.
This is an ok spot for this topic, imo.
That said, the “peaceful primitive” is a myth as old as colonialism. Look at chimpanzees, our closest (exept for their closer relations the bonobos) living relatives: they frequently hold “wars” of relatively the same kind as described in that article. Ai dont, however have the nessesary knowledge to tell you exactly why this kind of violence is preferable to the civilizationist approach (something to do with the fact that only civilized people conquer and or wipe out entire peoples), but when in doubt, ai always look to how non-human persons do it. In this case, intergroup violence is very common in carnivorous and omnivorous pack-forming animals and interpersonal violence because of a fit of anger (even resulting in death) is relatively common to animals in general. This is why ai find “peace” and “nonviolence” movements at least as laughable as non-face-to-face warfare (ie. guns, bombs, etc.).
Hope my post wasnt too ramble-ish.
I have to admit that I am very busy these days (this week in particular) and while I found your post really interesting, I only skimmed it, and also I did not read the article in full.
I’m aware that the article might already address the question I’m asking below, but whether it does or not, I’m not entirely certain, because I haven’t taken the time to read the whole article yet. If the article does address my question, sorry about the redundancy, and please let me know if it does because that would probably make me want to read it again more carefully.
So anyway, the question I have is:
Does the author take into account the possibility of any external influences that may have affected traditional Andamanese society prior to the events of these written observations? Such influences could include A. loss of access to land/food, B. civilized disease interrupting the health of the community, or C. the introduction of other groups of people, refugees from civilization’s expansion, “crowded into” the land where the Andamanese live (which is pretty similar to example A).
Edit: for clarity.
Oh, and in answer to the third question you listed at the end: I believe this is a fine topic of conversation for rewild.info and just because there is a tendency to talk about practical application doesn’t mean that theoretical kinds of conversations aren’t worth having or that they are shunned here. Individual members may choose to ignore certain threads, of course, but as long as your post is relevant to rewilding (and it is), it belongs on the board.
If you are curious about the general guidelines for posting and more about the “hows” and “whys” of this forum, please see:
http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=1086.0
http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=567.0
http://www.rewild.info/conversations/index.php?topic=34.0
And don’t be shy to introduce yourself in Introductions if you plan to stay awhile! 
The biggest thing I noticed was…
Although rarely more than one or two were killed, the more adult males a raider had killed, the louder his boasting later. The raids lasted only a few minutes and still less if surprise was not achieved, resistance was encountered or if one of their number was hurt or killed... Although not the specific target of the attack, women and children were of course at risk, Whenever a woman or a child happened to get killed in such circumstances, this was not thought sufficient cause for boasting. It could also prolong the feud.
How does this differ from modern or recent practices…?
I remember someone posted a thread discussing very well about this…
People used to try to say that about the San, too. Of course, it’s impossible to be untouched by outside cultures completely, when you’re surrounded by them. Being as close as they are to major ancient civilizations, I seriously doubt that they had no contact with civilization in some form or another.
True. This is some Eurocentric 21st century account. 
That part specifically, which is the bulk of the second paragraph, leads me to believe that this isn’t a commonplace occurrence at all, but rather the author musing on a rare problem that was observed.
Read as: “I’m making shit up to further my point”. Not to say there probably wasn’t murder, but I think the author is overstating its prevalence based on his own assumptions and/or desire to see the natives that way. Having gone to school for anthropology, I’ve learned to spot this almost immediately.
The Andamanese fight against outsiders after 1858 must be the subject of a separate chapter. It was as a War for Survival. The widespread hostility towards anyone not of their own group and to all strangers was a state of mind, shared to a greater or lesser degree by all and deeply ingrained. Notwithstanding differences in detail between the various groups, whenever the sail of a strange ship appeared on the horizon or a canoe with strangers approached the local beach, all right-thinking traditional Andamanese immediately reached for their weapons and prepared for the reception. Occasional reports of friendly behavior towards strangers seem to be merely the exception to confirm the rule.
It’s good he mentions this, though kind of brushes over it so we don’t notice. What this says is that, basically, this is a stressed people. At the time he’s writing this, they’ve been exposed to and attacked by civilization. They’re under stress, and hostile to outsiders. Not surprisingly, an outsider views them as, believe it or not, rather hostile.
Okay, I don’t feel like quoting any more, but there are numerous points in the article that state the elders almost always came in to calm the pissed off person down, whether they be men or women. Usually older men would calm young men, and older women would calm the young women, and so on. They seem to have some pretty good social control systems set up.
Violence is a problem no matter what, but typically one sees it drastically reduced in traditional societies. What I don’t see here is numbers, another one of those signs I’ve learned to catch, and again I should state that I think the author is specifically not giving any numbers to give the impression of it being a more common phenomenon.
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Dan, Jason & Sascha are the anthropologists, so I don’t intend to address most of this, but there is one thing I wanted to comment on:
No, I don’t think so. But I do think modern Western culture has a blindspot the size of an elephant when it comes to the difference between them. To me, calming someone down is totally different from coercion. I see it as the difference between working as a group and working in a hierarchy, and IMO, that’s a pretty damn big difference. In the former, everyone is engaged and participating, in the latter… not so much. If a peaceful solution can’t be found, then so be it, but I somehow doubt that that really happens all that often.
Dedraker, street gangs do have some characteristics in common with tribes, and in some ways can be seen as expressions of the tribal instinct, but the things you mentioned are not characteristics that define tribes. Except for “their own music, slang, symbolic hand gestures – even their own aesthetic displays and decorative practices” – which describes many groups and subcultures, even fans of sports teams, and which in my opinion is a faint expression of tribal instinct. But there is a difference between a group that echoes tribal instinct and an actual tribe.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your inquiry. Your original question conflated three different things – intragroup conflict, intergroup conflict, and egalitarianism – but in a later post you yourself made the key differentiation between two of those things, which speaks well of the thoughtfulness that you are bringing.
But let me get to an explanation of tribalism (and why street gangs are expressions of tribal instinct but are not tribes).
Tribalism can be defined as society governed by kinship. It is hard for modern people to appreciate the power of kinship bonds because modern states and modern capitalism are based on shredding tribal kinship bonds. (Then the hunger for belonging that is left behind can be exploited by religious leaders, advertisers, the military, etc. etc.)
But kinship is so powerful because it is the natural way of humans to organize themselves, and that is why kincentric or tribal societies function very well without government or any coercive force such as police, prisons, courts, etc.
In an indigenous tribal world, kinship bonds extend out to all beings that share or participate in life together in the Place they are in. Different people’s cosmology reflect their social structure (for example, the universe of medieval Christianity was ruled by a heavenly Lord or King sitting up on a throne above us, just as their societies were ruled by lords and kings). For indigenous tribal peoples, the universe, like their societies, is a network of mutual kinship bonds and obligations, obligations which include sharing and reciprocation and focusing on the well-being of the whole. The Sun may be Father, Grandfather or Elder Brother, the Wind may be Grandmother or Elder Brother or Sister, the River, the various animals – it doesn’t matter exactly what kinship term is used (and tribal languages generally have intricate kinship terms that have been lost in non-tribal languages). What matters is that every element around you is a being and is related to you, and all of them help to support your life, and one another’s life, and you help to support their life in return. (Most modern people don’t feel the Power in the phrase “All my relations” and I have even heard New Agers translate mitakuye oyasin as “We are all one.”) The kin relationship with all the spirits of the Land where you live is, basically, what defines a tribe as indigenous.
(There are also Islamic tribes, whose kinship bonds do not extend further than the human. They are indigenous to whatever extent that they have preserved their pre-Islamic animistic relationship to the world. But, even if they are completely non-animistic, they are tribes because they are governed by kinship. However, I have no personal experience with such tribes; what I am saying is based on North and South America.)
The internal kinship structures of tribal societies fall into two broad categories: clan-based societies, and societies in which kinship is structured like a spiderweb, a series of concentric circles in which there are many different degrees of closeness or distance in relationship. Sedentary tribal societies tend to be clan-based and nomadic ones tend to be based on the “spiderweb” model.
(Both of these differ from the linear-descent-based model of civilization, which was created to make possible the inheritance of private property, and which gave rise to treating children as possessions of their parents, and then women as possessions of their husbands, since the paternity of children inheriting property had to be assured.)
But there is potentially a fatal weakness is a kincentric society. That weakness is – the other side of the coin of the loyalty to kin is the instinct (note I use the word “instinct,” not “belief”) that “If any member of your group harms a member of my group, all of my group share the injury and all of your group share the guilt.” This is one aspect of tribalism that remains alive and well in the modern world (for example, look at all the Americans, after 9/11, who said that the responsible country should be nuked, as though all its civilians shared the guilt.) This instinct is strongly expressed in street gangs. That is probably the most tribal thing about them.
So in a kincentric society, there is the ever-present danger of blood feuds erupting, either between two clans, or, in the spiderweb-kinship society, between closer and more distant groups of relatives. This could potentially destroy the society. So over generations, a tribe must develop ways to keep social harmony and resolve all internal conflicts before they turn into feuds. This might be called a kind of social/spiritual technology, and each tribe has its own ways of handling them, including purification of the people involved, restitutions, and many other ways – but resolution can’t involve one side winning and the other side losing, as in modern courts, because that would leave one side with resentment, which could erupt in other subtle ways. Everyone in the community would want the problem to be resolved, because any problem affects the entire community, and social approbation would be given not for being “in the right” but for showing that one puts the well-being of the community above one’s personal sense of grievance. And social approbation is a very powerful force. Belonging, acceptance and approval is what humans crave above all else (not material stuff as advertisers try to tell us we crave).
It sounds to me as though the Andaman Islanders (or one particular tribe or group there) has some very unusual ways of handling internal conflicts, involving accepting that sometimes people go crazy, and sometimes involving regarding a conflict as being just between the individuals involved, somehow walling it off so that it does not infect the larger group. It is hard to judge from the text, though, and the text itself says that intragroup conflict is rare.
But among people who share the same language, culture, customs, and sense of a common identity and common welfare (in other words, among people of the same tribe) customs and social technologies are developed over generations for maintaining harmony within the community.
But when people with different languages and customs have a conflict, it is much harder to resolve, and much easier for blood feuds to develop, and difficult to end them. In fact, sometimes, people did not even want to end them. “Enemy” is a relationship too. (Sports fans feel a special brand of kinship with fans of rival teams.) In my ancestral culture (which culturally is at the cusp between the interior Northwest and the warrior cultures of the Plains) war is not considered a problem to be solved, or war is not considered “bad” while peace is “good.” Rather, war was something to be kept in balance, not allowed to get out of hand to the point where it disrupted normal life. It allowed the young men to risk their lives, to test their spiritual medicine, to face death, to become heroes for avenging their kin, but it was conducted according to strict rules that kept it from escalating to where it became too disruptive and destructive of normal life.
Of course, that did not always work. Sometimes intertribal blood feuds would escalate anyway and become destructive. Then, it would become necessary to end the warfare between the two groups. This is not done by “making peace,” which is never lasting. It is done by “making relatives.” The two groups could come together and officially become kin to each other. Once they are kin, all warfare ceases, immediately and forever, because it is unthinkable to make war against your own kin.
To continue this discussion, I recommend that you read the thread that I posted in the Language section, “What indigenous language diversity tells us.”
Oh, and back to the Crips and Bloods. They are tribe-like in certain aspects: they are identified with particular territory, which is common to all members; they have common language, customs, dress, etc., which help to strengthen a sense of common identity; I would bet that they try to settle internal disputes in ways that try to maintain group unity; and, as discussed, they express the tribal instinct that “an injury to one is an injury to all, and if any member of your group hurts a member of my group, all of your group shares the guilt.” (Which is one aspect of tribalism that is alive and well in the modern world.)
But they can’t be considered real tribes because, for one thing, real tribes do not consist of just one age group and mainly one sex. Real tribes are a continuity from generation to generation, with elders helping to raise the young, and especially with elders helping to guide and initiate the young men, whose energy can otherwise come out in destructive ways. To my knowledge, even though they are ready to avenge each other, they don’t take care of each other. If one member is starving, others might help out of friendship, or might not, but to my knowledge the gang does not share all its resources, or feel obligated to make sure that all its members have the necessities of life. So these are some of the reasons why street gangs, while tribe-like in some ways, are not actual tribes.
Sidenote…random rant ahead!
A friend of mine likes to say he’s part of an “urban tribe” of people who loosely depend on each other to work on software/web development, who all share pretty similar ideas and lifestyles. Really they’re more like a business collective (like an art collective, but with technology and money involved). I asked him once if they lived together and procured food together. I kinda hope he stopped thinking of his life as tribal after that.
BH, you are right that a subculture like that is not a tribe. But they might be seen as faint expressions of the tribal instinct coming out. It’s kind of like, a cat playing with a string or a dog chasing a ball is not hunting, but still that is an expression of the hunting instinct coming out.
I think even people calling a group like that a tribe is a faint expression of the distant, instinctual desire or need to be part of a tribe.
I think, rather than convincing your friend not to think of his group as tribal, you could talk to him about it. How does it feel tribal to him? … What ancient needs are being fulfilled by feeling that he is part of a tribe? … What needs might a real tribe fulfill? … What would it be like to be part of a group bound by kinship where everyone takes care of everyone, and where the group would not split up at a moment’s notice if everyone got a better job for themselves in some other place.
Ask him what “tribe” means to him, and how it feels when he says he is part of an “urban tribe” … and maybe lead it into discussions of real tribes. What is the longing that is there? What is the memory that can be reawakened?
This is really simplistic, and it’s probably wrong since I learned it in school, but… aren’t matrilocal tribes peaceful and patrilocal tribes violent?
Sacha, wow. You know things. Can I ask how you got that way? School, books, experience, or something else?
[quote=“sacha, post:12, topic:1113”]I think even people calling a group like that a tribe is a faint expression of the distant, instinctual desire or need to be part of a tribe.
I think, rather than convincing your friend not to think of his group as tribal, you could talk to him about it. How does it feel tribal to him? … What ancient needs are being fulfilled by feeling that he is part of a tribe? … What needs might a real tribe fulfill? … What would it be like to be part of a group bound by kinship where everyone takes care of everyone, and where the group would not split up at a moment’s notice if everyone got a better job for themselves in some other place.
Ask him what “tribe” means to him, and how it feels when he says he is part of an “urban tribe” … and maybe lead it into discussions of real tribes. What is the longing that is there? What is the memory that can be reawakened?[/quote]
Well, if I may be blunt, he calls it a “tribe” because it’s the cool thing to do among people in media culture. Throwing out words like that makes a person more marketable. He repeats them to me because he needs to convince himself of their authenticity. He doesn’t call his business associates a tribe because he feels a deep sense of community with the people he works with. Many of them come and go, and they often manipulate each other. He thinks of the business contracts he enters into as a chess game for a bigger slice of the pie… and in the context of the business field he works in, that’s a pretty accurate assesment.
That said, he knows how to be a caring friend outside of all that mess. I find it pretty sad that he doesn’t wish to prepare for life after collapse. He’d rather just use words like “urban tribe” and leave it at that.
This is really simplistic, and it's probably wrong since I learned it in school, but... aren't matrilocal tribes peaceful and patrilocal tribes violent?
I would say that that is way oversimplified to the point of meaninglessness. But matrilocal vs patrilocal does make a difference in some important ways, especially in the strength of the women’s community. When I lived with the patrilocal Napo Runa, in Ecuador, it really made me think how much in a patrilocal culture the quality of a woman’s life depended on how well she got along with her husband’s family. (Traditionally, the groom’s family would court the family of the prospective bride to try to convince them that they would be a good family for their daughter to live with. Nowadays, with more people choosing mates on their own without the families involved, a woman often doesn’t really know the family she is marrying into.)
But among peoples like North American foragers who would live in large bands of up to several hundred people, it really is usually neither patrilocal nor matrilocal, since usually both the husband’s and wife’s family were part of the same band.
Sacha, wow. You know things. Can I ask how you got that way? School, books, experience, or something else?
Thanks. Experience mostly, supplemented by books and school. (Listening to elders I count as experience.)
He doesn't call his business associates a tribe because he feels a deep sense of community with the people he works with. Many of them come and go, and they often manipulate each other. He thinks of the business contracts he enters into as a chess game for a bigger slice of the pie...
Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound tribal at all. It reminds me of a TV show I heard about where people would be stranded on a desert island (with a camera crew) and grouped into “tribes” to survive together, but the rules set it up so that they were all to try to stab each other in the back to compete for a million-dollar prize.
while this conversation is really interesting, one thing that gets left out of these types of conversations so often, is that it’s silly to try to generalize about a group as large as “early humans”, “hunter-gatherers”, “paleolithic people”, or whatever. The !Kung are not the same as the Andamanese are not the same as the Yavapai are not the same as the Palouse. While all these people might have lots of stuff in common, they all have different histories, different ecosystems, different traditions, different neighbors, and on and on.
And we don’t have to model our future lives off of any of them completely. we can take influence from wherever it is useful, and create our own cultures/lifestyles. I don’t need to be tied to other cultures traditions of violence or social structure just because they’re un-civilized.
In the end, this stuff is more interesting to me anthropologically than as a how-to guide.
Pine trees are not the same as Apple trees are not the same as Holly trees are not the same as Gingko trees, yet they all have certain things in common, just as the !Kung, the Andaman Islanders, the Yavapai and the Palouse all have certain things in common.
We need to understand the difference between “copying” a “model” and learning from another people (or another species). Indigenous peoples don’t use other cultures as “models.” But they learn from one another.
The specific details of another culture would usually carry relevance only to those living in that particular land. But for people are seeking to re-indigenize and re-tribalize, it is worth it to consider the commonalities that define a people as indigenous and tribal.
That includes learning about problems of tribal life that we of today can equip ourselves to avoid.
According to geneticists cited in the link, the Andaman Islanders have lived in isolation for 30,000 to 60,000 years, as multiple diverse ethnic groups, in an area about the size of the Portland metropolitan area. They may know something about how the human species can live successfully.
yeah, crap, i definitely didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Just that I think so often people get confused by generalities that are made along the lines of “Primitive peoples are peaceful, civilized people are warlike.” It’s just to general of a comment about too diverse of a group of people. We definitely need to learn from primitive peoples, just not hold them up on some high pedestal as a perfect example of what we should be. We should learn what we can from them, without any kind of heroifying, and meld it with what we know about ourselves and how we want to live.
We should learn what we can from them, without any kind of heroifying, and meld it with what we know about ourselves and how we want to live.
Agreed. Also, I think you were probably addressing dedrater’s conflation of “early humans” (referred to in the past tense) and present-day tribal peoples. That not only assumes that people do not change, but carries the assumption that tribal peoples are anachronistic and do not belong to now.