Tribalism

For the Enter Shikari album, see Tribalism (album).

The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals^{[citation needed]}.

The other concept to which the word tribalism frequently refers is the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group. This phenomenon is related to the concept of tribal society in that it is a precondition for members of a tribe to possess a strong feeling of identity for a true tribal society to form^{[citation needed]}. The distinction between these two definitions for tribalism is an important one because, while tribal society no longer strictly exists in the western world, tribalism, by this second definition, is arguably undiminished. People have postulated that the human brain is hard-wired towards tribalism due to its evolutionary advantages. See Tribalism and evolution below.

Many tribes refer to themselves with their language's word for "people," while referring to other, neighboring tribes with various epithets. For example, the term "Inuit" translates as "people," but they were known to the Ojibwe by a name 'Eskimo' translating roughly as "eaters of raw meat."^{[citation needed]} This fact is often cited as evidence that tribal peoples saw only the members of their own tribe as "people," and denigrated all others as something less. In fact, this is a tenuous conclusion to draw from the evidence. Many languages refined their identification as "the true people," or "the real people," dehumanizing the other people or simply considering them inferior. In this, it is merely evidence of ethnocentrism, a universal cultural characteristic found in all societies.

Tribalism and violence

The anthropological debate on warfare among tribes is unsettled. While typically and certainly found among horticultural tribes, an open question remains whether such warfare is a typical feature of hunter-gatherer life, or an anomaly found only in certain circumstances, such as scarce resources (as with the Inuit or Arabs), or among food producing societies^{[citation needed]}. There is also ambiguous evidence whether the level of violence among tribal societies is greater or lesser than the levels of violence among civilized societies.

If nothing else, conflict in tribal societies can never achieve the absolute scale of civilized warfare.^{[citation needed]} Tribes use forms of subsistence such as horticulture and foraging which, though more efficient, cannot yield the same number of absolute calories as agriculture.^{[citation needed]} This limits tribal populations significantly, especially when compared to agricultural populations.^{[citation needed]} When tribal conflict does occur, it results in few fatalities.^{[citation needed]} Lawrence Keeley argues in War Before Civilization, however, that as a percentage of their population, tribal violence is much more lethal. Nevertheless, Keeley also admits that the absolute numbers are so low that it is difficult to disentangle warfare from simple homicide, and Keeley's argument does not ever cite any forager examples, save the anomalous Inuit.^{[citation needed]}

Tribalism and evolution

Tribalism has a very adaptive effect in human evolution. Humans are social animals, and ill-equipped to live on their own.^{[citation needed]} Tribalism and ethnocentrism help to keep individuals committed to the group, even when personal relations may fray.^{[citation needed]} This keeps individuals from wandering off or joining other groups. It also leads to bullying when a tribal member is unwilling to conform to the politics of the collective.

Socially, divisions between groups fosters specialized interactions with others, based on association: altruism (positive interactions with unrelated members), kin-selectivity (positive interactions with related members), and violence (negative interactions). Thus, groups with a strong sense of unity and identity can benefit from kin selection behavior such as common property and shared resources. The tendency of members to unite against an outside tribe and the ability to act violently and prejudicially against that outside tribe likely boosted the chances of survival in genocidal conflicts.

Modern examples of tribal genocide rarely reflect the defining characteristics of tribes existing prior to the Neolithic Revolution--for example, small population and close-relatedness.

According to a study by Robin Dunbar at the University of Liverpool, primate brain size is determined by social group size.^{[citation needed]} Dunbar's conclusion was that the human brain can only really understand a maximum of 150 individuals as fully developed, complex people (see Dunbar's number). Malcolm Gladwell expanded on this conclusion sociologically in his book, The Tipping Point. According to these studies, then, "tribalism" is in some sense an inescapable fact of human neurology, simply because the human brain is not adapted to working with large populations. Beyond 150, the human brain must resort to some combination of hierarchical schemes, stereotypes, and other simplified models in order to understand so many people.

Nevertheless, complex societies (and corporations) rely upon the tribal instincts of their members for their organization and survival.^{[citation needed]} For example, a representative democracy relies on the ability of a "tribe" of representatives to organize and deal with the problems of an entire nation.^{[citation needed]} The instincts that these representatives are using to deal with national problems have been highly developed in the long course of human evolution on a small tribal scale, and this is the source of both their usefulness and their disutility. Indeed, much of the political tension in modern societies is the conflict between the desire to organize a nation-state using the tribal values of egalitarianism and unity and the simple fact that large societies are unavoidably impersonal and sometimes not amenable to small-society rules.

In complex societies, this tribalistic impulse can also be channelled into more frivolous avenues, manifesting itself in sports rivalries and other such "fan" affiliations.

"New tribalism"

In the past 50 years, anthropologists have greatly revised the understanding of the tribe. Franz Boas removed the idea of unilineal cultural evolution from the realm of serious anthropological research as too simplistic, allowing tribes to be studied in their own right, rather than stepping stones to civilization or "living fossils". Anthropologists such as Richard Borshay Lee and Marshall Sahlins began publishing studies that showed tribal life as an easy, safe life, the opposite of the traditional theoretical supposition. In the title to his book, Sahlins referred to these tribal cultures as "the Original Affluent Society," not for their material wealth, but for their combination of leisure and lack of want.

This work is for the progression of humanity and the enlightenment of ourselves, such as that advocated by John Zerzan or Daniel Quinn. These philosophers have led to new tribalists pursuing what Daniel Quinn dubbed the "New Tribal Revolution". The new tribalists use the term "tribalism" not in its widely thought of derogatory sense, but to refer to what they see as the defining characteristics of tribal life: namely, an open, egalitarian, classless and cooperative community. New tribalists insist that this is, in fact, the natural state of humanity, and proven by two million years of human evolution.

The answer depends on each person's preferences as well as on the particular tribes that are used as a point of reference - because tribal life itself is not the same for all tribes; the environment where a tribe lives has an especially important influence.

In an open letter to the Occupy protesters, Quinn described the Occupy movement as the "New Tribal Revolution," a term he first used in Beyond Civilization.

External links

• Sow, Adama: Ethnozentrismus als Katalysator bestehender Konflikte in Afrika südlich der Sahara, am Beispiel der Unruhen in Côte d`Ivoire at: European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU),Stadtschleining 2005 (German)
• "The New Tribalism" by University of Oregon president Dave Frohnmayer, condemning a "new tribalism" in the traditional sense of "tribalism," not to be confused with "new tribalism".
• "Tribalism in Africa" by Stephen Isabirye
• "Tribalism on the terrace" An article in Greek about soccer tribalism in Britain
• "KENYA: It’s the economy, stupid (not just “tribalism”)" An IRIN article on post election violence in Kenya - January 2008
• Steven Pressfield, "It's the Tribes, Stupid" (five part video series)