Tribe

The term tribe is used in different contexts as a category of human social group. It is predominantly used in anthropology, but there are multiple and contrasting definitions, from different theoretical perspectives, due to the variety of existing kinship structures and forms of social organization. It is considered hierarchically higher than the lineage or clan, but lower than a nation or state. Sometimes tribes even have legal status, such as Native American tribes in the US, which have a nation-to-nation relationship with the US federal government.

Toba tribe, near the Pilcomayo River, 1892.

It is a social, political and anthropological concept full of controversy. Depending on authors, times and trends, the concept has different meanings and serves different purposes. Therefore, discrepancies arise between the various social scientists, depending on the approach from which they work. The concept has even been used to manipulate the politics of colonized subjects, and establish subdivisions or minimize the importance of socio-political entities, mainly in Africa and Asia.

Theories

The concept of tribe is found in Jewish and Greco-Latin cultures; Originally it referred to a culturally homogeneous set of families with a real or mythical common ancestor. In turn, the grouped tribes could constitute a larger cultural group similar to that of protonation.

Marshall suggests the following definition: "social group associated with the family, together with the autonomy of a nation". A relevant symbolic interactionism between the members and a clear place of socialization of the same, which must last for more than one generation and with kinship and obligations verifiable by the observers and documented by them. Artifacts, traditions and evidence, such as a magna carta, a sacred book, a folklore and a language, for a territory that was historically delimited.

The term tribe, taken from the vocabulary of the political institutions of Antiquity that includes other terms to express the affiliation by birth to a group (Benaveniste, 1969), was first used by the evolutionists of the ALE century to designate the political organization of societies located in a certain stage of the evolution of humanity. Escaping the failure of evolutionary concepts, it continues to be used in anthropology, associated with the functionalist approach to stateless cities, frequently called Tribal Societies. The term tribe is in fact applied to very different societies in terms of their way of maintaining social order without the existence of a centralized authority. Thus, the Nuer tribe is the largest united political unit, compared to other similar units, and which regulate their internal differences through arbitration (Evans-Pritchard, 1940). This definition underlines the territorial dimension of the tribe, contrary to the evolutionist definition, which opposed archaic tribal organization and territorial organization.

Origin and etymology

The term tribe appears in ancient Rome, when various bands, clans or a group of related people were united, different from each other, but who had the need to form a community and create institutions so that coexistence is possible among the people who live together. They have decided to live together and united, knowing the differences between them and between the tribes.

The word tribe has originated from the Latin numerous words such as:

• Distribute: give materials or food among the tribes.
• Tribunal and tribune: to administer justice and politics.
• Tax and contribution: contribution of economic goods.

Tribes in Ancient Rome

From the Latin tribes, referring to the original tripartite ethnic division of Ancient Rome: Ramnes (Ramnenses), Tities (Titienses) and Lucers, which according to Varro would correspond to the Latins, the Sabines and the Etruscans, respectively.

Ramnes comes from Romulus, leader of the Latins, Tities from Tito Tacio, leader of the Sabines, and Luceres from Lucumon, leader of the Etruscan army, who would have helped the Latins. For Tito Livio, the three tribes were, in fact, squadrons of horsemen, rather than ethnic divisions. Each tribe contributed one hundred horsemen, called celeres to form the Centurias inauguratae.

Critical definition (in an anthropological key)

For both evolutionists and functionalists, the tribe is a social group with a pre-state organization, based on the grouping of numerous families. For evolutionists, we are facing one of the four essential stages that mark the evolution of society: band, tribe, chiefdom and State, where the relationship with the territory (non-existent, with respect to bands and tribes, necessary for What it does to understand the leadership and the State is key to categorizing them.Functionalism considers that the existence or not of a territory/social group association is not the determining fact, but is based on whether the social order is founded on a centralized power and there is social segmentation (leadership and State) or power is not centralized and there is no social segmentation (gang and tribe).

The generalization of the use of the concept of "tribe" to different social groups from any part of the world brings out contradictions in either of the two approaches: in Polynesia the tribes have a certain social segmentation (tribal aristocracy) and central power (the chief of the tribe assumes executive, military and economic functions, in addition to religious ones, that go beyond those typical of a “big man”;); in New Zealand the tribes (iwi) are the result of the aggregation of cognatic descent groups (hapu) with a clearly delimited territory; in India, ethnographic studies carried out between 1881 and 1961 show us that we are dealing with some 50,000 grouped subcastes in 3000 castes that give rise to 427 tribes, a grouping that does not respond to either of the two axes mentioned: it is presumed that its origin comes from the evolution in the division of labor and from the intrusion of the Brahman legislator, who fixed it by codifying it. by or On the other hand, in the pre-Islamic Arab society, the tribes were determined by religious facts (such as, for example, sharing sacrifices); in Siberia they were based on exogamous unions of patrilineal filiation (exchange of women); in Japan the same word (zoku) designates both a family and a tribe or race; in Alaska the tribes were made up of houses (which are different groupings of families, also existing in archaic societies of Guinea or Madagascar or in medieval Europe or the Far East) that maintained a strong economic and political autonomy... A true constellation of meanings under a concept that is too powerful to be described in a single way, without forgetting that the approach to these realities has often been done with romantic eyes that seek (and therefore see) exoticism of that different Another aspect that complicates the conceptualization of tribe is given by the lack of empirically documented theories that demonstrate how tribes evolve towards chiefdoms.

However, and taking into account that no anthropologist has been able to see bands, tribes or chiefdoms in their purest form, since anthropology appeared long after the birth of the State, there is archaeological evidence, historical accounts and current facts that allow establish a series of basic facts associated with the tribes: social groups with non-intensive food production (horticulture and herding), villages and descent groups without a determining social stratification (although, as happens with the Nuer of Sudan, when the tribes are very large, another type of segmentation called OLS appears: organization in segmentary lineages, which point to common ancestors), a central government insufficient to force compliance with its decisions (as an example of the impact that lack of authority has on social life). a strong central power, Bronislaw Malinowski describes in great detail in chapter IV (Canoes and Navigation) the extensive and lengthy Negotiations and regulations necessary for the social organization of work in these social groups categorizable as tribes,- which this lack makes essential at the moment when the chiefs of the tribes of the Tobriand and Kitava communities ask to build a canoe for them), right based on consanguinity and not on the contract, and, finally, absolute gender inequality.

In general, in Africa the concept of tribe has been assimilated to that of nation, as in the case of state sociopolitical entities such as the Yoruba, the Mandinga, the Mossi, and hundreds of cultural and state groups that in no case can be considered as tribe. This type of pejorative definition minimized the importance of African sociopolitical entities as a way of justifying the intervention of the colonizer with a supposedly superior system. Likewise, colonialist anthropologists made use of the term as a division tool that would justify the imposed borders. This is the case of the division of the Fang cultural group into smaller groups based on non-scientific linguistic criteria.

A recent definition of the term on the page contributed by the anthropologist and defender of indigenous rights, Stephen Corry, relates the concept of "tribe" with the ascription "indigenous" and it focuses on the differential component of the ways of life with respect to the dominant models. Corry's point is that "tribal indigenous peoples" preserve "eminently self-sufficient ways of life," for generations, that are distinguished from those of "majority society," to which the "indigenous tribal" they are not integrated.

As a final critical analysis, it goes without saying that the enormous difficulty that Anthropology has encountered when defining “tribe” highlights the real shortcomings of the empirical foundations of the anthropological way of its study.

Other uses

"Urban tribes": Gangs, bands, or, simply, groups of young people and adolescents, who dress in a similar and flashy way, follow common habits and become visible, above all, in large cities.

Adolescents and young people often see in the tribes the possibility of finding a new way of expression, a way of getting away from the normality that does not satisfy them, and, above all, the opportunity to intensify their personal experiences and find a gratifying core of affectivity. It was, from many points of view, a kind of emotional shelter as opposed to "outdoors" contemporary urban that, paradoxically, takes them to the street.

We were, therefore, faced with a profound phenomenon of the life of the second half of the XX century: the crisis of industrialized, bureaucratic and individualistic modernity, which is giving way to a demand for human contact, physical contact and, above all, a new image of young people and for young people.

There are also so-called civic tribes made up of heterogeneous groups of members whose only link is shared emotions. Researchers António Damásio through neurobiology and Edward Osborne Wilson from sociobiology explored the behavior of various human groups whose tribal sentiment transcends the individual and leads them to behave as mere particles of the community. Their link can be born from a territory, a language, an ideology and even a sports hobby. This feeling of belonging born of the collective civitio activates a mechanism of passionate social behavior that overcomes individual differences and unites the whole group with an unbreakable identity. The symbols of the tribe cause strong emotions both when they are praised and when they are denigrated and pride in front of other social groups originates the desire to want to affirm the worth, difference, superiority, distinction and power of their tribe against the neighbor.