Tribal Allegiances Research Articles

Making democracy safe for tribal homelands? Self-determination and political regionalism in Weimar Germany

ABSTRACTThis article adds to the literature on political regionalism in the Weimar Republic at the end of the First World War. After four years of hardship at the hands of the central government, proponents of reform were prepared to countenance the dismemberment of Prussia – Germany’s largest state – in favour of autonomous tribal (stammlich) entities under the federal umbrella of the Reich. However, contemporaries soon learned that instead of acting as a catalyst of emancipation, the Wilsonian discourse of self-determination frustrated genuine change because the latter’s appropriation by ethno-regionalists threatened to unravel many of the viable compromises reached in the imperial period. The resulting inability to keep all parties engaged in dialogue generated verbal as well as physical aggression. The article suggests that these phenomena shed revealing light not only on the way in which ideas of space and the ‘othering’ of fellow Germans based on tribal allegiance shaped political conflict but also challenge more broadly the assumption prevalent in some parts of the historiography that when ethnic movements make demands for their own state, they automatically turn nationalist. Empirical evidence from the province of Hanover shows that regionalists could well make violent demands for secession from Prussia while at the same time affirming their identification with the German nation.

On the Making and Unmaking of Arab States

Since 2011, Arab states have faced unprecedented challenges to their territorial integrity. Movements in Kurdistan, southern Arabia, and Cyrenaica have all made unilateral bids to secure administrative and coercive control over territory. While some disavow secessionism, their agendas for separation clearly undermine their respective parent state, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. Added to this is the Islamic State (IS), intent on breaking all the borders of the region and establishing a new caliphate. It is easy to see the emergence and empowerment of these movements as steps in the crumbling of artificial colonially constructed states and the reassertion of more ancient and organic clan, sect, and tribal allegiances. Yet these movements represent less a reversion to primoridialism than a reassertion of claims to self-determination that had been overridden in the course of 20th-century state formation.

“Vistas of Simultaneity”: Northern Irish Elegies for Yugoslavia

“Vistas of Simultaneity”:Northern Irish Elegies for Yugoslavia Margaret Greaves When asked in a PBS NewHour interview in 2000 if the “honor-bound, blood-stained, vengeance-driven” culture of Beowulf reminded him of Ireland, Seamus Heaney refused to take the bait. He replied diplomatically but unequivocally, “Well, no. Ireland . . . [is] in a different kind of cultural situation.” Instead, he suggested resonances between Beowulf and another fringe region of Europe, one often aligned with Ireland in the British and Anglo-Irish literary imaginations: the Balkans. Heaney compared the ethnic violence of the 1990s with the tribal allegiances of the Anglo-Saxon world; what does strike the contemporary reader of “Beowulf,” he said, is that sense of small ethnic groups living together with memories of wrongs on each side, with a border between them that may be breached. I mean, after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, after Bosnia and Kosovo and so on, the feuds between the Swedes and the Geats, these little dynastic, ethnic, furious battles strike a chord.1 Heaney allows that “there is of course an ethnic energy and a vengefulness from the past” in Northern Ireland, but that these impulses are “more widespread than that”—emanating at least as insistently from southeastern Europe. By displacing his response onto former Yugoslavia, Heaney suggests that Ireland’s historically specific situation should not be read too faithfully into the primitive landscapes of Beowulf. In contrast to Heaney’s insistence on cultural specificity, the mainstream media and some scholars have explained the Northern Ireland “Troubles” and the Yugoslav Wars in strikingly similar terms: as tribal conflicts rooted in the blood feuds of primordial, savage Europe.2 Indeed, this “tribal warfare thesis” has been applied persistently to these two conflicts. Since the nineteenth century, the [End Page 31] Balkans and Ireland have frequently appeared as distorted doubles in British and Anglo-Irish literature, imagined as primitive backwaters in the margins of Europe. Count Hermann Keyserling’s immortal remark in his 1928 book Europe— “If the Balkans hadn’t existed, they would have been invented”—now resonates with the opening of Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland: “If Ireland had never existed, the English would have invented it.”3 Although balkanization is most apparent in English literature through the fin de siècle, Andrew Hammond’s British Literature and the Balkans (2010) places the Yugoslav Wars on a continuum with earlier balkanist discourse.4 For that matter, it is striking that Irish Gothic readings of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, which find the plight of colonial Ireland in Dracula’s Romanian landscape, became trendy just as war in the Balkans broke out and peace talks in Northern Ireland began.5 The branding of the “Troubles” and the Yugoslav Wars as tribal warfare no doubt has roots in fin de siècle balkanization. But we have yet to consider the intersections between Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia, despite the richness of the texts—particularly in poetry, a genre generally neglected in most literary studies of the Balkans.6 Yet the genre of poetry in general, and Irish-themed elegy in particular, has responded powerfully to the superficial paralleling of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia. The 1990s saw multiple individual poems and volumes of poetry dedicated to victims of former Yugoslavia that implicitly or explicitly bring in Irish, and especially Northern Irish, themes. These volumes include Klaonica: Poems for Bosnia (1993); In the Heart of Europe: Poems for Bosnia (1998); and Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia, edited by [End Page 32] Chris Agee (1998).7 Not all of these poems come from Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. But all of the poems considered here are transnational elegies that mourn the dead of Yugoslavia through Northern Irish contexts.8 In the rhetoric of tribalism in postwar Europe, the tribe is imagined as a base unit of human groups, an almost oppressively intimate collectivity. Intimacy is also an underlying concern in the theory of lyric. Intimacy takes on additional force when brought to bear on the lyric “I” and addressed or implied “you” of the elegy. Experiments with intimacy between poet and addressee—particularly the circumstances in which these overtures break...

Pastoralité in eastern Turkey

In this article, we will confront the pastoral practices of the Kurdish populations in eastern Turkey, which is a very ancient culture, to the heritage process in order to try to establish a pastoralité, a concept emerging in the French academic circles. Pastoral practices in eastern Turkey are characterised, like high mountains (pasture) shelters, by a great diversity due to geographical, historical and social contexts, but also to the recent establishment of the Turkish nation-state and Kurdish nationalism, the most striking trait of which is the persistence of tribal allegiance. We are witnessing an impossible standardisation of these practices and a heritage institutionalisation, although one that remains hypothetical considering how the different forces in presence play out. Stuck between three settings of representation - that of pastoral communities, those of Turkish or Kurdish nationalisms and those inherent to the internal logic of the heritage institutionalisation - pastoralism in the Anatolian East could be understood as a pastoralité defined as a resisting community, the territory being itself an actor of this resistance. In this form, the pastoralité would be an identitary construction. We would like to offer another reading, closer to a tool than to an ideology, and which can encompass both the geopolitical complexity of the Turkish land and what is at stake for the French: pastoralité could firstly be a pastoral concept and a resilience as well as a transformation field.

Factors affecting the internal audit effectiveness: A survey of the Saudi public sector

This study assesses factors influencing internal audit effectiveness (IAE) in Saudi Arabia. Data were obtained from 203 managers and 239 internal auditors from 79 Saudi Arabian public sector organizations. Multiple regression analysis examines the association between IAE and five principal factors. Results suggest that management support for IAE drives perceived effectiveness of the internal audit function from both management's and the internal auditors’ perspective. Management support is linked to hiring trained and experienced staff, providing sufficient resources, enhancing the relationship with external auditors, and having an independent internal audit department. Saudi Arabia is representative of many developed and developing environments, and its recent tradition of governance and audit is mirrored in countries worldwide. Moreover, its specific cultural traditions involving clan and tribal allegiances, and pervasive and core religious beliefs, characterize the GCC countries, the Arab World generally, and indeed, many other developing countries, irrespective of wealth. Thus, links between management support and internal audit effectiveness are likely generalizable beyond the Saudi public sector context.

The Origins, Organization, and Perhaps Demise of Armed Resistance to the State

Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States. By Kimberly Marten. New York: Cornell University Press, 2012. 280 pp., $35.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-801-45076-1). Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War. By Zachariah Cherian Mampilly. New York: Cornell University Press, 2011. 320 pp., $45.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0-801-44913-0). Weak states and destabilizing insurgencies continue to be global concerns in the twenty-first century. The two books reviewed in this essay— Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States by Kimberly Marten and Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War by Zachariah Mampilly—detail how insurgencies function, flourish, and perhaps fail. These books will be essential resources for graduate students, policymakers, and scholars of states struggling with armed resistance. In Warlords, Marten provides a wonderfully nuanced description of the relationship between states and warlords. Warlords are individuals who require some level of state support and protection, but ultimately undermine state capacity by controlling small pieces of territory using a combination of force and patronage. In four substantive chapters, Marten gracefully outlines the trajectory of warlordism as a function of state construction in Pakistan, Georgia, Chechnya, and Iraq. Marten displays great depth of knowledge, and her description is rife with anecdotes, insider information, and humor, making it authoritative and enjoyable to read. In her first chapter on Pakistan's contested border region with Afghanistan, Marten describes how tribal allegiance to the Pakistani state was secured through investing in development initiatives over which local Malik leaders had control. In return for their loyalty, the state gave Maliks unfettered access to patronage resources, turning a blind eye to extensive smuggling and corruption. Popular resentment against the Maliks led to the emergence of radical Islamist Mullahs who replaced the Maliks as local powerbrokers in the 1970s. Buoyed by external funding from the Sunni diaspora, the Mullah imposed Sharia law, assassinated Maliks, and ran free religious schools. Migration to the Persian Gulf to work in the oil fields in the late 1970s may have provided “a potential alternative mechanism for social evolution,” by challenging the established patronage system and social order, but it ended unexpectedly with an …

La recomposition des allégeances tribales dans le Moyen-Euphrate syrien (1958-2007)

RéSUMéL’auteure s’intéresse à la recomposition des allégeances tribales en Jazīra (Syrie) après un demi-siècle d’expérimentations « socialistes » (réformes agraires, révolution bacthiste et « Projet de l’Euphrate ») visant à créer de nouvelles formes d’appartenance sociale détachées des liens primordiaux. Elle montre que les sociétés du Moyen-Euphrate demeurent majoritairement structurées en tribus et que leurs hiérarchies internes se sont modifiées en fonction de leur degré d’allégeance au régime et des avantages qu’elles en tirent, notamment en termes fonciers. L’étude des scrutins électoraux de mars 2003 et avril 2007 éclaire les stratégies des candidats, qui mobilisent différents clans pour augmenter leurs chances de remporter les sièges indépendants soumis au vote.

The Commemoration of Defeat and the Formation of a Nation in the Hebrew Bible

This article argues that the emergence of a "national" consciousness in Israel and Judah was originally fueled by many factors, such as a confined and remote core territory, a history of tribal allegiances, language, culture, law, cult, and ongoing military conflicts. But more important than these factors or any institution of statecraft was the anticipation of defeat and defeat itself. When life could not continue as usual, and the state armies had been conquered, one was forced to answer the question: Who are we? The biblical architects of Israel's memories responded to this question by (selectively) gathering fragments of their collective past and using this material to construct a narrative that depicts the origins of a people and the history leading up to the major catastrophe. Much of the historical narrative treats the period before the rise of the monarchy, and portrays Israel existing as a people long before it established a kingdom—or to use later European political terminology, it portrays Israel existing as a nation before it gained statehood. This "national" consciousness represents the precondition for the writing of Israel's history and the maturation of its rich theological and political tradition. In demonstrating these points, the article critiques two trajectories of contemporary scholarship: one that follows Julius Wellhausen in viewing the community that emerged after the loss of statehood as a form of "church," and another that sees the great moments of state power as the primary context for the formation of the Hebrew Bible and the rich theological-political thought contained therein.

Toleranz und Gewalt. Das Christentum zwischen Bibel und Schwert (review)

Reviewed by: Toleranz und Gewalt. Das Christentum zwischen Bibel und Schwert Robert Bireley, S.J. Toleranz und Gewalt. Das Christentum zwischen Bibel und Schwert. By Arnold Angenendt. (Münster:Aschendorff Verlag. 2006. Pp. 797. €24,80.) This highly significant book deals with the relationship of Christianity to the historical development of human rights and more specifically of religious tolerance over the course of Western history. Often difficult and challenging to follow, it rewards the persistent reader with insight and understanding.The author, professor emeritus of church history at the University of Münster, stands out as probably the most prominent medievalist in Germany today even though he is not well known in the English-speaking world. He has been one of the first historians to approach the Middle Ages through the history of religions, and in this book, which ventures way beyond the Middle Ages, he draws frequently on anthropology and on the history of religions.The author has a dual purpose. First, to respond to the many charges leveled against historical Christianity for its record on human rights, based, for example, on the Inquisition, the persecution of witches, the treatment of the Jews, the Crusades.These accusations against Christianity have been made with particular ferocity in recent years in Germany, in the many volumes, for example, of Karlheinz Deschner's Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, and in the popular German press.Angenendt writes primarily for a German readership. His book is not an apology; he admits readily where Christianity has failed. But he [End Page 308] makes clear the gross exaggerations in the charges against Christianity, many of them with their roots in polemics of the Enlightenment, that have been repeated over and over again for centuries. Recent scholarship in particular, he shows, has debunked many accusations, with regard to the Inquisition, for example, and if it has not completely exonerated the Church, it has reduced its responsibility. Second, and more profoundly,Angenendt seeks to show the Christian roots of European human values; these values constitute a moral capital on which Europe still lives despite widespread rejection of their Christian basis. In support of his argument he cites, among many others, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who in his speech following his reception of the Frankfurt Book Prize in 2001 and again in a famous dialogue with then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in Munich in 2004 recognized the need for modern philosophy to acknowledge the insights and role of religion and for Europe to draw upon its undeniable Christian past as it faces the future. (Russell Shorto in an article on Pope Benedict XVI,"Keeping the Faith," New York Times Magazine, April 8, 2007, refers to these two statements of Habermas.) Angenendt divides his book into five sections, each of which, he states in the Introduction, can be read as an independent unit. Regular summaries of the argument help the reader to keep track of the main argument despite the many digressions. Throughout,Angenendt draws on an immense number of authors to support his theses, anthropologists and philosophers as well as historians, and he frequently inserts brief comparisons with Islam. One can mention only a few prominent arguments in a brief review. The first section is entitled "Tolerance and Force (Gewalt) as Primary Human Tasks."There exists, the author asserts, a necessary dialectic between the two, in that force is necessary to enforce toleration. At the center of his argument is the "long history of toleration." Intolerance rather than tolerance has been the normal situation throughout a human history dominated by aggression as described by both Hobbes and Freud.The passage from such a state or primary culture where ethnic or tribal allegiances and conflicts prevail, to a secondary culture where this is no longer the case constitutes a major human achievement, a triumph of culture over nature that must constantly be repeated as is apparent in our own day. For this two developments are necessary. First must come the recognition of the equality of all human beings and with it implicitly of human rights. Christianity has contributed to this by its insistence that every individual, whether prince, prelate, or pauper, whether man or woman, must render an account of his life...

Fashion and clothing: the construction and communication of gay identities

PurposeThis paper explores the importance of clothes for gay males as semiotic markers for identity creation and communication in order to highlight the increasing fragmentation of this market and the role of consumption practices as cultural markers.Design/methodology/approachThe study is grounded in qualitative data from participant observation, diaries interviews and a focus group of Manchester‐based respondents; findings are linked back to literature on postmodernism, image and identity.FindingsFindings point to communication of individual identity through clothes; firstly, on a community level, as a marker of “gayness”; secondly, on a neo‐tribal level, indicating tribal allegiance and aiding inter‐tribal communication; thirdly, on a situational level, where clothing facilitates acceptance and integration. The proactive use of clothing as a semiotic marker enables the fluid construction and linking of multiple identities. Findings indicate the existence of quite specific codes with (gay) culturally embedded meanings which gay men can choose to identify with and make use of, or not, in different situations. Thus fashion is an important means of differentiation and communication of personal and group identities and affiliations.Research limitations/implicationsThis is an in‐depth study of a small sample of subjects located in Manchester only. Despite satisfactory respondent and ecological validity it would therefore be desirable to extend the study to a larger sample size and replicate it in other settings before making wider generalisations.Practical implicationsImplications for marketers include the need to move away from treating this market as homogeneous as well as opportunities for “tribal marketing”.Originality/valueThrough its in‐depth qualitative approach the paper represents a rich picture of the UK gay fashion market which has a good degree of respondent validity and useful insights for marketers.

(De)Limiting the Past for Future Gain: The Relationship between Sovereignty, Colonialism and Oil in the Qatar v Bahrain Territorial Dispute

The chapter begins with an account of the general history of the dispute and the proceedings as well as the ruling itself. The discovery and exploitation of oil encouraged both foreign and local powers to construct regimes of territoriality, but how were such borders determined, and what role have legal arguments played in this endeavour? Three cases are available to answer this question: the two arbitrations between Dubai and Sharjah and Eritrea and Yemen and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) dispute between Bahrain and Qatar. The last case forms the subject of the chapter, but the other two cases serve as useful reference points, in exploring both local approaches to sovereign control and the link between European domination and treaty law. Discussion about the relationship between tribal allegiances and statehood, as well as the impact of communal property rights on the ability to establish exclusive control, however, was different.Keywords: Bahrain; International Court of Justice (ICJ); Qatar; statehood; territorial dispute

Public Housing on the Reservation

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Roger Biles; Public Housing on the Reservation. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 1 January 2000; 24 (2): 49–63. doi: https://doi.org/10.17953/aicr.24.2.cv853120rj30m683 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

The Arabian Peninsula in Modern Times: A Historiographical Survey

IN 1935, THE BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE produced a memorandum called Seven Independent Arabian States.' The independent states in the Arabian Peninsula still number seven. But of those described a half-century ago (Yemen, 'Asir, al-Hijaz, Najd, Kuwait, Jabal Shammar, and Jawf), only two still exist in similar form. Today, six of the seven states are monarchies: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman. The seventh, the Republic of Yemen, was formed in 1990 out of the merger of North and South Yemen. This immense change provides an illustration of the fragile and transitory nature of traditional Arabian states, given their foundations on shifting tribal allegiances, their absolute dependence on strong and capable leadership, and their lack of firm territorial grounding. But today's seven states have a more durable appearance, even able to withstand the recent conquest of one by a rapacious neighbor. Obviously, much has transpired in just a half-century to change the situation. It can be argued that the process of state formation is the single most fundamental factor in the modern history of the Arabian Peninsula. Earlier writing on the Peninsula dealt mostly with rulers and tribes. More recent writing, whether scholarly or otherwise, has concentrated heavily on country case studies. Much of this is political history (names and dates), but the country emphasis also holds true generally for what little economic and social history exists. As such, state formation provides a convenient and useful prism through which to view the historiography of Arabia. At first glance, the literature on Arabia seems misleadingly substantial. The majority of it is descriptive or narrative. Until the last several decades, most authors have been either travelers, both casual and professional, or government officials (principally British) stationed in the region. It should not be surprising

Centralized versus Decentralized Pattern of Urbanization in Developing Countries: An Attempt to Elucidate a Guideline Principle

I. Background There is no controversy on the ever-growing trend toward urbanization or the prospect that the largest percentage of the total population will find itself within urban regions and settlements 1--39 percent today according to Kingsley Davis.2 The concomitant development of urbanization is particularly spectacular today in which traditionally have been agriculturally based. The urbanization process in developing countries is a cumulative result of other basic trends such as demographic explosion, rural overpopulation, weakening of traditional allegiance to tribe and custom, increased mobility, and rise in personal aspirations and expectations. The problem confronting almost every developing country is whether this inevitable urbanization process will focus on a few urban poles of or whether a more articulated and dispersed pattern of urban centers will emerge. In the first case a split into two societies and economies-one urban and modernized, the other rural and traditional-may be anticipated. Factual evidence on the urbanization process in most of the developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America shows that the first alternative, that of polarized urbanization in a few primate cities, is the dominant one. It therefore appears plausible that in many developing countries a concentration of urban population in primate cities is accepted as natural, deeply anchored in the technological and economic settings of recent and, even more so, of future decades. It is considered that the break with tradition, custom, and tribal allegiance of a migrant from rural areas to a