Globalism is a failed experiment. Prominent American political scientist Ian Bremmer has written about this in numerous places and he is not alone.
The world economy has surged, and along with it the disparity between the haves and have-nots. These disparities force people to migrate in search of better opportunities, bringing their culture and history along with them. This existential baggage is not necessarily welcome and the promise of a unified global consciousness gives way very quickly to an us-versus-them mindset. We turn to social media where algorithms feed us information tuned specifically to our preferences and biases, deepening the divide even further as we are effectively blocked from alternate viewpoints. Without this critical information, we cannot begin to build empathy and recognition for others and we retreat further and further into our respective corners. We see the globalization backlash in the rise of populism, environmental devastation, and worldwide pandemics.
Some would say this is as it should be.
Controversial French sociologist Michel Maffesoli has proposed that we have evolved to live in tribal society. In his 1988 book The Time of the Tribes, Maffesoli predicted that as the culture and institutions of modernism declined, societies would embrace nostalgia and look to the organizational principles of the distant past for guidance. Tribalism is the social construct that suits us best. We were never meant to get along with everybody, but modernity has seriously eroded our historical tribal underpinnings.
Enter the neotribe.
Full disclosure: I have not read Maffesoli’s book (there is only a very expensive and purportedly lousy translation from the French), though I have read a fair bit about the book and he asserts that the project of modern globalization involved domination of nature by the individual. In our current era where the failures of modernity are increasingly evident, there is an “impulse to community” as we seek out others with shared interests, moving into and out of communal spaces as our emotional and social needs demand. These communal spaces he terms “neotribes” and they are different from the traditional tribal model in that inclusion in one neotribe does not exclude you from another. Neotribalism has more in common with the idea of subcultural affiliation than the historical idea of absolute allegiance to a specific clan.
The individual, therefore, is in a position to explore or otherwise expand various iterations of the self through neotribal affiliation. The neotribe defines an aspect of the self without commenting on the totality of the person. It follows that in order for the neotribe to define some facet of its participants, the neotribe itself must be hemmed and limited in its scope.
Some of us are runners or hunters or vegans or fans of a particular music group. Each of these “passion groups” can be understood as a neotribe comprised of individuals who share a particular interest, but may be otherwise alien to one another in terms of their political or religious outlook. This doesn’t matter, because at the heart of the neotribal ethos is the ephemeral nature of the affiliation. The neotribe exists to fulfill an emotional need. Once that need has been met, our attachment dissolves.
As a Muslim, I recognize my affiliation to the greater body of Muslims, collectively known as the Ummah. These are a people identified by their unflinching monotheism and their recognition of Muhammed as a prophet, May God’s peace and blessings be upon him. The attachment here is not emotional. In my case, the linkage is spiritual pragmatism (but actually Divine Decree). Because Islam is effectively at the root of my aspirational self, I cannot abandon its central tenets in my neotribal associations. This is reinforced over and over in textual prompts that remind us to be mindful of our company:
O believers: fear God and be with the truthful ones.
Q9:119
Keep only the believer for a companion and let your food be eaten only by the righteous.
Tirmidhi
A man follows his friend’s religion. Be careful who you take for friends.
Abu Dawud
This advice helps us to navigate the neotribal landscape, moving through passion groups and subcultures as outlanders, extracting emotional benefit and lending our wisdom and experience as warranted without compromising what is essential to our core identity.
The neotribalist model honors our tendency to form groups that meet our emotional needs without giving ourselves over in totality. It is a way of coming together for a defined purpose with the understanding that our alliance is for a fixed term. But it requires, in my view, that we be sufficiently grounded in order to juggle our affiliations with confidence.
The Ummah, being a supra-national Commonwealth of Muslims with a shared history and mythology, is (and always will be) a fractured assemblage of cliques, sects, and factions, each with its own character and emphasis. The neotribalist perspective allows us to appreciate this reality, recognizing that each of these groupings exists to cater to the unique emotional, developmental, geographical, political, cultural, and economic needs of its participants. This awareness may help us appreciate the legitimacy of camps that we do not personally agree with, recognition that is essential in those moments when the Ummah is attacked from the outside.
Neotribalism also allows us to venture outside the Ummah, to form temporary alliances for fixed terms where there is need. We might enter neotribal partnerships in the name of advocacy, art, culture, education, or recreation. The neotribal perspective breaks us out of the incestuous isolationism that has hobbled the work and reputation of Muslims in predominantly non-Muslim areas.
The work of Dust and Tribe is quintessentially neotribal. Men and women come together for two or three days in the wilderness. Powerful bonds are formed as individuals coalesce into a working group to support the success of all involved. And then it’s over.
Unless you want more.
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