8 January 2008
(Page 2 of 5)
Images of timelessness and savagery hide the modern character of African ethnicity, including ethnic conflict.
The idea of tribe particularly shapes Western views of ethnicity and ethnic conflict in Africa, which has been highly visible in recent years. Over and over again, conflicts are interpreted as "ancient tribal rivalries," atavistic eruptions of irrational violence which have always characterized Africa. In fact they are nothing of the sort. The vast majority of such conflicts could not have happened a century ago in the ways that they do now. Pick almost any place where ethnic conflict occurs in modern Africa.
Investigate carefully the issues over which it occurs, the forms it takes, and the means by which it is organized and carried out.
Recent economic developments and political rivalries will loom much larger than allegedly ancient and traditional hostilities.
Ironically, some African ethnic identities and divisions now portrayed as ancient and unchanging actually were created in the colonial period. In other cases earlier distinctions took new, more rigid and conflictual forms over the last century. The changes came out of communities' interactions within a colonial or post-colonial context, as well as movement of people to cities to work and live.
The identities thus created resemble modern ethnicities in other countries, which are also shaped by cities, markets and national states.
Tribe substitutes a generalized illusion for detailed analysis of particular situations.
The bottom-line problem with the idea of tribe is that it is intellectually lazy. It substitutes the illusion of understanding for analysis of particular circumstances. Africa is far away from North America. Accurate information about particular African states and societies takes more work to find than some other sorts of information. Yet both of those situations are changing rapidly.
Africa is increasingly tied into the global economy and international politics. Using the idea of tribe instead of real, specific information and analysis of African events has never served the truth well. It also serves the public interest badly.
Section 2: If "Tribe" Is So Useless, Why Is it So Common?
Tribe reflects once widespread but outdated 19th century social theory.
As Europeans expanded their trade, settlement and military domination around the world, they began trying to understand the different forms of society and culture they met. In the 19th century, ideas that societies followed a path of evolution through definite stages became prominent. One widespread theory saw a progression from hunting to herding to agriculture to mechanical industry. City-focused civilization and related forms of government were associated with agriculture. Forms of government and social organization said to precede civilization among pastoralists and simple agriculturalists were called tribal. It was also believed that cosmopolitan industrial civilization would gradually break down older localized identities.
Over the course of the 20th century scholars have learned that such images tried to make messy reality neater than it really is. While markets and technology may be said to develop, they have no neat correspondence with specific forms of politics, social organization, or culture. Moreover, human beings have proven remarkably capable of changing older identities to fit new conditions, or inventing new identities (often stoutly insisting that the changed or new identities are eternal). Examples close to home include new hyphenated American identities, new social identities (for example, gay/lesbian), and new religious identities (for example, New Age).
Social theories of tribes resonated with classical and biblical education.
Of course, most ordinary Western people were not social theorists.
But theories of social evolution spread through schools, newspapers, sermons and other media. The term tribe was tied with classical and biblical images. The word itself comes from Latin. It appears in Roman literature describing early Roman society itself.
The Romans also used it for Celtic and Germanic societies with which many 19th and early 20th century Europeans and Americans identified. Likewise the term was used in Latin and English bibles to characterize the twelve tribes of Israel. This link of tribes to prestigious earlier periods of Western culture contributed to the view that tribe had universal validity in social evolution.
Tribe became a cornerstone idea for European colonial rule in Africa.
This background of belief, while mistaken in many respects, might have been relatively benign. However, emerging during the age of scientific rationalism, the theories of social evolution became intertwined with racial theories. These were used to justify first the latter stages of the Atlantic slave trade (originally justified on religious grounds), and later European colonial rule. The idea that Africans were a more primitive, lower order of humanity was sometimes held to be a permanent condition which justified Europeans in enslaving and dominating them. Other versions of the theory held that Africans could develop but needed to be civilized by Europeans. This was also held to justify dominating them and taking their labor, land and resources in return for civilization.
These justifying beliefs were used to support the colonization of the whole continent of Africa after 1880, which otherwise might more accurately have been seen as a naked exercise of power. It is in the need to justify colonizing everyone in Africa that we finally find the reason why all Africans are said to live in tribes, whether their ancestors built large trading empires and Muslim universities on the Niger river, densely settled and cultivated kingdoms around the great lakes in east-central Africa, or lived in much smaller-scale communities between the larger political units of the continent.
Calling nearly all African social groups tribes and African identities tribal in the era of scientific racism turned the idea of tribe from a social science category into a racial stereotype.
By definition Africans were supposed to live in tribes, preferably with chiefs. The colonizers proposed to govern cheaply by adapting tribal and chiefship institutions into European-style bureaucratic states. If they didn't find tribes and chiefs, they encouraged people to identify as tribes, and appointed chiefs. In some places, like Rwanda or Nigeria, colonial racial theory led to favoring one ethnic group over another because of supposed racial superiority (meaning white ancestry). In other places, emphasis on tribes was simply a tool of divide and rule strategies. The idea of tribe we have today cannot escape these roots.
Section 3: But Why Not Use "Tribe?"
Answers to Common Arguments
In the United States no one objects to referring to Indian tribes.
Under US law, tribe is a bureaucratic term. For a community of Native Americans to gain access to programs, and to enforce rights due to them under treaties and laws, they must be recognized as a tribe. This is comparable to unincorporated areas applying for municipal status under state laws. Away from the law, Native Americans often prefer the words nation or people over tribe.
Historically, the US government treats all Native American groups as tribes because of the same outdated cultural evolutionary theories and colonial viewpoints that led European colonialists to treat all African groups as tribes. As in Africa, the term obscures wide historical differences in way of life, political and social organization, and culture among Native Americans. When we see that the same term is applied indiscriminately to Native American groups and African groups, the problem of primitive savagery as the implied common denominator only becomes more pronounced.
Africans themselves talk about tribes.
Commonly when Africans learn English they are taught that tribe is the term that English-speakers will recognize. But what underlying meaning in their own languages are Africans translating when they say tribe? Take the word isizwe in Zulu. In English, writers often refer to the Zulu tribe, whereas in Zulu the word for the Zulu as a group would be isizwe. Often Zulu-speakers will use the English word tribe because that's what they think English speakers expect, or what they were taught in school. Yet Zulu linguists say that a better translation of isizwe is nation or people. The African National Congress called its guerrilla army Umkhonto weSizwe, "Spear of the Nation" not "Spear of the Tribe." Isizwe refers both to the multi-ethnic South African nation and to ethno-national peoples that form a part of the multi-ethnic nation. When Africans use the word tribe in general conversation, they do not mean the negative connotations of primitivism the word has in Western countries.
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