Thanks for posting. Additional ammo for me - much of what is written fits in with my thoughts and coincides with wht I have myself written about.
I have an addition - although off topic. Hindu "communities" in India - eg "Yadav" or "Madhwa Brahmin" are basically tribes. Tribes were sought to be united by both Christianity and Islam to form a super-tribe on the basis of allegiance to a God. So called "Hindus" on the other hand are unique in never having grown out of tribes. I have a hypothesis I am working on. Tribes were unable to hold the loyalty of more than a few thousand people at a time. The religions (Christianity an Islam) raisded the bar by uniting tribes to make groups of several million. But it took modern secular governance systems like democracy and communism to unify humongous numbers of people (tens of millions) into nation states. shiv On Monday 16 Mar 2009 9:21:10 pm Udhay Shankar N wrote: > Fascinating. I'd be greatly interested in your thoughts on, inter alia, > how many of these conditions apply to silklist itself. :) > > Udhay > > http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/03/manufacturing- >fictive-kinship-.html > > Friday, 06 March 2009 > TRIBES! > This may fill in some gaps for people thinking about surviving the > future intact. > > How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and > advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal > organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it > was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important > aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach > of human history. It has proven it can withstand the onslaught of the > harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem. > > If you are like most people in the 'developed world,' you don't have any > experience in a true tribal organization. Tribal organizations were > crushed in the last couple of Centuries due to pressures from the > nation-state that saw them as competitors and the marketplace that saw > them as impediments. All we have now it is a moderately strong nuclear > family (weakened via modern economics that forces familial diasporas), a > weak extended family, a loose collection of friends (a social circle), a > tenuous corporate affiliation, and a tangential relationship with a > remote nation-state. That, for many of us, is proving to be > insufficient as a means of withstanding the pressures of the chaotic and > harsh modern environment (D2 in particular). > > The solution to this problem is to build a tribe. A group of people > that you are loyal to you and you are loyal in return. In short, the > need for a primary loyalty to a group that really cares about your > survival and future success. > > So how do you build a tribe? A strong tribe, in this post-industrial > environment*, isn't built from the top down. Instead it is built > organically from the bottom up. A simple tribe starts with cementing > ties to your extended family, a connection of blood. The second step is > to extend that network to include other families and worthy > individuals. A key part of that is to build fictive kinship, a sense of > connectedness that leads to the creation of loyalty to the group. That > kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on > this): > > * Story telling. Shared histories and historical narratives. > * Rites of passage. Rituals of membership. Membership is earned > not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence. > * Obligations. Rules of conduct and honor. The ultimate penalty > being expulsion. > * Egalitarian and often leaderless organization. Sharing is prized. > * Multi-skilled. Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among > parts). > * Two-way loyalty. The tribe protects the members and the members > protect the tribe. If this isn't implemented, you don't have a tribe, > you have a Kiwanis club. > > The development of fictive kinship will likely be key to the development > of resilient communities (as it is already for global guerrillas). We > can already see this process at work in the UK's Transition Towns > movement with their story telling, honoring elders, re-skilling, and > leaderless approach (see the 12 steps). > > *Nationalism is a form of fictive kinship manufactured/bent to serve the > needs of the state during our industrial phase of economic organization. > > Posted by John Robb on Friday, 06 March 2009 at 10:15 AM
