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No anthropologist with valid field experience advocates the use of the term tribe anymore
Way over my head. I just know that during the 15 or so years I've co-owned businesses in West Africa, my friends and business partners often ask people they've just met which tribe they are from and use the word tribe extensively. People seem to be very proud to talk of their tribal ancestry.
Hadn't crossed my mind that it might not be acceptable to use that word. What is the correct word to use to describe a tribe now? Is it more that a white person shouldn't use tribe?
Stonehedge-
Most Nigerians I've met have used the word tribe, and not that I've used it that extensively but none of them have mentioned my use. Equally when I lived with an indigenous community in Bolivia I'm pretty sure the Spanish speaking guide used the word tribe (or rather the Spanish version).
But I get the argument against it, and in both my examples neither were overly PC in their language.
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This is not my area of expertise, but I remember when reading Congo by David Can Reybrouck that the construct if tribes was imposed by the Belgian authorities in the Congo, and that it ultimately took on a constitutive reality that led to the development of tribal identities. I don't know how this correlates to the experience of Ghana or Nigeria in the colonial or post colonial era.
I'm guessing from the post that the OP would use 'indigenous cosmologies' in place of tribe. Having said that, I would have been too ignorant to know check myself from the use of tribe.
hugo7
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No anthropologist with valid field experience advocates the use of the term tribe anymore- it just doesn’t describe any specific form of social/political organisation. It’s profoundly anchored in 19th and 20th Century evolutionist thinking about ‘primitive’ others that were commonly contrasted with the ‘civilised’ west. I would go as far as to say that the use of the term today is in itself racist.It is true that in many indigenous cosmologies around the world (especially in the Amazon for example), humanity is thought to conincide with one’s own social group, and everyone beyond that is a barbarian. I would however say that the kind of racism We are talking about in the context of BLM, the racism that underpins empire and colonialisation, is clearly a fairly modern western invention and unparalleled in the ethnographic record.
Also the ‘tribes’ in Ghana and Nigeria that you know, I would be interested to know how the colonial experience has reconfigured relations between them, especially in Ghana and Nigeria where the British used indirect rule very effectively.