ABSTRACT
The mukhtar and the saih families used to be the nearly exclusive gate-keepers between village and state. Politicization accompanied the social mobilization, leaving a profound imprint on the village. But the evidence of growing peasant income was apparent in almost every village: new houses under construction, the growth of commodity consumption, cash income, and petty commerce. The village has increasingly been exposed to the winds of social change under Ba‘th rule, and while some is government sponsored, the increasing integration of the village into wider markets has had the most profound effect. The Ba‘th arose in this Hauran village as a product of this wider political ferment, and most immediately, as a manifestation of revolt against the traditional local leadership which enforced the old order and tied the area to Damascus. Druze villages were among the few in Syria which escaped urban domination since they lay outside the sphere where the government could make landlord rights respected.
