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(posted January 27, 2004)
Notes on Understanding the "New World Disorder":
Modern "Tribalism" and International Development
by
Guntram Werther Ph.D.
In trying to make sense of the likely directions of
international change, one of the central ideas is that one can and ought to
"develop" this or that place, economy, or political system.
"Modern" arrangements and institutions are thought - within this view
- to replace the "old", and there is a certain active and directional
sense through which some people believe that this change, which is often called
"development", occurs. I want to draw attention to an alternative
perspective by suggesting the more nuanced situation in which a wide variety of
existing societal institutions and arrangements successfully and slowly
accommodate themselves over time to changed circumstances through much more
passive means; in some sense they internally "morph" rather than being
actively changed from the outside. If this is true, then it has large
implications for understanding the international "new world disorder"
and how it changes.
It is my experience that what Western speakers generally have in mind when they
speak of international "development" is a process whose end state will
look more or less like the societies of Western Europe, North America, or at
least the "developed" parts of Asia; democratic, capitalist in the
corporate sense, and "modern" in societal aspect and feel. Indeed,
there is quite an academic cottage industry in suggesting that democracy and
"free" market capitalism (or some variations thereof) are the
likeliest paths of the "global" future. That
"tribalism" can also be "modern" does not easily fit this
kind of a perspective.
Leaving aside that there are numerous forms and styles of "capitalism"
and "democracy" to "develop" towards- notice that it is not
practiced the same way in Arizona vs. Alabama vs. California, let alone among
the USA, Great Britain, South Korea, Japan, India, Switzerland, or any number of
other capitalist "democracies" - considering "tribalism" in
it's many forms as a similar adaptation to the contemporary world's
circumstances still seems incongruous. Doing so recognizes "tribalism"
as a legitimate alternative way of organizing people that occurs even in a
"developed" and democratic society; and yet there it is.
People who are more familiar with and used to legally contractual (ie.
constitutional) styles of government and social intercourse often have trouble
seeing "tribalism" as a central, even defining, part of many
societies. Some of these are quite modern while others are less so.
Nevertheless what we are encountering in much of the Middle East, in most of
Africa, in Central and South Asia, in parts of Latin America, and in the much of
the Pacific archipelago is precisely this phenomena of adapted
"tribalism". Nor need one travel that far to see it.
One needs to go no further than the USA (with it's 500 or so embedded
"tribes" or "nations"), Canada (numerous First Nations) and
elsewhere in the developed world to see the degree to which increasingly
sophisticated "tribes" have adapted to the modern world. They
successfully live within nations that have nuclear arms, ATM's, and even
"Western" democracy. Afghani tribes did not defeat the Soviets with
bows and arrows. They did so with modern arms and missiles. If successful, we
will not build Iraqi democracy without accommodating it's many tribes any less
so than we built U.S., Canadian, or Australian democracy without accommodating
our tribes. This observation brings to mind the U.S. corporate executive who
exhorted employees to treat "tribes" well not only because this was
the right thing to do, but because "they have the finest lawyers in the
world."
For many people, this may seem a strange kind of a "global" reality in
the 21st century, but if one hopes to understand the international environment
as it is, and accurately consider how the international environment actually
changes, one must deal with complex realities whether we like them or not. For
this task, we are ill prepared.
Rare is the mainstream economics course that discusses tribal, clan, and other
relationship networks as a preferred way of doing business within many
societies, but that is how it works in numerous parts of the world. We seem
unready to properly consider the complex impact of such relationship-based
networks for national and regional strategic politics, in intra- and inter-state
societal relationships, and for "global development", but that reality
is what we are up against all over the place.
Because one couldn't discuss this topic properly in fewer than several good
books, within this brief note I have highlighted only two aspects of the
"tribalism" and international "development" issue. First, I
hope that you will agree that tribalism isn't going away anytime soon, so we
better understand it in our foreign policy decisions and in domestic discussions
thereof. The alternative is failure of foreign policy in many cases. Second, I
hope that you will see that "tribalism" as an institution has changed
as necessary to accommodate the larger societies in which it currently exists.
In that sense it is "modern". Consider as foreign policy examples our
current challenges within both Iraq (once a quite sophisticated society with
advanced science and technical capabilities) and within Afghanistan as just two
somewhat polar examples of this extant "tribalism" and foreign policy
phenomenon.
During the past few years, I gave a number of talks about "globalism",
"development" and international change patterns in which I
highlighted "user UNfriendly" places like Somalia (a clan organized
society) and tribal Afghanistan as examples. In part, I pointed out that getting
IN to those areas has historically never been the problem. Getting OUT has been
the problem. The local saying "Grab an Afghan, and he'll never let you
go" came immediately to mind as I prepared those talks. I pointed out that
when Alexander the Great showed up, Afghans shot at him with arrows, when the
British showed up, they shot at them with rifles, when the Soviets showed up,
they shot at them with automatic weapons and missiles. Frankly, in 2,500 years
neither has ever been a particularly friendly neighborhood. What makes us think
this will change in the next few months or years I asked? I got no answer.
The core issue is in part the "fission / fusion" "household"
nature of these clan and tribal kinds of societies; simply put, they get
together mainly when they have a common problem (fussion) and act as dispersed
"households" (fission) when there is no common problem. This makes
them hard to manage in the long term as the Greeks, the British, the Russians,
and now we are discovering.
Professor Lois Beck noted this flexible and eternally fluid "tribal"
pattern of societal organization in her book, The "Qashqa'i of Iran"
(Beck 1986). She noticed specifically that tribal leaders were
"essentially... power brokers who interacted with other powers," and
saw as basic the "flexible, temporary association of the households"
(Beck 1986, 34). In plain English, we are dealing here with eternally shifting
sands more than with stable political units.
This is what makes such societies hard to defeat, and even harder to rule.
Several countries like Pakistan and Yemen do not really try; they leave their
tribal people for the most part to self rule. Others, like Iraq and Libya,
traditionally rule through the tribes. In many countries, including in much of
Africa, tribal and clan affiliations routinely cross borders and are often more
important than that country's borders. That is a part of how
"development" happens.
Nor is this a new problem. The Romans spent a great deal of time playing tribal
politics in their possessions, and in the end it did not work out well for them.
I was amused to read that Charlemagne (ca. 800 AD), that magnificent uniter of
medieval Europe, defeated the same Saxon tribe about a dozen times; and that
they revolted again just after this great king died.
I think it is fair to say that a style of social, political, and economic
organization (or really disorganization, most of the time) that has prospered
for eons and has embedded itself into the fabric of modern countries like the
USA, Canada, Australia, Chile, Saudi Arabia and so forth, is really not going
away time soon however much one might prefer another reality. This means that we
need to learn to deal effectively with the "tribal" phenomena in our
international strategic and development thinking. One cannot understand what
happens in much of the world without considering this issue thoroughly. When you
think about it, relationship styles of societal interaction such as tribalism,
clan, family and village ties, and so forth are present in most of the world's
countries.
Next: "Societal Transformations and Time: why Rome (or anything else)
wasn't built in a day."
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