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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Comparative Governance
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1454752
This article is part of the Research Topic Politics of Ethnic and National Identity View all 5 articles

Bringing back the tribe: Why we should not abandon the study of tribes in the Arab world

Provisionally accepted
Eleanor Gao Eleanor Gao *
  • University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Once broadly applied, the term "tribe" has been discredited and is now rarely used in the social sciences. Critics argue that the concept is vague, is evocative of primitive and backwards connotations, and has been inappropriately applied to societies that are not "tribal". While these criticisms are well-founded and legitimate, I argue in this Perspective piece that we must not abandon the study of tribes in the Arab world. The concept of "tribe" continues to be salient for Arab citizens and one that they aptly assign to themselves. To address criticisms of previous studies, I offer here three ways to reform scholarly pursuit on tribes: (1) adopting a thin conception of tribe (2) treating the concept as a dynamic not static unit and (3) being led by on-the-ground reality and not by theoretical biases regarding the applicability of this term.

    Keywords: Tribes, Arab World, Identity, Orientalism and Colonialism, Conceptual stretching, decolonisation

    Received: 25 Jun 2024; Accepted: 04 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Gao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Eleanor Gao, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

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