Forget "Tribe" - Become a Citizen of the World

Photo: Raising Miro: On the Road of Life


Ligaya Mishan
April 13, 2020
The New York Times T Magazine


Some things, the writer of this essay gets right, IMHO. Others, she does not.

Writer at large, Ligaya Mishan, declares she is going to rescue "tribe" from "decades of anthropological study that privileged Western civilization." Okay. I guess. But that would be a tall order in a short New York Times T Magazine essay. Yes, the British Colonial Office hired anthropologists in the early-mid 20th Century to further colonialism, and help expand the privileges of Westerners beyond Europe.

I am not sure what decades of anthropological study the writer wants to rescue "tribe" from. Because later she rightly refers to American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins who objected to the term in the mid-20th century; and who was quickly joined by virtually all other American anthropologists, especially within US cultural anthropology. Within British social anthropology, on the other hand, is where the term "tribe" took root in academia and far beyond in the early-20th century. However, even among the Brits its professional usage declined significantly, especially so by the middle of that century. Regrettably, the British, via BBC, still to this day like to report on "tribal clashes" in Africa.

More importantly, there is much more to the anthropological use of "tribe" that Mishan does not address. At the end of this post, for example, there is a link to the use of "tribe" with reference to African ethnic groups, a very good article readers will find informative.

All that said, there are more important fish I want to fry here than the history of anthropology shortcomings in Mishan's essay. The real problems with her essay begin when she tries to "square this [early human within-band bonding] with the ethos of individualism."

First, Mishan ignores the early Christian innovative emphasis on the individual's choice of accepting or not accepting God and His redemption. Prior to this there was not much choosing individuals could do. This was an important occurrence in the history of Western individualism. Okay, the Christian notion was not a total liberation of the individual. However, it helped lay a foundation for European individuals to dare to begin thinking independently and scientifically about the Earth and the cosmos, and later about society, philosophically and politically.

Mishan claims individualism originated in 12th Century Europe, but "was not fully embraced until the 17th Century, at the start of the Age of Enlightenment." I think hers is a too narrow understanding of individualism. If you want to limit yourself to individuals being more important than their groups, okay, I guess. However, the individual-group dynamic balance is as old as humankind itself. We covered this at Own & Ibis a few times.

It is not a matter of there being no individualism before it began during the 12th Century in Europe. This is not a good way to think about individualism. Nevertheless, Mishan goes on and compounds the problem of her narrow view by claiming "the primacy of the individual is still resisted by many cultures, particularly much of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America." In a sense she is right, it is. But emphasizing overwhelming individualism is and has been resisted for a long time, and for good reasons.

Over-emphasized, unfettered individualism is not a good permanent human strategy for individuals or groups. It wasn't 200,000 years ago and has not been since. It still isn't. Much of the dysfunction we see in many Western societies, and those that have followed Western ways, is attributable to a culmination of a long-growing imbalance promoting and favoring individual freedom over group responsibility, especially beginning in the early 20th Century in the US.

When did this begin? If you want to find the source of individualism, look at the transition from nomadic hunting-gathering band life to settled agricultural urban life in Mesopotamia beginning between 10-15,000BP. That is when and where individualism's ascendance first reared its head. The autocratic governance that ensued was a driving down of the rise of this me-first-over-my-anonymous-fellow-urbanites thinking. This is when we first began to systematically forsake our brothers, sisters, in-laws, fellow-workers, and friends. Individuals became even more "special" during the Enlightenment, and pathologically so beginning in the early 20th Century. See my blog essay, “Enlightenment Lost: A Faustian Exchange of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity for Self Glorification and Material Convenience,” November 2018.

Mishan is right to note Heidegger's notion that to be human is to be in the world, not standing proudly apart and above it. She is also right to note that when the context of living grows beyond human’s ability to deal with it on a face-to-face basis, as was begun in early Mesopotamian settlements, "we become unmoored," she says.

Also, to her credit the writer is right to ask "is 'tribe' the best way to describe the loose alliances of today." Regrettably, she concludes it is not the best term but it is all we can come up with to describe "groups that transcend the old ties of kinship and language." "The English language fails us," she says. But she declares that "no other word in English carries the same promise of a family beyond family."

I think many people like using the term "tribe" because it has a certain cachet, a hipness, a primalness or authenticity, that other words such as group, clique, and others are not regarded to have. I can hear the Iron John tom-toms and chanting now. I think the use of tribe is a Western-hatched fad that will soon fade. Fade, but not before it is folded into our false notions of an instinctual human nature embedded in our genes and neurons – a false ideological embedment that has already begun. Look for articles and essays to soon appear purporting to have found our "tribe gene" or "tribe neural pathways/clusters/networks."

I credit Mishan for mentioning Durkheim’s notions of a "collective effervescence" and that humans are prone to "coming together, thinking together, feeling together, and acting together." Yes, that has been going on since the Pleistocene. I am not sure it had an "effervescent" quality, but early humans certainly knew who was a member of their band and who was not. That sort of group composition awareness has been around as long as social mammals have.

But there is something about the modern use of "tribe" I don't like. If it's, say, white nationalism and the similarities between such like-minded groups in Georgia and Oregon one wants to focus on, then refer to your white nationalist brothers and sisters, or comrades. If I want to march with Extinction Rebellion or with women on the National Mall in Washington, I do not need to be referred to as a member of the ER or Woman tribe.

As a cosmopolitan in Diogenes's sense, I personally prefer to be thought of and described, first and foremost, as a "citizen of the world," a human being. If you must, an ethnographer, an American-Ugandan, a person of English descent. But not a "tribe" member. We can do better by not following the "tribe" fad. Following it is not really helping us understand what we humans are and why we do the things we do.

Returning to the essay, Mishan then brings in Marshall McLuhan who, she says, "attributed the decay of tribal culture to the overriding of oral tradition by a codified, written language, a process accelerated by the 15th-century invention of the printing press." Uh, no, not exactly.

There are things I like about McLuhan's notion the "medium is the message," but this idea of his Mishan presents isn't another of them. No, the "decay of tribal culture" was not begun or caused by written language. It was begun by the overwhelming press and complexity of living in larger, settled groups, in Mesopotamia. Codified or written language, including law, was invented to account for surplus food, and for social control where face-to-face accountability had begun to prove less and less effective. Writing did not do in tribal culture, its use by autocrats and their functionaries and agents did. They used it to shift individual allegiance from between persons, to between persons and the state and metropolis.

Finally regarding the essay, Mishan says tribes are "instinctual, constantly shape-shifting, drafters of their own fates" (empahsis mine). "Instinctual?"  No. See above and everywhere else I have written about “human nature.”

I also don't agree about tribes being "drafters of their own fates." Consider Pam Dewey's docucommentaries on religion and the co-evolution and rise of US conservatism, the Frontline documentary, The Persuaders. Modern "tribes" are found, created, and fine-tuned by marketers and advertisers, and used by manufacturers, service providers, and politicians to direct our economic and voter behavior.

What to do with "tribe?" Ignore it, don't use it. Use "group." Hopefully it's a fad that will go away sooner rather than later. 

Here is a list of essays and commentaries presenting my views on self, tribe, and band. From From the Unknown into Uncertainty: Essays and Commentary on the Origin, Evolution and Future of Humankind by James E. Lassiter:

Essay 6, A New Map for Africa
Essay 7, Christian Exceptionalism
Essay 18, The Origin and Evolution of Language
Essay 41, The Origin and Evolution of Religion
Essay 63, Suffering and Injustice
Essay 91, After the Collapse of Modernity
Essay 95, Going Local, Again
Essay 97, You Choose, Section 1, "Primal Accommodation" and Section 2, "Settled Agricultural Autocracy"

and

Commentary 2, On 'How Do We Explain the Evolution of Religion?'
Commentary 38, Yes, There is a Human Nature
Commentary 59, Game of Thrones

Finally, here is another take on "tribe," this from the Africa region context:

"The Trouble with Tribe" by Chris Lowe, Teaching Tolerance, Spring 2001

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