Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
I agree. This looks like one of those "one stop solution" things that has been simplified to the point that it has no real value but can beguile many into believing that it has value. Perhaps that's what happens when someone who's predominantly a novelist takes a crack at major anthro-type writing.
LOLOL Too true!

What really got me was two things:
  1. he is using "tribe" as if there is only one type of tribe and "they are all the same" (which is a crock);
  2. his entire rant is based on the old, 19th century unilinear evolutionary argument for cultures (analogically similar to that AF article we have been talking about elsewhere).


Back in 1968, Marshall Sahlins wrote a little primer of tribes called, appropriately enough, Tribesman (Foundations of Modern Anthropology, Prentice-Hall). In it he identifies 7 different major types of "tribes", and we are pretty sure now that there are or have been more. I'd actually recomend it since you can usually find it in a second hand shop for a couple of bucks.

Sahlins also wrote what is probably the best analysis of how tribes hang together. It's mainly an argument out of economic anthropology (and somewhat complex), but brilliant: Stone Age Economics. When you tie it in with Marcel Mauss' argument in The Gift (which Amazon is offering as a bundle), you get a really good feel for the structural dynamics.

Marc