The word "tribalism" can refer to two related but distinct concepts.

The first is a social system where human society is divided into small, roughly independent subgroups, called tribes. Tribal societies lacked any organizational level beyond that of the local tribe, with each tribe consisting only of a very small, local population. The internal 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 structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals. Some tribes are particularly egalitarian, and most tribes have only a vague notion of private property; many have none at all. A shared sense of identity and kinship encourages the development of kin selection. Tribalism has also been sometimes been called "primitive communism" but this is rather misleading since allegiance to a communist state is not based on kin-selective altruism. One thing that is certain is that tribalism is the very first social system that human beings ever lived in, and it has lasted much longer than any other kind of society to date. Social structure (also referred to as a social system) is a system in which people forming the society are organized by a patterns of prelationships. ... Human relationships within an ethnically diverse society. ... A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states, though some modern theorists hold that contemporary tribes can only be understood in terms of their relationship to states. ... Egalitarianism can refer to moral as well as factual theories. ... This page deals with property as ownership rights. ... Kin selection refers to changes in gene frequency across generations that are driven at least in part by interactions between related individuals, and this forms much of the conceptual basis of the theory of social evolution. ... Primitive communism, according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is the original society of humanity. ...

The other concept to which the word "tribalism" frequently refers is the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates oneself as a member of one group from the members of another. 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. 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. The term Western world or the West can have multiple meanings depending on its context. ...

Contemporary forms of tribalism

Tribalism, as a mentality, can and has taken many forms. Since tribalism involves categorizing oneself into a group, it also entails the categorization of others into other groups, often leading to prejudice and, in extreme cases, even genocide. The presence and difference of other groups aids in creating identities. Sometimes, as in the case of street gangs, differences are artificially created specifically for this purpose.

Some post-tribal-society manifestations of tribalism include:

• employees of competing companies
• Toronto Maple Leafs fans or Montreal Canadiens fans
• Political classifications such as Conservative or Liberal
• The Crips and Bloods street gangs
• Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan
• The Hutu and Tutsi tribes in the Rwandan Genocide
• Persecuting some ethnic groups, and favoring others, by the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a professional ice hockey team based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Conservative may refer to: Conservatism, political philosophy A member of a Conservative Party Conservative extension, premise of deductive logic Conservativity theorem, mathematical proof of conservative extension Conservative Judaism britney spears Category: ... Look up liberal on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Liberal may refer to: Politics: Liberalism American liberalism, a political trend in the USA Political progressivism, a political ideology that is for change, often associated with liberal movements Liberty, the condition of being free from control or restrictions Liberal Party, members of... The blue bandanas worn by most Crip gangs. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Aryan Nations (AN) is an American anti-government, anti-Semitic white nationalist group. ... Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally during the 1920s. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Tutsi are one of three native peoples of the nations of Rwanda and Burundi in central Africa, the other two being the Twa and the Hutu. ... The Rwandan Genocide was the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 [1] to 1,071,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100 days from April 6th through mid-July 1994. ... Idi Amin on a ten-shilling note Idi Amin (c. ...

Tribes and tribalism in anthropology

While ethnocentrism is one of only a very small handful of human cultural universals, the term "tribalism" has become nearly synonymous with it. This is largely due to the Eurocentrism of early anthropologists who forced tribal societies into a simplistic model of cultural evolution. Ethnocentricity is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of ones own ethnic culture. ... Eurocentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing emphasis on European (and, generally, Western) concerns, culture and values at the expense of those of other cultures. ... Cultural evolution is the structural change of a society and its values over time. ...

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 translating roughly as "eaters of raw meat." 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," suggesting that there were other people, who were simply inferior. In this, it is merely evidence of ethnocentrism, a universal cultural characteristic found in all societies. Inuit (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, singular Inuk / ᐃᓄᒃ) is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic coasts of Siberia, Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Quebec, Labrador and Greenland (see Eskimo). ... For other uses of Chippewa, see Chippewa (disambiguation). ... Ethnocentricity is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of ones own ethnic culture. ...

Tribalism and violence

The term "tribalism" taken in the sense of societal structure usually carries a connotation that society is not only divided into smaller groups, but that these groups are actively hostile towards one another. Thus, "tribalism" as a social structure connotes a society divided in civil conflict between myriad small groups.

The anthropological debate on warfare among tribes is unsettled. While certainly found among horticultural tribes, an open question remains whether such warfare is a typical feature of tribal life, or an anomaly found only in certain circumstances, such as scarce resources (as with the Inuit), or among food producing societies. 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. Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, human or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... The United States detonated an atomic bomb over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. ... Inuit (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, singular Inuk / ᐃᓄᒃ) is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic coasts of Siberia, Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Quebec, Labrador and Greenland (see Eskimo). ... Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization. ...

If nothing else, conflict in tribal societies can never achieve the absolute scale of civilized warfare. Tribes use forms of subsistence such as horticulture and foraging which, though more efficient, cannot yield the same number of absolute calories as agriculture. This limits tribal populations significantly, especially when compared to agricultural populations. When tribal conflict does occur, it results in few fatalities. Lawerence 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. Inuit (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, singular Inuk / ᐃᓄᒃ) is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic coasts of Siberia, Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Quebec, Labrador and Greenland (see Eskimo). ...

Tribalism as a sense of identity (its second definition), on the other hand, can clearly play a strong role in motivation for aggressive wars, and this is another reason to draw a distinction between the two definitions of the word. Some examples include WWII and also the slaughter of the Cathars by crusaders in 1209 AD. Cathars being expelled from Carcassone in 1209. ...

Tribalism and evolution

Tribalism has a very adaptive effect in human evolution. Humans are social animals, and ill-equipped to live on their own. Tribalism and ethnocentrism help to keep individuals committed to the group, even when personal relations may fray. This keeps individuals from wandering off. Thus, ethnocentric individuals would have a higher survival rate -- or at least, with their higher commitment to the group, more opportunities to breed. A more significant vector may be that groups with a strong sense of unity and identity can benefit from kin selection behaviour 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. Logically, a distinct divide between one's own group and other groups fosters the ability of the individual to interact with members of those groups in a manner that is equally distinct: one being altruistic (in the case of a group of unrelated members) or kin-selective (in the case of a group of more or less related members), the other being violent. Human evolution is the part of the theory of evolution by which human beings emerged as a distinct species. ... Ethnocentrism (Greek ethnos nation + -centrism) is a set of beliefs or practices based on the view that ones own group is the center of everything. ... Kin selection refers to changes in gene frequency across generations that are driven at least in part by interactions between related individuals, and this forms much of the conceptual basis of the theory of social evolution. ...

While it may be tempting to believe that racial conflict, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are the result of increased social pressures from relatively recent societal paradigms such as nations and empires, our understanding of early human history suggests otherwise. Acts of genocide are described in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament (Deut7:2), which is one of the earliest historical works. Genocide is also often used to explain the disappearance of Neanderthals in Europe shortly after the arrival of early humans in prehistorical times. It is logical to assume that a predisposition to tribalism and specifically to genocide aided early humans in their expansion into Europe. Such tendencies continue to serve their evolutionary purposes even in modern times in places such as Rwanda. While very few would view such conflicts as positive, it cannot strictly be said that tribalism has become maladaptive. While most would regard this as unjust, the final outcome of the Rwandan Genocide, is that there are fewer Tutsis with which the Hutus must compete for resources. This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) Article 2 as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing... NOTE: Judaism commonly uses the term Tanakh, but not Old Testament, because it does not recognize the New Testament as a continuation or completion of the Jewish bible. ... Binomial name Homo neanderthalensis King, 1864 The Neanderthal or Neandertal was a species of genus Homo (Homo neanderthalensis) that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia from about 230,000 to 29,000 years ago (in the Middle Palaeolithic, early Stone Age). ... The Rwandan Genocide was the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 [1] to 1,071,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100 days from April 6th through mid-July 1994. ...

According to a study by Robin Dunbar at the University of Liverpool, primate brain size is determined by social group size. 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. Robin Dunbar is an evolutionary biologist, specialising in primate behaviour. ... The University of Liverpool is a university in the city of Liverpool, England in the United Kingdom. ... Dunbars number (also known as the Dunbar number or the Monkeysphere) is a value significant in sociology and anthropology. ... Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell (born September 1, 1963) is a United Kingdom-born, Canadian-raised journalist now based in New York City who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. ... The Tipping Point (ISBN 0316316962) is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Nevertheless, complex societies (and corporations) rely upon the tribal instincts of their members for their organization and survival. 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. 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. A corporation (usually known in the United Kingdom and Ireland as a company) is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a Civil law systems may refer to corporations as moral persons; they may also go by the name... The term nation-state, while often used interchangeably with the terms unitary state and independent state, refers properly to the parallel occurence of a state and a nation. ...

In complex societies, this tribalistic impulse can also be channeled 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 our 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 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. Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, human or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... Franz Boas Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 22, 1942) was one of the pioneers of modern anthropology and is often called the Father of American Anthropology. A German by birth, Boas worked for most of his life in North America. ... Cultural evolution is the structural change of a society and its values over time. ... Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization. ... Marshall Sahlins (born 1930) is a prominent American anthropologist. ... The theory that the original affluent society was that of hunter-gatherers was articulated by Marshall Sahlins at the symposium on Man the Hunter held in Chicago in 1966. ...

This work formed the foundation for primitivist philosophy, 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 traditional, derogatory sense, but to refer to what they see as the defining characteristics of tribal life: namely, an open, egalitarian, classless and cooperative community, which can be characterized as primitive communism. New tribalists insist that this is, in fact, the natural state of humanity, and proven by two million years of human evolution. Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. ... John Zerzan John Zerzan (born 1943) is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. ... Daniel Quinn (born 1935 in Omaha, Nebraska) is a United States writer. ... New tribalists are radical adherents of Neo-Tribalism. ... Egalitarianism can refer to moral as well as factual theories. ... This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ... Primitive communism, according to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is the original society of humanity. ...

Whether life in this natural state was better or worse than life in modern society is a question that remains open to debate, and the answer may depend on each person's preferences as well as on the particular tribes that are used as a point of reference - because tribal life itself was not (and is not) the same for all tribes; the natural environment where a tribe lives has an especially important influence.

See also

This entry is related to, but not included in the Political ideologies series or one of its sub-series. Other related articles can be found at the Politics Portal.

• Neo-Tribalism
• Tribal chief
• aboriginal people
• Native Americans
• civilization
• Dunbar's number
• Sectarianism
• Ethnocentrism

An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. ... Neo-Tribalism is the ideology that human beings have evolved to live in a tribal, as opposed to a modern, society, and thus cannot achieve genuine happiness until some semblance of archaic lifestyles has been re-created or re-embraced. ... The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view. ... Indigenous peoples are: Peoples living in an area prior to colonization by a state Peoples living in an area within a nation-state, prior to the formation of a nation-state, but who do not identify with the dominant nation. ... Native Americans is a term which has several different common meanings and scope, according to regional use and context. ... Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization. ... Dunbars number (also known as the Dunbar number or the Monkeysphere) is a value significant in sociology and anthropology. ... Sectarianism refers (usually pejoratively) to a rigid adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination. ... Ethnocentricity is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of ones own ethnic culture. ...

External links

• "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