"Tribalism"

One strategy that imperial and neocolonial powers have employed to legitimize their actions, as well as the general global political-economic order, is to portray their subjects as culturally and developmentally backward. This tactic has taken multiple forms throughout the past couple of centuries or so. One recent manifestation is the invocation of the concept of "tribalism" when describing conditions in the Middle East and Africa. In the post I will focus specifically on the Middle East, in light of recent military involvements and current political interests.

The term "tribe," as it is currently used, has its roots in anthropology.   Here is another great example of the way in which science has served as a tool of colonialism.  For anthropology, in its origin as an academic discipline, was oriented toward elaborating an evolutionary (oh yes, we're back to evolution) framework of human history, which used certain living human populations to represent the past evolutionary stages of the more developed European civilization.  One aspect of this model of "cultural evolution" was a progression of social organization from bands and tribes to the eventual emergence of a state apparatus.  The former acheived social cohesion not "rationally" through laws and systems of justice, but "emotionally" (once again, the contradistinction between "emotional" and "rational") through bonds of kinship and patriarchal authority.

The cultural backwardness of non-European populations was used to justify the "civilizing" mission of colonialism. Europeans congratulated themselves on their attempts to liberate their subjects from the bonds of patriarchal tyranny, even while women in their own countries were denied fundamental rights.

It is obvious how the salience of kinship and partriarchy continues to dominate characterizations of Middle Eastern societies. The use of the word "tribalism" bears witness to the lasting influence of cultural evolutionism, and implies a less "civilized" form of existence for those to whom the term is applied.

In particular, "tribalism" is invoked to suggest that a situation is unpredictable, that the people with whom one is engaging are apt to act irrationally, that loyalties of kinship will frustrate efforts to enact compromises and create peace. It is a way of saying that persistant violence and chaos is "their" fault and not "ours." Conflict is the result, not of systematic exploitation by the industrial powers, but of ethnic/sectarian differences that have existed before the dawn of time ("tribal" people do not possess a history either of their own or in relation to the rest of the world). Conflict persists, not because of foreign intervention and provokation, but because "tribal" people are not able to act any differently.

However, let's consider the facts.  First, it is a property of human identities that they are malleable and changing while appearing as fixed or "natural" categories. Thus, every sort of ethnic/racial/sectarian identity, in the form that it currently exists, is necessarily new and responsive to the particular conditions at hand.  No feature of human social life is truly ancient.  Second, the Middle East was, during one of the most affluent and fastest-growing periods of human history (11th-13th centuries), the most developed region in the Old World. Localities that are now supposedly stuck in a primitive, tribal past, were home to some of the most advanced state structures, the most sophisticated economic institutions, and the most cosmopolitan and learned cities in the world. The stage of social evolution that is currently attributed to regions such as Afghanistan was far surpassed even 10 centuries ago!! Clearly, the current state of these locales cannot be a function merely of internal characteristics or enduring "tribal" loyalties. Rather, current conditions in the Middle East must, as with current conditions anywhere in the world, have arisen as a result of recent geopolitical/economic processes. Specifically, those processes include: colonialism, more colonialism, neocolonialism (i.e. foreign meddling), economic marginalization, etc. etc.

It is both inaccurate and racist to impute conditions in the Middle East and Africa to "tribalism."