Tribe

Like the concept of people , there are two basic definitions of what a tribe is. According to one of them, a tribe is determined by common features common to all members of the tribe and objectively distinguished: language, religion, origin, customs and traditions.

By another definition, it is believed that “faith” in a common connection in itself is already a sufficient criterion. Ethnographic studies show that the genealogy of tribes that do not know the written language is very flexible and quickly adapts to political circumstances. By this definition, tribes are primarily political unions. As an example, associations during the Great Migration of Peoples of groups of various origins into tribes are given. The center of crystallization was often the only one leader or his descendants, who later was considered the ancestor of the whole tribe. Faith in descent from any deity was also used willingly, for example, the Germanic tribes of Alemanni and Lombards considered . Often, tribes had a legend of their own ethnogenesis , telling how and why their tribal union arose and how the signs that distinguished them from other tribes developed. Often there were legends as well, as a tribe of its own, led by a deity, fell to its land.

The exact distinction between the concepts of "tribe" and "people" is problematic, since the boundaries are often blurred. A tribe may be an integral part of the people, or may be its preliminary stage. Descendants of the American Iroquois tribe consider themselves today as a people and as a nation.

A distinctive criterion between tribes and states is often the presence of regular troops . Tribal communities that exist even today in remote and underdeveloped regions of the Earth are considered by many as the initial form of political education. Evolutionists , Lewis Henry Morgan and Friedrich Engels, shared this view. In their opinion, there is a natural chain of development of political units from gender to phratry (not always), from phratry (gender) to tribe, from tribe to union of tribes (not always), from union of tribes (tribe) to the state. ^[2]

In political anthropology, a tribe is considered as a form of political organization ( polity ), a one-level chiefdom , but different from the latter by a consensual type of political leadership, while the chiefdom is characterized by an authoritarian type of political leadership ^[3] . The process of moving an ethnic community to a tribal level is called tribalization .

One of the debate issues in modern African studies is the applicability of the concept of "tribe" to the ethnic associations of Tropical and South Africa. This is largely due to the development of social anthropology and historical science in the independent countries of Africa in the second half of the 20th century. For a new generation of African scholars, the word “tribe” is associated primarily with the colonial era and the imposition of ideas on the underdevelopment and primordial barbarism of African societies to Africans. East African scholar Okot p'Bitech wrote about this:

... the fact is that it [the term "tribe"] sounds derogatory, as it means people living in primitive or barbaric conditions ... And when Western scholars write about "tribal law", "tribal economy", "tribal religion", etc. .d., they thereby make it clear that we are talking about the laws, economy and beliefs of primitive or barbarian peoples.

- Okot p'Bitec. African traditional religions. - M., 1979. - S. 31.

However, a critical attitude to the legality of applying the concept of “tribe” to African realities is characteristic not only of African scientists, but also of modern Western and Russian researchers. For example, I. Kopytov, professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that the concept of a tribe acquired its modern meaning in the 19th century, it became part of the evolutionary model by which modern Europe built the history of mankind: “To be a tribe meant to be at a certain stage of social evolution; from here the line led to higher forms of organization, such as peoples, nations, and states. This model was used to justify the claims of European nationalism, which flourished in the 19th century, and to bring the historical and ethnological base under it ” ^[4] Russian Africanist A. S. Balezin also advocates refusing to use the term“ tribe ”in relation to the ethnosocial organization of African peoples . In his opinion, the main supra-communal structures in Africa in the pre-colonial period were the “conical clan” (or “Ramage” clan) and chiefdom ^[5] .

However, consensus among Africanists on this issue has not yet been reached. In scientific works, along with the term chiefdom, the term tribe continues to be used quite widely. The fact that the discussion on this issue has not yet been closed is evidenced by the publication in 1991 of the book of the Leningrad / St. Petersburg Africanist N. M. Girenko, “Sociology of the tribe. The formation of sociological theory and the main components of social dynamics ”and its reprint in 2004 .

• Korotaev A. V. “Apology of tribalism”: Tribe as a form of socio-political organization of complex non-primitive societies // Sociological Journal . - 1995. - No. 4.