Tribalism

Many of the most disturbing images of the last decade of the twentieth century have depicted horrific episodes of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and protracted ethnic or communal conflicts. In fact, post-Cold War world politics seems to have been ‘engulfed in convulsive fits of ethnic insecurity, violence and genocide’ (Lake and Rothchild, 1996, p. 41). These events have generated extensive intellectual debate among policy makers, academics and other commentators. In particular these debates have revealed two sets of assumptions about the underlying causes of ethnic antagonisms. Some argue that these conflicts represent a revival of premodern or ‘tribal’ identities, whilst others argue that they are part of a late-modern ‘fragmentary’ reaction against homogenising tendencies of globalisation...

In To cite this work: Mount, Gavin. “A World of Tribes?” in G. Fry and J. O’Hagan (eds) Contending Images of World Politics, Palgrave MacMillan, 2000

This research study examines the relationship between tribalism and ethically suspect behaviors, and tribalism and corruption. The work is also an examination of whether tribalism is a unique cultural behavior that is different from Hofstede's and other cultural dimensions. We used the institutional anomie theory to develop my hypotheses relating tribalism to individuals' ethically suspect behaviors and corruption. Using the hierarchical linear modeling technique, multiple regression analysis, the bivariate analysis and secondary data from the tribalism index, the World Value Survey, and the KOF Index of Globalization the study showed that tribalism is a cultural dimension different from Hofstede's four cultural dimensions (i.e., power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, and masculinity). The study also showed that tribalism is positively related to corruption. Moreover, the positive relationship between tribalism and corruption is weaker at a higher level of globalization. However, the study did not support the positive relationship between tribalism at the country level and ethically suspect behaviors at the individual level. Future research, theoretical and practical implications, and research limitations are also discussed.

Boundaries are mere artifacts that have little basis in reality. It is we ourselves who create them, and the entities they delineate are, therefore, figments of our own mind. — Eviatar Zerubavel, The Fine Line, p. 3 I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came to tell you it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders and boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from here… is a choice I leave to you. — The Matrix

Foragers, farmers and pastoralists is my third big book project. My research started out on similarities between gifted and ASD children and was titled The Hunter-Gatherer Neurotribe. In it I hypothesised that the usually four temperaments of common personality tests like the Myers-Briggs or Helen Fisher’s types have their evolutionary origin in our ancestral modes of subsistence: hunting-gathering, farming and herding.

I had a lot of online feedback from people. Many found the idea very intuitive and plausible and strongly identified with the evolutionary types. Many others doubted that our recent “work environments” could have resulted in different types, when our ancestors had been foragers for more than 95% of the past 200.000 years. Most evolutionary psychologists still have the assumption that we are basically paleolithic foragers. None of us really are, the past 10.000 years left significant evolutionary traces in our minds. Even if many of us are mixed foragers, farmers and pastoralists, very often one type is dominant due to a process called assortative mating, ie the “fiery” pastoralist types  prefer to find a partner with a similar temperament and so do the “earthly” farmer and the “airy” forager types.

For each culture in history the specific mix of temperaments constituted its “character” and determined the trajectory of its future. By picking apart the evolutionary temperament it becomes possible to see history as governed by laws, to some extent. History isn’t random, but follows causality and there are certain recurring patterns that we will be able to identify. Most revolutions in history are forager revolutions and the reasons will become clear throughout this book.

Long before I became interested in Evolutionary Psychology, history was my passion. The 12 year old me was fascinated by the range of possible human behaviour and had the feeling that the key to understanding lay in our history. As an adult I am far more fascinated by Evolution, but I have rediscovered history. Human evolution and human history are tightly intertwined. I hope this book will shed some light on both history and human evolution. As the basic premise of this book is still very hypothetical there is a risk that a lot of this narrative contains errors. However, the picture that is painted here makes so much sense that it will be hard to convince me otherwise.

Somalia is generally thought of as a homogenous society, with a common Arabic ancestry, a shared culture of nomadism and one Somali mother tongue. This study challenges this myth. Using the Jareer/Bantu as a case study, the book shows how the Negroid physical features of this ethnic group has become the basis for ethnic marginalization, stigma, social exclusion and apartheid in Somalia. The book is another contribution to the recent deconstruction of the perceived Somali homogeneity and self-same assertions. It argues that the Somalis, just like most societies, employ multiple levels of social and ethnic distinctions, one of which is the Jareer versus Jileec divide. Dr. Eno successfully portrays another Somalia, in which a mythical homogeneity masks the oppression and social exclusion suffered by some ethnic groups in the country

Kadin sunneti, insanlik kadar eski bir olgudur. Bugun dunya'da 30 ulkede uygulanmaktadir. Kadin sunnetinin en cok goruldugu yerler Misir, Kenya ve Etiyopya'dir. Bircok kabile, kadin sunnetini uygular. Bu bilimsel calismamda en cok bilinen 20 kabileyi inceledim. Iyi okumalar

In our time, Western states have to abandon the classical concept of a nation as a culturally integral community and to look for solutions to the problem of supporting the unity of their citizens while preserving the cultural diversity brought in recent decades by migrants from all over the world. In modern conditions, this should happen so that postcolonial states, most of which are initially multicultural due to their unique history of formation, will find themselves in a preferable position if they abandon attempts to build nations according to the outdated classical Western model. While irreversible globalization is associated with modernity (Modern History), which began in the West half a millennium ago, nation-building in contemporary postcolonial countries shows that globalization is in no way synonymous with Westernization, and modernity, as a historically conditioned type of society and culture, disintegrates into many modernities. Our analysis of the process of the formation of nations in three postcolonial states of Africa-the United Republic of Tanzania, the Republic of Zambia, and the Republic of Uganda-has shown that today, due to better historical prerequisites, Tanzania is closer than Zambia and Uganda (and, in general, most of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa) to the formation of a nation as a community of fellow citizens committed to the same basic values and having a single culture and identity over local and private-ethnic, regional, confessional-cultures and identities with their value systems, for whom loyalty to one nation-state, common for all of them, is primary in relation to the differences caused by them. In Zambia and Uganda, local identities, especially tribal and ethnic, are more significant than in Tanzania. However, considering the global trend of multiculturalization, which is especially clearly manifested today in the West, the situation in Zambia, Uganda, and most similar postcolonial countries is perhaps becoming equally or even more promising.

Compte rendu de  Hassan Rachik, Symboliser la nation par Hajar Dehhani "Un essai édifiant qui nous permet de reconsidérer les actions du mouvement national marocain et de les voir sous un nouveau jour : celui d’actions qui ont joué un rôle central dans la genèse du nationalisme. "

Tribalism is rife all over the world. Unfortunately it is more fragmented nowadays than 30 years ago when the Berlin Wall was torn down. In this short book I will argue that our triblistic tendencies stem from three evolutionary adaptations to our ancestral modes of subsistence: hunting-gathering (foraging), farming and herding.

The content of this book (and much more) is available for free on my blog The Bigger Picture. In fact, I have put the post of my blog together to create this themed ebook. A lot of the core ideas therefore get repeated over and over again. I apologize to the reader.

Animal ethicists have been debating the morality of speciesism for over forty years. Despite rather persuasive arguments against this form of discrimination, many philosophers continue to assign humans a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. The primary source of evidence for this position is our intuition that humans’ interests matter more than the similar interests of other animals. And it must be acknowledged that this intuition is both powerful and widespread. But should we trust it for all that? The present paper defends a negative answer to that question, based on a debunking argument. The intuitive belief that humans matter more than other animals is unjustified because it results from an epistemically defective process. It is largely shaped by tribalism, our tendency to favor ingroup members as opposed to outgroup members. And this influence is distortive for two reasons. First, tribalism evolved for reasons unrelated to moral truths; hence, it would at best produce true moral beliefs accidentally. Second, tribalism generates a vast quantity of false moral beliefs, starting with racist beliefs. Once this intuition is discarded, little evidence remains that speciesism is morally acceptable.

This research project investigates the links between state indigeneity and Nigeria’s national identity using Lagos and Jos (Plateau State) as case-studies. It deconstructs the institutional and historical aspects of state indigene-ship/indigeneity across the Nigerian federation, before finally stipulating recommendations from both the policy and scholarly angle that could be of positive addition to the school of thought concerned with indigeneity and citizenship politics in Nigeria and, Africa to an extent.

The culture of corruption has grown roots in Kenyan society at large and has become an endemic. Institutions, which were designed for the regulation of the relationships between citizens and the State, are being used instead for the personal enrichment of public officials (politicians and bureaucrats) and other corrupt private agents (individuals, groups, and businesses). Corruption persists in Kenya primarily because there are people in power who benefit from it and the existing governance institutions lack both the will and capacity to stop them from doing so. This work takes a governance and development perspective to analytically examine the causes and consequences of corruption in Kenya. It identifies the key factors (such as absence of strong and effective democratic institutions, centralised power, lack of public accountability, and impunity) and synthesises and analyses available data, indicators, and other information in that regard. The research attributed Causes of Corruption in Kenya to the following: Bad governance political patronage, Lack of political will, Breakdown/erosion/perversion of societal values and norms. Non enforcement of the law, Tribalism, favouritism, nepotism and cronyism, Weak or absence of management systems, Procedures and practices. Misuse of discretionary power vested in individuals or offices, Weak civil society and apathy. Lack of professional integrity, Lack of transparency and accountability, inefficient public sector and Greed. In addition, the police were reported to be corrupt. It was reported that they arrest criminals not to keep law and order but to extort money. A criminal can do anything in Kenya and go scorts free as long he has the cash to buy his freedom from the police. The study is a literature review with systematic principles (Hagen-Zanker et al., 2012). This approach is designed to produce a review strategy that adheres to the core concepts of systematic reviews – rigour, transparency, a commitment to taking questions of evidence seriously while allowing for a more flexible and user-friendly handling of retrieval and analysis methods (DFID, 2014; Hagen-Zanker and Mallett, 2013; Hagen-Zanker et al., 2012).

This study examines the relationship between tribal factors of ethnic fractionalization, group grievance, gender inequality, indigenous population, and the country’s level of corruption. This study also explains how tribalism causes corruption in 132 countries worldwide.

Tribalism is at the forefront of public discussion across the political spectrum in America today. Zombie stories have also risen to unprecedented popularity. Amid present-day racial, political, and otherwise tribal tensions, the story I Am Legend has particular resonance. As the original inspiration behind the modern zombie trope, it was published as a novella in 1954 and has been remade as a film multiple times, in 1964, 1971, and 2007. Using grounded theory, I explore each film regarding what moral attitudes are portrayed concerning confrontation between rival milieus. My findings center on four themes: identification, compassion, ambivalence, and condemnation. Overall, in chronological order, the different renditions of the story exhibit decreasing compassion for the other and decreasing ambivalence about relations with the other. The most dramatic change is between the 1971 and 2007 remakes. Implications for what the changes in the morals presented in the story might reflect in terms of social changes in America are discussed.

The word “tribalism” has become the new cant expression. Linguist Geoff Nunberg nominated it as the word of the year 2017. The current usage of “political tribalism” stems from Yale Law School professor Amy Chua’s 1918 book Political Tribes: Groups Instinct and the Fate of Nations. She posits a new expanded definition of tribe to include whites, blacks, ethnic groups, religious groups, and even political parties. Chua’s use of the term “political tribes” does nothing to improve on Madison’s term “factions.” Madison’s point was that when a political faction constitutes a majority, a large republic in contrast to a small democracy functions to prevent the majority from infringing on the rights of a minority. But when a faction constitutes a minority, Madison thought that the “republican principle” would take care of the matter.

The problem with Chua’s construct of “tribalism” is that it equally puts the blame on both the Liberal, or Progressives in the Democratic  Party and Conservatives in the Republican Party. More accurately we need to view the current crisis in American Democracy on how the governmental checks and balances envisioned by the Founding Fathers has been broken. The broken system is the result of a number of things, including political gerrymandering, the Supreme Court ruling affording the protection of free speech to Super PACs (political actions committees), and the abandonment of the “fairness doctrine” of the Federal Communications Commission.

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political voting districts in order to give one political party or another an advantage in elections. The term gerrymandering dates back to an article in the Boston Gazette in March 1812 accusing Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry of signing a law that drew elections maps in the shape of a salamander to giver his Democratic-Republican Party an advantage. In modern times the tactic has been used by both Democrats and Republicans. But in recent years the tactic has been refined using computers to use voter databases to draw voting districts with more precision.

The Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission case of 2010 created another problem for elections. In this case the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United sought to televise a film critical of Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2008 presidential election. The Federal Elections Commission blocked the broadcast based on the 2002 Bipartison Campaign Reforms Act (known as McCain-Feingold after its sponsors senators Republican of Arizona John McCain and Democrat from Wisconsin Russ Feingold  prohibited any corporation or labor union from electioneering within 30 days of a primary. The Supreme Court ruled that this law violated the right of free speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Citizens United  overturned the ban on corporation and union contributions and allowed Super PACs (Political Action Committees) to spend large amounts of money on political advertisements without revealing the donors to their organizations. The Democrats as well have formed super PACs. One of them that supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is Priorities USA Action to which the Hungarian-American George Soros donated $7 million. Ironically, Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election without the benefit of major super PAC contributions.

The Fairness Doctrine was issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1949 requiring the holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues in a honest, equitable, and manner. In 1987, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, the FCC declared the Fairness Doctrine as unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Meanwhile, in the late 1990s there was a growing politicization of cable news, which technically came under the jurisdiction of the FCC by virtue of being a broadcast medium. In 1996 Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch founded the Fox News Channel satellite news television network and hired Roger Ailes, a Republic political strategist, to become its CEO of the news operation. Another conservative news outlet was One America News (OAN) founded in July 2013 founded in San Diego, California, by Robert Herring, Sr. of Herring Networks, Inc. OAN is noted for its pro-Trump and anti-abortion coverage and for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton. Not only did Conservative propagandists take over Fox News and OAN, but there was consolidation of local television stations by Right-Wing communications companies. The largest owner of television stations in the United States is the Sinclair Broadcast Group founded by David D. Smith.

Adding to this radical politicization of the Right-Wing broadcast and print media, there was an attempt to use social media to influence the election by Vladimir Putin and his Russian agents in the Russian Military Intelligence Service (GRU). In June 2016 the Democratic National Committee announced that that their campaign servers had been hacked by an online persona known as Guccifer2.0. In August 2016 the Russian spread fabricated articles on approximately 7,000 pro-Trump social media accounts, using Internet trolls (persons who spread negative information on the Internet), botnets (malicious software that spreads rumors without the website owner’s knowledge), and Twitter accounts (online social media accounts that publish Tweets, i.e., messages originally limited to 140 characters).

The Electoral College was never intended to work the way it was used in the November 2016 election in which the Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton received more popular votes 65,853,514 (48.2%) than the Republican nominee Donald J. Trump 62,984,828 (46.1%). But Trump received 304 votes in the Electoral College to Clinton’s 227. Alexander Hamilton explained the purpose the Electoral College in Federalist Paper Number 68. “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” What the Founding Fathers were concerned about was what they called the “Tyranny of the Majority.” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes that today we are confronted by a “Tyranny of the Minority.”

In conclusion, the real issue for the American Empire is not the development of “political tribalism” on the part of both Democrats and Republicans. It is much more structural. The basic concept of check and balances between the three branches of government (Executive, Judicial, and Legislative) is in danger of breaking down with a minority of Right-wing Republicans dominating all three branches.
One week after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1964, his widow Jacqueline Kennedy invited the journalist Theodore White to her mansion for an interview. At that meeting she mentioned that both she and her husband loved the musical Camelot about King Arthur that ran on Broadway between 1960 and 1963. JFK had been a classmate at Harvard with Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote the lyrics for the show. Clearly, Mrs. Kennedy was trying to shape a heroic legend for her husband and his administration. Like all legends it was not based on historical fact, given subsequent scholarship that showed JFK to be an anti-Communist Cold War warrior and to have been forced into intervening in the Civil Rights movement. And yet there is another interpretation of the Arthurian legend that might well apply to the administration of Donald J. Trump, given his stance as a denier of scientific evidence that global warming is part the result of human actions. In 1922 the American poet T. S. Eliot wrote a poem titled “Waste Land” based on his understanding the death of the Fisher King, the possessor of the Holy Grail.

The theme of market-dominant minorities underlies Amy Chua’s latest book, Political Tribes, which examines domestic identity politics and the effects of foreign identity politics on U.S. foreign policy. Chua’s focus on tribalism, that instinctual tendency of humans to associate around shared norms, values, histories, customs, and traditions, holds together what feels like two different arguments: the one about culture at home and the other about foreign policy. The problem with Chua's perspective is that anti-tribalism is tribal, i.e., a view embraced by certain elite groups in America without regard to the perspective of many ordinary Americans. Political Tribes suggests, therefore, that Chua is part of the problem: her type of tribalism is acceptable, others are not. A more convincing plea would acknowledge that the breezy cosmopolitanism Chua prefers is not accessible to all, and offer a more nuanced depiction of “Americanness” and its multiplicities.

This is corrected copy prepared for a discussion by older adults of the Biblical Book of Jonah (Yom Kippur 5776/2015), based on an essay growing out of teaching Jonah to "college-age" undergraduates, most specifically for a Senior Capstone English Department course in Comedy and Satire (Miami University, ca. 2000-2006). The Book of Jonah proves useful for the relationships among comedy, satire, Prophecy, and parable, and how a story that seems some place between banal and mildly comic to us could function in its time as gentle but pointed satire — and should function in that way for us. (Background point: A standard "Moral" for a fable is "De te fabula": This little story (dear audience) is about *you*", and a standard joke among comedians is the mock definition, "Satire": The magic mirror in which everyone sees everyone else.)

Riprendo e rielaboro in forma saggistica un testo che ho presentato recentemente in ambito mediatico-divulgativo in occasione di un fatto di cronaca avvenuto nella primavera del 2021: la scomparsa della diciottenne italo-pachistana Saman Abbas, presumibilmente uccisa dallo zio, come esecutore di una pressoché unanime sentenza di condanna a morte emanata dalla famiglia; il tutto in aderenza a uno schema ormai tristemente comune a queste vicende sempre più ricorrenti in Occidente. Se il cadavere della ragazza non è stato finora trovato, dalle intercettazioni telefoniche e dalle testimonianze del fratello (l’unico membro della famiglia che, coraggiosamente, ha denunciato l’accaduto) è emerso il seguente scenario che è stato ampiamente notiziato dai media [2]: l’uccisione è stata descritta dai parenti della vittima come l’unica soluzione possibile, un atto difficilissimo ma necessario, commesso tra le lacrime per lavare l’onore della famiglia dal comportamento della giovane; comportamento che veniva percepito come atto di gravissima inadempienza rispetto al dovere di essere una buona musulmana. In merito Saman veniva accusata di non essere rispettosa dei precetti religiosi, non veniva accettato il suo rifiuto rispetto al suo destino di matrimonio combinato in Pakistan, non era tollerato il suo desiderio di vivere all’Occidentale (ed è emblematico in merito che sui social Saman usasse il nickname “Italian girl”).

This paper is concerned with the subjugation and oppression of women in the southern region of Pakistan. Women are constantly subjugated by patriarchy and male dominance. This research paper will identify Pakistani Muslim women in rural areas and how they are marginalized under the pressure of political and social institutes of Pakistan's tribal society. The struggle for basic women rights and oppression experiences are burning issue in the Southern region of Pakistan. This paper will critically analyze the feminist study of how tribalism works as a whole hidden system. Southern women have always been under pressure and an analysis of 'My Feudal Lord' will shed light on the same issue from experiences of Tehmina Durrani as an urbanized educated woman struggling to make her place in a tribal system.

Like many of us, I have friends who are from New York who have settled permanently in Florida. The friends I am referring to live just outside of Orlando. They have lived there for over 20 years. They are both in their 70s and when they go shopping or go to any indoor venue, they wear masks. Inevitably, they are asked, "You're not from around here, are you?"

In The WEIRDest People in the World (2020) Joseph Henrich discusses the problem of scaling up primitive societies and turning them into complex ones. Joseph's answer is that intergroup competition (e.g. stealing and raiding of corn and cattle) made scaling up for protection a necessity (there is strength in numbers). This is usually how the transition from foraging to farming is explained, as farming was considerably harder labour and early farmers most likely had shorter lifespans than foragers. Thus, early farming spread not because rational individuals prefer to farm, but because farming communities with particular institutions beat mobile hunter-gatherer populations in intergroup competition. There is one huge catch to the scaling-up problem: tribalism. Most small-scale societies are very clannish and as they scale-up intra-group competition increases and the society starts to fall apart again. One need only think of warring Scottish clans a few centuries back. On the other side of the world, the echoes of the culture of honor that were part of Scotland's segmentary lineages still affect life and death: in counties of the U.S. South, the higher the percentage of Scottish or Scotch-Irish residents in the first U.S. census in 1790, the higher the murder rate is today. The cultural descendants of these migrants still tend to respond aggressively when their honor, family, or property is threatened. Globally, researchers have argued that the character of "Islamic terrorism" may be best explained by the honor psychology fermented in segmentary lineages. Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and Al Qaeda, for example, all recruit heavily from populations with segmentary lineages, and the character of their kin-based institutions may have shaped the particular religious creeds adopted by these groups. I have argued that tribalism actually increased in the transition from foraging to farming-herding. Early farmers shared more among kith and kin than the whole tribe and there were many social and probably also evolutionary developments that increased tribalism: • Transition to a patrilineal and patrilocal system • Transition to a more hierarchical system and rising inequality • Nepotism • Higher levels of conformity • Loosening of kinship marriage taboos (e.g marrying first-degree cousins) So, we get these two opposing forces: Intergroup competition: pressure to scale up Scaling-up increasing intragroup competition: pressure to scale down

For Nepantleras, “to bridge is an act of will, an act of love, an attempt toward compassion and reconciliation, and a promise to be present with the pain of others without losing themselves to it” (Anzaldúa & Keating 4). This piece witnesses my entering to confusion as an outsider/writer to write about the stories of four women who work with/for Latinx communities in the U.S. Therefore, bridging tHEiR stories together becomes an act of drawing a picture of a new home; a new tribalism. Their stories become a representation of border-crossing of liminal spaces, and of going beyond the limits of monocultural perspectives. More importantly, their realities represent the intertwined and mutual way can help the Other understand one another.

This article surveys the reasons that Arab tribalism, or qabaliyya, has been traditionally associated with nomadism, deserts, and rural populations. This commonplace is present not only in the West, but also in the mentality of urban dwellers in the Arab countries of the Middle East. Despite this misconception, it is well known that tribal people have been settled in cities and towns for decades. Building on this fact, the author argues that Arab tribes have assumed urban models of social organization in order to adapt to their relationships and assure the preservation of personal identity, protection, group solidarity and their capacity for collective action.

This study assesses the relationship between tribalism (the tribalism index) and government effectiveness (per the World Bank) in 60 countries using cross-sectional data. This study finds that countries with high tribal populations generally enjoy bad governance in terms of government ineffectiveness. Government ineffectiveness and tribalism are found to mutually reinforce each other in a robust relationship.

ABSTRACT This article surveys the reasons that Arab tribalism, or qabaliyya, has been traditionally associated with nomadism, deserts, and rural populations. This commonplace is present not only in the West, but also in the mentality of urban dwellers in the Arab countries of the Middle East. Despite this misconception, it is well known that tribal people have been settled in cities and towns for decades. Building on this fact, the author argues that Arab tribes have assumed urban models of social organization in order to adapt to their relationships and assure the preservation of personal identity, protection, group solidarity and their capacity for collective action.