The use of the term tribalism must be understood against the assumption that citizens of the modern world would develop significant identification only with large groupings which included a plurality of social categories. Tribalism is used to describe those situations where broad social identification has broken down so that people identify themselves exclusively with a narrower category. For example, people may organize their lives around ethnic group and ethnic identity or sexual preference or religious belief. This retribalization of the society is thought to lead to fragmentation and divisiveness as people identify with an in-group, making a shared sense of citizenship among larger groupings more and more fragile.
Tribalism and social bond help to keep individuals committed to the group, even when personal relations may fray. That 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. - Jenks, Chris (1998). Core Sociological Dichotomies. Ontologically, tribalism is oriented around the valences of analogy, genealogy and mythology. That means that customary tribes have their social foundations in some variation of these tribal orientations, while often taking on traditional practices, and modern practices, including monetary exchange, mobile communications, and modern education.
Tribalism,
Nationalism,
Rank-Equilibration, and Social Structure
A Theoretical Interpretation of Some Socio-political Processes in Southern Nigeria
Ulf Himmelstrand, University of Ibadan; presently University of Uppsala. Some aspects of Nigerian
nationalism, particularly as espoused by the Ibo elite in the struggle for Nigerian
independence and immediately after, are here interpreted as an alternative or
supplementary response to the same kinds of structural strains which have gener ated
impulses to so-called tribalism. Rank-equilibration theory is utilized to provide the necessary causal links. Further discussed
are a number of attendant micro- and macro-circumstances which might explain why
rank-equili bration sometimes stimulates tribalism and secessionism, at other times seems
to increase the appeals of a broader nationalism.
Tribalism and Religious Identity in the Work of Richard Wright - Sylvester Johnson. Richard Wright is familiar to many as a literary author whose work portrayed race and adversity in America. Examining a less familiar theme in Wright's work, this article examines Wright's use of the concept of tribalism. It argues that Wright employed this problematic metaphor in his fiction and non-fiction in order to depict American revivalism.
The Political Economy of Tribalism in North America: Neotribal Capitalism? -
Ingo W. Schroder.
In her
analysis of Maori tribalism, Rata argues for a view of modern tribes as organizations of
capitalist accumulation that are legitimized through a ‘neotraditionalist’
ideology that recreate present-day class relations in precolonial terms. Despite some
differences in the historical development of tribes, this model proves useful for the
analysis of the political economy of US American Indian identity. Since the late 19th
century, tribes have been dominated by new economic and bureaucratic elites that control
access to tribal revenues. The discourse on ‘tradition’ and ‘cultural
preservation’ has become the latest currency of representing tribal social relations
to the American state and legitimizing the political status quo before the local
population.
Tribalism, Nationalism, and Pan-Africanism - William R. Bascom,
Berkeley, California.
Tribalism, no longer an obstacle to self-govern ment in Africa, is still an obstacle to
national unity. In Ghana, national solidarity has been built by eliminating effective
opposition. In the Congo, tribalism has produced conflict and violence. In Nigeria, a
middle course of federation has been pursued. Balkanized by rival European powers in the
past, African boundary lines impose artificial divisions on already complex patterns of
tribal and subtribal groupings. In some instances, tribal ties have been successfully
exploited to develop a sense of national identification. Growing nationalism, however, may
become a future obstacle to broader African identification.
Nationalism or 'Tribalism': The Evolution of Cape Afrikaner Ethnic Consciousness in the Late Nineteenth Century - Mottie Tamarkin. Abstract: This article seeks to explore the evolution of the ethnic consciousness of the Afrikaners in the Cape Colony at an initial and crucial stage. The colonial Cape Afrikaners are treated as a core community, distinguished from Afrikaner communities in other states in South Africa. It is argued that their collective consciousness was shaped primarily by their core colonial experience rather than by their ethnocultural commonality with the other diaspora Afrikaner communities.
Relating Global Tensions: Modern Tribalism and Postmodern Nationalism -
James P.
Abstract: What is the relationship in the contemporary world between the abstract global
peace of state-initiated violence from above and the embodied violence of
persons hacking into others with machetes as they lay on the ground? Can this be explained
simply in terms of the difference between the rationalising modern nation-state and
resurgent tribalism? This article explores the contradictions associated with peace and
violence in a globalising - localising world, both generally and in relation to violence
in Rwanda and Bosnia-Kosovo. The article is intended predominantly as a political essay
opening up lines of understanding. It argues that the postmodernists hopes that
postnationalism will offer a way out of the mess is thoroughly misplaced.
Wrestling with Japanese Tribalism Emerging Collaborative Opportunities For India
and Japan - Lambert, Bruce Henry.
Abstract: Japanese firms, with their strong technology base and high domestic factor
costs, have the potential of teaming with India, with its more basic infrastructure and
eight times the population. Japan's poorly-performing excess capital could fuel India's
strongly-developing middle class and robust entrepreneurialism. Especially promising are
collaborative information technology projects. What stands in the way of a greatly
expanded relationship? Much of the blockage stems from Japan's insularism, an impetus here
labeled tribalism. A hopeful dimension is that this tribalism can be clearly defined as
archaic, recognized as detrimental, and then toned-down.
Tribalism: First Things First - Jeff Ballabon.
In today's world, largely as a result of Judaism-Christianity-Islam-Enlightenment, we
tend to overlook the real tectonic plates along which human conflicts erupt: tribes.
Tribalism - simple, instinctual, unintellectual, amoral tribalism - is a far more potent
force than any of the big unifying universalist ideas to which we generally attribute the
great victories and tragedies of civilized humanity.
Jeux De Masques: Postmodern Tribalism - Michel Maffesoli, Charles R.
Foulkes.
Tribalism & Racism among the Ancient Greeks - A Weberian Perspective. Michael Bakaoukas.
Abstract: Were the ancients Greeks racists in the modern sense of the term
racist? The terms ancient Greek proto-racism, tribalism are used here to denote the abstract, narcissistic notion that not only the
non-Greek barbarians, but also certain ancient Greek tribes (like the Macedonians, the
Boeoteans etc.) should be excluded from the Hellenic community, for they were considered
to be inferior compared with the general Hellenic civilization. The present paper analyses
comparatively the social phenomena of ancient Greek tribalism and modern racism in order
to answer the following question: what distinguishes the ancient Greek racism from
the modern one?
After postmodernism : Reactionary tribalism - Antonio Robert J. This essay links reactionary tribalism to a recurrent 20th-century theoretical tendency, the total critique of modernity-a fusion of oversimplified Nietzschean and Weberian ideas.
Relating Global Tensions: Modern Tribalism and Postmodern Nationalism - Paul James. Abstract: What is the relationship in the contemporary world between the abstract global ‘peace’ of state-initiated violence from above and the embodied violence of persons hacking into others with machetes as they lay on the ground? Can this be explained simply in terms of the difference between the rationalising modern nation-state and resurgent tribalism? The article is intended predominantly as a political essay opening up lines of understanding. It argues that the postmodernists' hopes that postnationalism will offer a way out of the mess is thoroughly misplaced. This is particularly so given that those states that swept militarily into Kosovo from above now project themselves across the globe with the same new enthusiasm for pax postnationalism as the postmodernists themselves.