Tribalism is a way of thinking or behaving in which people are more loyal to their tribe than to their friends, their country, or any other social group.
The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few (if any) significant social distinctions between individuals.
Tribalism infers the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group. It is a precondition for members of a tribe to possess a strong feeling of identity for a true tribal society to form. The distinction between these two definitions for tribalism is an important one because, while tribal society no longer strictly exists in the western world, tribalism, by this second definition, is arguably undiminished. People have postulated that the human brain is hard-wired towards tribalism due to its evolutionary advantages.
Many tribes refer to themselves with their language's word for "people," while referring to other, neighboring tribes with various epithets. For example, the term "Inuit" translates as "people," but they were known to the Ojibwe by a name 'Eskimo' translating roughly as "eaters of raw meat.
Tribalism and violence
The anthropological debate on warfare among tribes is unsettled. While typically and certainly found among horticultural tribes, an open question remains whether such warfare is a typical feature of hunter-gatherer life, or an anomaly found only in certain circumstances, such as scarce resources (as with the Inuit or Arabs), or among food producing societies. There is also ambiguous evidence whether the level of violence among tribal societies is greater or lesser than the levels of violence among civilized societies.
If nothing else, conflict in tribal societies can never achieve the absolute scale of civilized warfare.[citation needed] Tribes use forms of subsistence such as horticulture and foraging which, though more efficient, cannot yield the same number of absolute calories as agriculture.[citation needed] This limits tribal populations significantly, especially when compared to agricultural populations.[9] Lawrence Keeley notes in War Before Civilization that examples exist with low percentage rates of casualties in tribal battle. He also points out that some tribal battles were much more lethal as a percentage of population than, for example, the Battle of Gettysberg. He concludes that the data examined is that no evidence consistently indicates that primitive battles are proportionately less lethal than civilized ones.
Tribalism has a very adaptive effect in human evolution. Humans are social animals, and ill-equipped to live on their own. Tribalism and ethnocentrism help to keep individuals committed to the group, even when personal relations may fray.[citation needed] This keeps individuals from wandering off or joining other groups. It also leads to bullying when a tribal member is unwilling to conform to the politics of the collective.
Socially, divisions between groups fosters specialized interactions with others, based on association: altruism (positive interactions with unrelated members), kin-selectivity (positive interactions with related members), and violence (negative interactions). Thus, groups with a strong sense of unity and identity can benefit from kin selection behavior such as common property and shared resources. The tendency of members to unite against an outside tribe and the ability to act violently and prejudicially against that outside tribe likely boosted the chances of survival in genocidal conflicts.
Modern examples of tribal genocide rarely reflect the defining characteristics of tribes existing prior to the Neolithic Revolution--for example, small population and close-relatedness.