics have typified both ancient and modern cities and states. Clientage has existed in diverse forms in many cultures and time periods. But the concept is drained of its meaning if it is equated with all vertical social linkages. Thus, it is useful to exclude situations where such relations are legal and contractual, as in feudal Europe, or are governed by fixed rules, as in highly bureaucratic organizations. Increasingly precise understanding of clientage plays a growing role in the social history of many agricultural societies and in urban settings as well.
