The Etiquette of Bargaining in the Middle East‘

FUAD I. KHURI
American University of Beirut
Bargaining takes place in free markets, as in the sriqs o f the Middle East, where prices
fluctuate and where the buyers and sellers meet with opposed economic interests. I t
brings order to such markets by enabling the buyer and the seller to develop lasting
economic relationships between them, based on mufual trusr. Shoidd the bargaining
partners, buyer or seller, fail to establish such trust by the use of culturally determined
polite formulas, conflict between them arises and no transaction takes plbce.

S TUDENTS of primitive and peasant

economies have classified bargaining in a
number of typologies. Karl Polanyi, for ex-
ample, classifles it under “integrative ex-
change,” one of the three kinds of exchange,
the other two being “operational exchange”
and “decisional exchange,” which preclude
bargaining. Economically, bargaining is inte-
grative because it aims to produce favorable
prices; socially, however, it is unfavorable be- even reciprocity in nonmarket systems is not
cause it involves antagonistic relationships
(Polanyi 1957:250-253). Marshall D. Sah-
lins, who has recently used the concept of
reciprocity to account for what he calls “the
array of economic transactions in the ethno-
graphic records” in his model for primitive
exchange, classifies bargaining under “nega-
tive reciprocity,” the unsociable extreme, the
attempt to get something for nothing or to
maximize utility at the expense of others.
Like Polanyi, Sahlins views bargaining as a
“most economic” but unsociable form of
transaction, because it is always conducted
with varying degrees of cunning, guile,
stealth, and sometimes violence (Sahlins
1965: 148-149). Other typologies of ex-
change, namely those that implicitly or ex-
plicitly speak of market and nonmarket types,
as summarized by Cook (1966:323-343,
follow Polanyi’s and Sahlins’s views on bar-
gaining. On the one hand, these typologies
treat bargaining as a price-regulating mech-
anism, and therefore as economically favor-
able (functional); on the other hand, it breeds
hostility, rivalry, and distrust, and like other sites describes the market situation in which
market factors is socially unfavorable (dys-
functional). By contrast, nonmarket factors
Accepted for publication October 25, 1967.
698
such as reciprocity and gift exchange, which
are founded on trust and friendliness, neces-
sarily preclude bargaining, and are therefore
socially favorable (functional) (Bohannan
and Dalton 1962: 17; Herskovits 1952: 180;
Firth 1939:142; Malinowski 1922:95). Al-
most by definition, a bargained gift exchange
becomes a barter (Riggs 1964:103).
It has been established, however, that
incompatible with the self-interest or aggres-
siveness motive (Blau 1964:88-114; Ho-
mans 1961:61-64); nor is it generally con-
sidered compatible with solidarity and coop
eration, since, at times, reciprocity induces
conflict and maximizes gain at the expense
of others (LCvi-Strauss 1944:24; Sahlins
1965: 162, 175). This paper attempts to show
that just as reciprocity incorporates elements
of conflict, bargaining also incorporates ele-
ments of cooperation, as represented by the
dotted line in Figure 1.
The author argues against the view that
bargaining, while economically integrative, is
socially dysfunctional. True, there is always
in bargaining an element of suspicion as to
the true value of the commodity, and subse-
quently of the fairness of the price; but this
suspicion never turns into an open conflict if
the bargainers intend to conclude the sale.
Any bargainer, seller or buyer, makes sure
not to offend his partner, for this may put
an end to the bargain, as often happens. In
this paper, the section on bargaining requi-
bargaining takes place, and the section on
bargaining techniques shows that bargaining,
though initiated by suspicion, nonetheless
tends to eliminate suspicion, instituting in-
[KHURI] Middle Eastern Bargaining Etiquette
Market
(Bargaining)
\
8
Socially Socially
conflictful cooperative
FIGuRe 1.
stead an atmosphere of common interest
and trust, often leading to a lasting client re-
lationship, and even friendship.
THE REQUISITES OF BARGAINING
As a nonmarket activity, structured
reciprocity precludes bargaining. It not only
takes place between people bound by non-
market relationships, of which reciprocity
among kinsmen is the most vivid example,
but it also maintains such relationships.
Friends, neighbors, blood brothers, and trad-
ing partners, as in the Kula transaction
(Malinowski 1922:95-96), maintain their
relationships by reciprocity. In these in-
stances, reciprocity is nonhierarchical, bind-
ing people of equal status, in which case the
objects or acts reciprocated are expected to
be equivalent. If they are not, reciprocity
becomes hierarchical, indicative of d8erent
social ranks, as in the Potlatch practice
among the Kwakiutl Indians of North
America, or in the similar Bilaba practice
among the Fang of Cameroon, where a per-
son raises his rank by giving or destroying
more property than his competitor. Simi-
larly, he who gives more and accepts less in
any gift exchange earns superiority, becom-
ing magister; but he who gives less and ac-
cepts more earns inferiority, becoming
minister (Mauss 1954:72). Any instance of
reciprocity, as a gift or countergift, carries
with it the prestige of both the giver and the
receiver, which means that any variation in
the value of the transferred goods is likely to
699
Nonmarket
(Reciprocity)
/ \
Socially Socially
integrative conflictful
become, if formalized, a variation in social
prestige. Just as the loss in the market value
of goods is compensated for by a gain in
prestige, the gain in the market value is
compensated for by a loss in prestige. Since
price is here implicitly and automatically
translated into prestige, bargaining, itself a
price-setting procedure, is therefore out of
place. Apparently the lack of equivalence
between commodity and price in a market is
regulated by bargaining; in reciprocity, by
loss or gain of prestige.
It must not be concluded, however, that
price in market exchange is always regulated
by bargaining vis-A-vis the rules of supply
and demand-it may happen that a variety
of social relations channel the movement of
goods, preventing the elasticity of response
to changes in supply and demand, resulting
in fixed, unbargained prices. Firth says that
the Tikopia canoe budders regulate the de-
mand for canoes by giving priority to people
of high rank and kinsmen. Anybody of
lesser rank, or of less immediate kinship ties
with the specialist craftsmen, postpones his
plans to buy a canoe when the news spreads
that these craftsmen are preoccupied. There
is, in addition, a set of strict conventions
that fix the rates of exchange between
craftsmen and consumers, as when a chief
has the right to command the craftsmen’s
services at less than the customary rate, or
even for nothing. He may also pay the ordi-
nary rate of remuneration, or more than the
rate paid by commoners. In Tikopia, acts of
700 American Anthropologist
exchange are basically a series of individual
transactions controlled by specific bonds of
kinship, friendship, or clanship. No appeal
to a general market takes place, nor is com-
petitive bargaining permitted (Firth 1939:
142, 300-302).
Similar to the Tikopians, the Busam of
northeastern New Guinea carry out ex-
change without competitive bargaining, the
equivalence of each object being tradition-
ally set, and the goods handed over as if
they were free gifts. Discussion of values is
evaded because the Busam consider it
shameful to treat people one knows like
tradesmen (Hogbin 1947:244-246).
The Amhara traders of Abyssinia, who
are more motivated by the desire to carry
out the transaction without being mocked
(especially by their Coptic peers) than by
the desire to achieve monetary gain, nor-
mally avoid bargaining. They refuse to sell
their wares in the morning, pretending that
these wares have been ordered previously,
and that they, the traders, are waiting for
their customers to come and pick up the
wares. According to Messing, only in the af-
ternoon, when the market begins to close,
do they sell their wares, and at relatively re-
duced prices-a practice summed up by
their proverb: “To church early, to market
late” (Messing 1962:40).
For bargaining to take place, therefore,
exchange has to be carried out in a market
free from social ties. Economically, markets
in which bargaining occurs are characterized
by flexible price policy, by the nonstandardi-
zation of weights, measures, goods, and by
the lack of mass media that informs the
buyer and the seller about the supply-and-
demand situation (Sjoberg 1960:205-206).
However, bargaining and nonstandardization
are not always correlated. In Dahomey, for
example, weights and measures are not stan-
dardized; but trade associations fix the price
of food commodities sold by their members
so strictly that any customer who refuses to
pay the fixed price is physically punished
(Herskovits 1938:Sl ff). Among the Gumu
of Porto-Novo, during the scarcity period of
June, price is fixed by the secret society for
men, Zangbeto (Tardits and Tardits 1962:
.
101 ) On the other hand, prices are bargained
for where weights and measures are standard-
ized, even exceeding sometimes the official
[70, 1968
standard, as in Cairo, Egypt (Lane 1860:
578).
There are other market factors, however,
most notably apparent in industrial societies,
which disfavor bargaining as a priceregulat-
ing procedure. Mass production and con-
sumption, standardized weights and mea-
sures, the separation of the producer from
the distributor, the control of production
and distribution that produces a continuous
balance between supply and demand, the
presence of effective mass media that publi-
cize current prices, and finally, the imper-
sonal relationships that exist in these markets
-all these restrict bargaining. But they do
not determine it. Even when these factors
dominate as they do in North America,
Western Europe, and Japan, bargaining still
continues to be practiced, perhaps only in
relation to certain types of goods and ser-
vices, such as used cars, real estate, laborers’
wages, and professors’ salaries. Labor unions
and management in the United States have
instituted bargaining as a means to induce
peaceful settlements of disputes (Kuhn
1961;Siege1 and Fouraker 1960).
Although market and social conditions
may favor bargaining, as in the siiqs of the
Middle East (Benet 1957:192), bargaining
may still be precluded on the basis of the
social status of the bargainer. Men of honor
and prestige in the Middle East do not bar-
gain, even when they realize that the goods
they have bought have been overpriced.
This is because bargaining, like penny-
pinching, does not go with prestige. The
ability to pay appears to be honorific: in
hospitality towards strangers, preeminence
among equals, or gaining precedence over
traders by deliberately buying their over-
priced goods without bargaining. “Notables
do not bargain” (el-wujaha rnd bif&Zu)
noted a Beirut carpet trader, adding regret-
fully, “it is difficult these days to distinguish
notables from commoners; everybody bar-
gains.” Pitt-Rivers mentions similar be-
havior among men of high social status in
Spain who, in order to atfirm their high
status, tend to be lenient to the peccadillos
of their trusted employees as long as they
do not go too far (Pitt-Rivers 1965:59).
In conclusion, partners avoid bargaining
when they are bound by reciprocity or by
other social relations that channel the niove-
KHURI] Middle Eastern Bargaining Etiquette
ment of goods. They bargain when they
confront each other not only as opposed in-
terests in a market, but also as social equals
interacting on free unbounded bases, free
from social obligations.
THE TECHNIQUES OF BARGAINING
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Bargaining techniques in the Middle East
open initially with standardized expressions
of respect, affection, and common interest
and trust.2 The seller welcomes the buyer
into his shop, addressing him by kinship
terms as a mark of respect or of affection.
Kinship terms indicate respect if they are
used in their extended meaning: a young
male seller uses the term Cammi (my fa-
ther’s brother) to address an old male buyer
who is equivalent in age, sex, and status to
the seller’s father’s brother; or an old seller
uses the term ’ibni (my son) or ’ibn ’ukhi
(my brother’s son) to address a young
buyer who is equivalent in age, sex, and sta-
tus to the seller’s son, or his brother’s son.
Kinship terms indicate affection if they are
reciprocated, as when a mother calls her
child ‘immi (my mother), or a father calls
his child buyyi (my father). By the same
token, an old seller may address a young
buyer as bayyi, indicating an exaggerated
form of affection and informality. If the
buyer’s social status is higher than that of
the seller, in this case, the buyer then is ad-
dressed by a title-fuykh, buik, junn hadir-
tak-indicating that a formal relationship
exists between him and the seller. Informal-
ity here and the mutual trust it tends to cre-
ate are unnecessary, since men of high so-
cial status do not bargain.
As soon as the buyer orders a commodity
and inquires about its price, the seller re-
sponds vaguely: “Between us there is no
difference; we share the same interest
(wildit h d ) , price is not what pleases me,
what pleases me is to find out what pleases
you; pay as much as you want; brothers do
not disagree on price; for you it is free; it is
a gift (m’addami) .” These expressions, sig-
nifying common interest and trust, symbol-
ize the economic behavior of corporate fam-
ily groups, nuclear or extended. No buyer in
the Middle East, however, takes these words
seriously, and subsequently, insists on being
given a final price, not necessarily minimal.
70 1
With some apparent hesitancy, the seller
suggests a price and starts to advertize his
goods, especially the imported ones. Im-
ported goods enable the seller to earn better
bargains, for the simple reason that their
price and quality are less known to the
buyer than the locally manufactured goods
(Potter 1955: 108). In this sense, restrictions
on foreign trade necessarily reduce the sell-
er’s profits, as the Lebanese traders both in
Lebanon and in West Africa complain.
The aim of the seller in any bargaining
confrontation is to affect the buyer’s choice
behavior, which he can do by assessing the
latter’s status and appreciating his customs
and values. Shopkeepers in Beirut are ex-
traordinarily perceptive of people’s accents,
dress, cleanliness, names, and the way these
correlate with specific backgrounds. Names,
for example, often suggest sect and clan
membership; accents and dialects suggest re-
gional and sometimes village membership;
dress and the extent of cleanliness suggest
class membership. Like their counterparts in
Beirut, the Lebanese traders in West Africa
recognize a variety of native tongues, tribal
divisions, and status symbols, which they
manipulate to affect the choice behavior of
Africans. The seller uses such key associa-
tions to link the commodity to the buyer’s
background, in an effort to show him that
other people of his status do consume the
same goods by citing specific incidents-a
carpet trader told an American customer
who wanted to buy a Bukhara carpet:
I deal mostly with Americans and with the
people of the American University of Beirut.
They like my carpets and my prices. See the
post cards they send me, all are pleased with
my dealings. All of my American customers
are happy with my Bukharas. Bukhara . . .
of this color (golden red) goes with Ameri-
can future.
But, while praising the seller for his reli-
ability, the buyer, in his turn, insists on
being treated as a client. And to reinforce
his insistence, he makes reference to the sell-
er’s friends and relatives as having recom-
mended the shop. Meanwhile, h e tries to es-
tablish the final price and the quality of the
commodity without offending the seller, for
offending the seller terminates bargaining
without concluding the sale. The following
example illustrates this point:
702 American Anthropologist
Buyer: Are you sure that this suit is made in
Italy?
Seller: Is this so? What are we doing here?
Aren’t we trading? We are not playing.
Buyer: It (the suit) looks as if it is made
here (Lebanon).
Seller: Are we lying then?
Buyer: God knows.
Seller: Don’t buy. Drive on (yalla). We see
you later.
The buyer never doubts by direct inquiry
the commodity’s quality, as this may show
ignorance on his part which would expose
him to cheating and perhaps r i d i c ~ l e .Indi- ~
rect inquiry, by comparing the commodity
with a familiar one, is a more appropriate
procedure: it neither offends the seller, nor
exposes the buyer’s ignorance; yet, it helps
establish the real quality of the commodity:
Buyer: How does this shirt compare with
Arrow (shirts)?
Seller: Arrow (shirts) are little better but
more expensive.
Buyer: Arrow shirts are sold for fifteen Le-
banese pounds each, and you want thirteen
pounds for this one?
Seller: Arrow is prettier, this shirt lasts lon-
ger.
Buyer: Eleven pounds.
Seller: Take it for twelve.
Buyer: Eleven and half.
Seller: O.K. ( j a y i b ) , take it-I have not sold
anything today.
I n pursuing the bargain, the seller then
requests the buyer to price the commodity
and declare the amount of money he intends
to pay. If the buyer succumbs to this re-
quest, he would be first restricting his own
power of choice, and second he would give
the seller the priority to call off or continue
the bargain. Instead, by requesting the seller
to price his own commodities, the buyer
gains initiative and wards off the possibility
of being insulted in case the seller abruptly
decides to end the bargain. When the seller
sets a price, the buyer immediately declares
it expensive and pretends to leave the shop
-an act that often triggers the seller into a
continual reduction of his price until a final
one is reached. Reaching a final price, how-
ever, does not mean that the sale is concluded.
Many buyers test prices (bargain) in one
shop and buy their goods in another.4 This
behavior is repeated so frequently both in
Africa and the Middle East that shops situ-
[70, 1968
ated at the entrance of a market place are
considered less profitable than those situated
in the center. These shops, a shopkeeper in
Rabat (Morocco) complained, are “rich in
bargaining but poor in selling.”
When a bargain is concluded a seller may
refuse to be paid on the spot, insisting on
extending credit to the buyer, which, from
the buyer’s point of view is regarded as a
gesture of trust, but to the seller, as a move
to win the buyer’s clientage. Middle-Eastern-
em and Africans take pride in being trusted
by their shopkeepers, meaning that they are
men of “their word” (never delay or deny
their debts), respect, and economic laxity.
More complicated yet are the bargaining
techniques that center on the confusion of
husband-wife relationships, especially com-
mon among the Lebanese traders in West
Africa, or father-son relationships, common
in the Middle East. I n Africa, where wives
may tend shops with their husbands, a shop-
keeper’s wife, in a pretense of defiance, of-
fers the customer a lesser price than the one
her husband has initially suggested, leaving
the customer certain that her price is indeed
minimal. This certainty is reinforced not
only by the husband‘s initial reluctance to
sell the commodity for the price suggested
by his wife, but also by his scolding her,
even to the extent of using abusive Ian-
guage.5 In West Africa, this pretended
squabble between shopkeeper and wife is
performed with such skill that the author,
himself a Lebanese, has been taken in by it.
In Lebanon no merchant of “honor” allows
his wife to work in the shop; the wife’s role
as a bargaining associate is played by the
merchant’s sons or his brothers. To counter-
balance this husband-wife or father-son as-
sociation in bargaining, customers in either
the Middle East or in Africa often go shop-
ping accompanied by friends o r relatives,
who in their turn reinforce the buyer.
The bargaining techniques of underpric-
ing (under the market price) and overpric-
ing (over the market price) are also em-
ployed occasionally by Lebanese traders in
West Africa. If a buyer starts to check
prices at random, without showing interest
in any specific commodity, the seller then
deliberately underprices his merchandise,
which makes it difficult for the buyer to
shop elsewhere. But when the buyer comes
KHURI] Middle Eastern Bargaining Etiquette
back to the same shop to buy what he
needs, realizing that prices elsewhere are rel-
atively higher, the seller refuses to sell him
the goods for less than the current prices,
pretending that he was insulted when the
buyer initially distrusted him. According to
one Lebanese trader in West Africa, how-
ever, African customers prefer to shop
where they have been treated, at least ini-
tially, with trust.
Overpricing is observed to take place
especially among the Lebanese diamond
dealers in Sierra Leone, who act as middle-
men between African diamond miners and
the De Beers company, a foreign-owned com-
pany that is the only one that markets dia-
monds outside the country. African miners
are not allowed to sell their diamonds di-
rectly to the company unless they possess, in
addition to a miner’s license, a dealer’s li-
cense, which costs 500 pounds sterling.
While inspecting a “diamond lot,” as they
call it, a Lebanese dealer tries to undervalue
the gems by overemphasizing their deficien-
cies, such as cracks, spots, and yellowish
colors. If the customer proves to be tactful
in bargaining but incompetent in diamond
pricing, which is interpreted by the dealer to
mean that the customer’s aim, at least at this
stage, is just to price not to sell his gems, the
dealer than maneuvers against the customer
by offering him an over-themarket price. As
expected by the dealer, the customer unin-
formed of prices refuses to sell his “lot,”
hoping to earn better bargains elsewhere.
When he approaches other dealers, however,
and discovers that their prices are relatively
lower than the prices suggested by the first
dealer, the customer inevitably returns to
the first dealer to learn, not without disap
pointment, that even this dealer would not
1. THE AVERAGE
TABLE AND RANGEOF PRICE3 OF 42 SALE3 AS THEY V A R Y WITH
THE AVERAGEAND RANGEOF BARGAINING
No. of Range of prices Aoerage p&e
TYP of
Commodity Sales in SL
Carpets 7 Hx).OO-5ooo.00
Carpets 12 25.00- 200.00
Clothes 18 1.00- 25.00
Food stuffs 5 0.25- 8.00
703
buy the lot for the same price he himself
has suggested earlier. The dealer, of course,
justifies his refusal of buying the lot on the
grounds that the customer is unworthy of
“good treatment,” because he was distrustful
of the dealer when he offered to buy the
gems for an over-the-market price in the be-
ginning. Since overpricing makes it dficult
for the customer to sell his gems not only
elsewhere, but anywhere, the Lebanese deal-
ers in Sierra Leone refer to the technique of
overpricing in a descriptive way as “burning
the diamond lot,” which means that it can-
not be resold except by scattering its individ-
ual gems over other lots.
Not all bargaining techniques follow the
procedures discussed above. They vary with
price and the repeated consumption of com-
modities. With regard to price, Table 1 shows
how bargaining time varies with price: the
higher the average price (meeting competi-
tion), the longer the average bargaining
time. The range of time, however, indicates
that certain bargaining episodes, especially
for foodstuffs, may be concluded in a very
short period of time. The need for repeated
consumption tends to reduce the bargaining
time, or even to eliminate bargaining alto-
gether once a regular patronage has been es-
tablished between merchant and customer.
The data collected on bargained sales and
unbargained ones shows that food necessi-
ties, such as sugar, bread, oil, meat, because
of their repeated consumption involve the
least bargaining, regardless of whether or
not their prices have been arbitrarily fmed
by local authorities. Indeed, bargaining over
any commodity takes place only once, after
which the final price becomes customary to
the bargaining partners concerned. In this
sense, a customer saves time and bargaining
T w
Range Of Time in Average Time in
in EL Minutes & Minutes &
Seconds Seconds
1765.00 100‘-9’ 54’
146.00 45’-10’ 36’
9.22 7-2’ 5’ 10’’
1.88 3‘-12‘’ 41”
704 Arnerican Anthropologist
TABLE
2. THEPROFIT PER SALE OF BARGAINE~
~~ -
TYP of No. of Costing Price
Sale Sciles in EL
Bargained sales 132 5,070
Unbargained sales 2I I 14,425
if he establishes a life-long client relation-
ship with those who serve him-masons,
carpenters, butchers, shopkeepers, black-
smiths, goldsmiths, barbers. Such life-long
clientship, as a preferred, sometimes inher-
ited, relationship in the Middle East, must
not be confused with friendship. Still many
clients deliberately avoid friendship with
tradesmen who often manipulate these
friendships to delay their customer’s re-
quests, or even to pass off shoddy work.
Tradesmen realize that they can convince a
friend-client to accept their terms, but they
lose a nonfriend client if his own terms are
not fulfilled. From the customer’s point of
view, it is more advantageous, therefore, to
be a client, not a friend, of a tradesman.
Women are reputed to take more time
in bargaining than men, but this does not
mean that they are able to drive better bar-
gains. They simply “argue much,” in
Arabic: bijalti ktir. This is not an inherent
tendency in women, as many Middle-
Eastern traders have suggested, but a reflec-
tion of cultural norms. A seller would sel-
dom discontinue bargaining with a woman,
as he might do with a man, as this is con-
sidered an act of disrespect; propriety re-
quires that women be shown respect not
disrespect in public. Perhaps more im-
portant, however, is the mood of the seller
who, irrespective of his age, shows more
willingness to bargain with women. His
moods with men seem to vary with the time
of the day. In the afternoons, sellers have
less “spirit,” (r$i, implying lack of pa-
tience) for bargaining, which favors the
buyer more than the seller, since, at that
time, the latter is tempted to offer final,
minimal prices with little or no bargaining
at all.
Does the seller or the buyer profit from
bargaining? Table 2 shows that, given the
same commodity, bargained sales are less
profitable to the seller than the unbargained
[70, 1968
AND UNBARGAINED SALES
Selling Price Total Profits Profits per
in EL in EL Sale in EL
6,160 1,090 8.25
17,221 2,696 12.76
-
ones, which evidently means that bargaining,
on the whole, favors the buyer. The ten-
dency to bargain in the Middle East is there-
fore reinforced by material gain.
SUMMARY
Bargaining, an attribute of free market
systems of economic exchange, serves an
economic purpose, that is, to regulate prices
in societies where suspicion and uncertainty
of the value of commodities dominate. In
the Middle East, bargaining is not for fun,
nor merely for the sake of bargaining.6
Through the manipulation of cultural norms
and symbols, a bargainer, whether seller or
buyer, aims to eliminate suspicion of com-
modity and price and establish instead an at-
mosphere of trust often leading to client-re-
lationships, and occasionally to friendship.
True, what the Lebanese call “business
tricks,” such as overpricing, underpricing,
and credit, are used, but even these tricks
cannot be carried out without the initial es-
tablishment of trust and through an idiom
of trust: kinship terms, polite formulas, ob-
servance of good manners. In the Middle
Eastern case, the failure of a bargainer to
evoke and manipulate this idiom of trust
leads eventually to a failure in successfully
consummating the intended transaction. As
long as the consummation of a transaction
depends primarily on the establishment of
trust in bargaining, trust necessarily takes
precedence over the profit motive. Any act
of discourtesy (when a buyer tells a seller
that he is unreliable (gaSSM) or when a
seller tells a buyer that he is “unworthy of
the commodity”-that his status is lower
than the status of those who in fact consume
the commodity) inevitably puts an end to
the bargain.
In bargaining, the social status of the bar-
gaining partners is at stake. They attempt to
neutralize this status by following the strict
rules of bargaining etiquette. But bargaining
KHURI] Middle Eastern Bargnining Etiquette
is not used only to neutralize positions, but
also to improve them. If either party to the
bargain, seller or buyer, is unusually suc-
cessful in his approach, he earns social rec-
ognition among his group by developing the
reputation of knowing how to “handle”
people and subsequently affect their choice
behavior.’ Since profit in bargaining is trans-
lated into social recognition, seller-bargain-
ers in the Middle East resort to all sorts of
polite formulas to affect the economic choice
of their partners. These polite formulas are
used with such extravagance that many peo-
ple, especially foreigners, tend to cite them
as indices of the “bazaarish” character of
the Levantine. I n fact, these polite formulas
form an essential part of the bargaining
technique.8
I n the absence of price controlling mech-
anisms in a free market, such as in the sUqs
of the Middle East, bargaining becomes es-
sential to the opening of sustained economic
relationships between buyer and seller. Just
as bargaining enables the buyer to distin-
guish reliable sellers from unreliable ones-
the first the buyer avoids (conflictful func-
tion), the second he takes as a permanent
supplier (cooperative function)-it also en-
ables the seller to eliminate distrustful buy-
ers (conflictful function) and to establish
lasting clientship with trustful ones (cooper-
ative function). Hence, in a very intricate
and sensitive way, bargaining brings order
into an otherwise uncontrolled market sys-
tem.
NOTES
‘The data for this paper were collected among
Lebanese traders in West Africa in 1962/63, and in
the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East
in 1965/66. Fifty-four bargaining sessions were re-
corded, forty-two of them on a tape recorder, and
the rest, the longer ones, on paper. Through the
use of the tape recorder, the author was able to
measure the time of every bargaining session (Ta-
ble 1 ) . The bar ained and unbargained sales in
Table 2 were cofiected in eleven shops in Beirut
and Tripoli (Lebanon) over a period of one month
-the shops included seven for clothes, two for gro-
ceries, one for hardware, and one carpet store. I
would like to thank Professor Louis E. Sweet for
reading and commenting on this paper.
?This is a bargaining episode verbatim from the
tapes:
Seller: Welcome. brother. I have not seen YOU for
a long time.
Buyer: Why? I do come here from time to time.
Seller: You . . . from South Lebanon?
705
Buyer: Certainly, from the family of H.
Seller: Oh . .. I know some of the H’s; they
run for elections.
Buyer: Politics for politicians.
Seller: My shop is yours-order and desire ($ib
wi-1-manna) .
Buyer: You are to order (’int phib ,l’amir). I
want to buy some clothes for my chddren.
Seller: What clothes?
Buyer: Ready-made. Good quality and cheap.
Seller: Shirts, underwear, pants?
Buver: Socks and underwear for children of 7, 9,
a6d 10.
.
Seller: Best quality . . Italian made.
Buyer: But (they are) mixed with Nylon.
Seller : Slightly.
Buyer: Approximately, how much?
Seller: Pay as much as you want. We shall not
disagree.
-Buver:
---- Mr. K. M. told me that this shop is the
~
most reliable one.
Seller: I know him (Mr. K. M.) for a long time.
___
H e __ I
friend
is a - .
...- of vours? For your sake, pay
~
L L 3 for each df these (underwear); and
LL 1.75 for these.(each paireof socks).
Buyer: Isn’t that a little expenswe for me?
Seller: By God. It is only for YOU.
Buyer: The sum is BL 32. I give you L L 30.
Seller: God is generous. This is as much as they
cost. Please pay. God (will) send something
better (Alla bi-yi rijha Have pleasure In
wearing them (rnadPs I-bna).
3 Being “knowledgeable,” ’ashdb maCrifain Africa,
men of prestige avoid bargaizng sessions that may
expose their ignorance, thus exposing them to ridi-
cule.
‘Checking one seller against the other as means
to establish final prices is also observed by Mintz
to take place in a Caribbean peasant economy
(1956: 19)
5Abusive language to Africans is a serious as-
sault often tried before a court. They do not con-
sider it as ;L joke, therefore, when a Lebanese hus-
band scolds his wife by using abusive language,
but as a serious fight.
“This statement is made in reference to Majid
Khadduri’s work in which he views bargaining as
the shopkeeper’s job performed for fun, a game, he
says, often interrupted by irrelevant topics of con-
versation (Khadduri 1952:37-38), and also to
Sania Hamady who uses bargaining to illustrate
“the subjective, personal dealings of the Arab”;
this is where, to Hamady, the Arab combines social
duty, business, and pleasure (Hamady 1960:37).
Samir Khalaf is also cited by John Gulick (1965:2)
as mentioning bargaining for the sake of bargain-
ing, which process weakens the bargaining power of
labor unions due to their unrealistic bids (Khalaf
1965:25).
‘From the Fond-des-Nbgres market place, Haiti,
Mintz relates a similar observation: marketeers
congratulate each other on bargains, and belittle
each other when they pay too much (1961:25).
* The following anecdote indicates how foreigners
may misinterpret the rules of bargaining. In order
to win her trust and subsequently affect her eco-
nomic behavior, a carpet trader in Beirut jokingly
suggested to a Canadian lady that he become her
son-in-law. “Shocked” by this suggestion, the lady
nervously took her pretty daughter by the hand and
instantly left the shop. The carpet trader com-
706 American Anthropologist
plained: “She did not even say good-by.” Neither
understood the other.
REFERENCES CITED
BALU,PETERM.
1964 Exchange and power in social life. New
York, John Wiley.
BENET,FRANCISCO
1957 Explosive markets: the Berber highlands.
In Trade and market in the early empires.
Karl Polanyi, C. M. Arensberg, and H. W.
Pearson, eds. Glencoe, The Free Press.
BOHANNAN, PAUL,and GEOROEDALTON,eds.
1962 Markets in Africa. Evanston, Northwest-
ern University Press.
COOK, SCOTT
1966 The obsolete anti-market mentality. Amer-
ican Anthropologist 68:323-345.
FIRTH,RAYMOND
1939 Primitive Polynesian economy. London,
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
19.59 Economics of the New Zealand Maori.
New Zealand, R.E. Owen.
GULICK,JOHN
1965 Introduction. Human Organization 24: 1-3.
HAMADY, SANIA
1960 Temperament and character of the Arabs.
New York, Twayne Publishers.
HF.RSKOVITS, MELVILLEJ.
1938 Dahomey, an ancient West African king-
dom, Vol. 1. New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
1952 Economic anthropology. New York. Al-
fred A. Knopf.
HOGBIN,IAN
1947 Native trade around the Huon Gulf, north-
eastern New Guinea. Journal of Polynesian So-
ciety 54 :242-25 5.
HOMANS,GEORGE G.
1961 Social behavior: its elementary forms.
New York, Harcourt, Brace, and World.
KHADDLIRI, MAJID
1952 Governments of the Arab East. Journal of
International Affairs 6:37-48.
KHALAF,SAMIR
1965 Industrial conflict in Lebanon. Human Or-
ganization 24:25-33.
KUHN.JAMESW.
1961 Bargaining in grievance settlement. New
York, Columbia University Press.
LANE,EDWARD
1860 The manners and customs of the modem
Ewutians. London. Aldine House.
LBVI-SKAIJSS,
CLAUDE .
1964 The social and psychological aspects of
[70, 19681
chieftainship in a primitive tribe: the Nam-
bikuara. Transactions of the New York Acad-
emy of Sciences (Ser. 2) 7 (1).
MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW
1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London,
George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.
MAUSS,MARCELL
1954 The gift: forms and functions of exchange
in archaic societies. London, Cohen & West
Ltd
MESSING,SIMOND.
1962 The Abyssinian market town. In Markets
in Africa. Paul Bohannan and George Dalton,
eds. Evanston, Northwestern University Press.
MINTZ, SYONEY W.
1956 The role of the middleman in the internal
distribution system of a Caribbean
economy. Human Organization 15 :18-g.asant
1961 Standards of value and units of measure
in the Fond-des-Nkgres market place, Haiti.
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological In-
stitute of Great Britain and Ireland 91:23-38.
PITT-RIVERS, JULIAN
1965 Honour and social status. In Honour and
shame. J. G. Persistiany, ed. London, Weiden-
feld and Nicolson.
POLANYI,KARL
1957 The economy as instituted process. In
Trade and market in the early empires. Karl
Polan i, C. M. Arensberg, and H.W. Pearson,
eds. dlencoe, The Free Press.
POTTER,DALTON
1955 The bazaar merchant. In Social forces in
the Middle East. N. S. Fisher, ed. Ithaca, Cor-
nell University Press.
haos, FRED W.
1964 Administration in developing countries.
Boston, Houghton Mifftin Co.
SAHLINS, MARSHALL D.
1965 On the sociology of primitive exchange. In
Relevance of models for social anthropology.
AS.A. Monographs 1. London, Tavistock Pub-
lications.
SEOEL, SIDNEY,and LAWRENCE E. FOURAKER
1960 Bargaining and group decision making.
New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co.
SJOSEXG,GIDEON
1960 The pre-industrial city. Glencoe, The Free
Press.
Tmm, CLAUDEAM) CLAUDINE
1962 Traditional market economy in South
Dahomey. In Markets in Africa. Paul Bohan-
nan and George Dalton, eds. Evanston, North-
western University Press.