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From: macrakis@harvard.ARPA (Stavros Macrakis)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.africa
Subject: `Tribe': derogatory?
Message-ID: <120@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 14-May-85 11:39:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: harvard.120
Posted: Tue May 14 11:39:48 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 06:24:17 EDT
References: <> <336@lasspvax.UUCP>
Organization: Aiken Comp. Lab., Harvard
Lines: 75

> > Does anyone out there know why people talk about tribes only when
> > referring to African peoples?

> ... the "national" boundaries of [Africa] may be ...  arbitrary
> territories ([with] *some* relationship to kinship communities....)
> set up within the last 2 or 3 centuries by ...  westerners.

Of course, it is not only in Africa that the term `tribe' is used.
Another netter has pointed out that:
  ... there are segments of the Arabic and Semitic people that use the
  term tribe.  There are tribes in Australia, New Zealand, New
  Guinea, and Borneo. ... in South and Central  America.....

Clearly the term `tribe' can be used in a derogatory way.  In general, it
refers to groups which do not have their own country (e.g. the Ainu might
be considered a tribe, but not the Japanese).  And of course in the past
there were theories which linked `tribe' and `race' and so on; these
theories seem to be behind us in serious circles, at least.  Even so,
popular theory still speaks of `pure-blooded' x's (and people say it of
themselves, usually proudly).

There are other terms which are close to the notion of `tribe': nation,
ethnic group, people, millet (in the Ottoman Empire).  The notion is
that there are groups which consider themselves as one group or are
treated as one group even if they may live in different places and even
if they have different `racial' characteristics.

Another use of the word `tribe', was apparently to distinguish areas
governed by some sort of central apparatus (Kingdoms, Princely States)
from areas with dispersed organizations (tribal areas, i.e. areas with
many tribes).  But the subjects of Benin or of Rajput may well belong to
tribes or ethnic groups.

Now, why the word `tribe'?  We can probably exclude the word `nation',
even though in many ways it is the correct word, because its meaning has
been diluted by the concept of the nation-state, that is, the idea that
the state should correspond to a nation: thus France, Italy, Japan,
Albania, Hungary, Iran, Greece, ... -- of course, in practice, it seldom
does: we have the Alsatians, Provencaux, and Basques in France, the
Trentines and Sardinians in Italy, the Ainu and Koreans in Japan, the
Greeks in Albania, ....  and for that matter the Albanians in
Yugoslavia, the Hungarians in Romania, ....  And what about Czecho-
slovakia?  There are those who consider that two `peoples' (the Czechs
and the Slovaks) have united to form a `nation'.

Anyway, `nation' seems to have become (incorrectly) a synonym for
`state'.  The President of the US addresses the `American nation', which
is clearly an absurdity.  The Arabs do talk of the Arab nation, though,
which is the original meaning and does not necessarily imply a political
unity.  The Arabs also have some tribes within the nation, and some
tribes have clan organizations....

The word `people' is clumsy to use unambiguously.  (`The people that
inhabits the lower xx valley'?)  The word `millet' is specifically
Ottoman, and refers to the partially self-governing groups such as the
Orthodox Greeks and the Jews -- but the millets were largely organized by
religion, and not what we would call ethnic group.  `Community' is
hopelessly ambiguous.

Some netters have confused the notion of `tribe' with that of `clan' (and
have considered the latter `more derogatory').  This is a mistake.  Clan
means specifically an organization within a society -- and an
anthropologist can show you dozens of kinds of clan organization.

So I think we come down to `tribe' and `ethnic group'.  I prefer `ethnic
group', although in the US especially it refers sometimes to a much
looser and vaguer reality (Irish-Americans, German-Americans) than
elsewhere in the world.

The bottom line is that notions of ethnic group differ in different
societies and that these notions are manipulated in a variety of ways for
political reasons.  Since I don't want to get into the politics of
ethnicity, I end my note here.

	-s