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The concept of tribalism has fallen out of favour in social anthropology due to its associations with ethnocentric unilineal models of social evolution. Yet the concept persists in counterinsurgency warfare, pop evolutionary psychology and, increasingly, public debates about social media, where increased “tribalism” is often held to be one of the medium’s negative effects. Drawing on fieldwork with self-styled Bedouin tribespeople who blame social media for an increase in blood feuds, Geoff Hughes argues that anthropologists cannot ignore this troublesome inheritance. Tribalism is not an atavistic precursor to the state but rather a means of negotiating the boundary between state and society. Social media may not be making most people “tribal” in ways that my Bedouin interlocutors would recognize, but the concept of tribalism might nonetheless help us understand how social media became a strange new frontier of the state.Geoffrey Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Exeter. His work is primarily concerned with how people in Jordan and the wider Middle East have engaged with various technologies for large-scale population management. His first book, 'Kinship Islam and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan'. His new book is entitled Social Media Tribes: Jordan’s Bedouin and the Margins of the State. He is currently researching the politics of hunger in the Middle East.
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LIVE Daryll Forde, Room 230 2nd Floor, UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, WC1H 0BW and
Online ZOOM ID 948 6108 7055 passcode Wawilak
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UCL Anthropology, Taviton Street, Taviton Street, London, WC1H 0BW, United Kingdom
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