Quote Originally Posted by Tukhachevskii View Post
I agree. But I think in theatre experience is far more valuable than class room study. .

............Nonetheless, I find many of your findings fascinating if only as confirmation or negation of previous classroom study.
Thanks for the props - and I agree that field work is the key. I spent four years in Iraq dealing with tribesmen - and it took me many years to understand how and why tribesmen think the way that they do. My work is currently giving predictive power that I wasn't expecting.

Tribal analysis offers us a secular doorway of dealing with extremist phenomena.

As for lack of tribal identification, but rather identification with Hamula, or clan, or whatever - these are are all tribal identifications. (you didn't bring this up, but somebody else did) Semantic nit noiding aside, there is no doubt that tribal counterinsurgency TTPs are in their nascent state in the west, including Britain. The problem is in the language - and there is no place to start but in the classroom. Regardless of how many British anthropologists are working in Africa or elsewhere, there aren't enough of Americans or Brits that really speak Arabic.

And there is no better way to create misunderstanding than to hire interpreters from 7-Eleven or liquor stores and try to use them to bring understanding between two members of radically different cultures and mindsets. Anybody who has any experience in the middle east knows the importance of relationships. Most interpreters ruin the possibility of this - and the answer is for us to learn their languages if we hope to get anywhere at all.

And none of this is worth doing unless we are successful.

Tribeguy