Mark Weiner's article "The call of the clan: why ancient kinship and tribal affiliation still matter in a world of global geopolitics" (2013) has more in common with TIMN than any prior reading in this series. So do two other articles and an interview he did based on his then-new book The Rule of the Clan (2013). This post draws on all but his book, which I've not read. Yet, as today's reading, I'm pointing only to the article named up top — I like it best as an overview.
WEINER'S KEY POINTS: STRONG FIT WITH TIMN THEORY
As I keep repeating, tribal (TIMN’s T) forms of
organization, their dynamics and effects, have been widely ignored by
national-security policymakers, grand strategists, development economists, and
counter-terrorism theorists, among others — at their peril, to their discredit,
and without their even knowing it. They’ve ignored tribes as a distinct form —
yet it's the first and forever form, the form upon which every society is
grounded. They have also ignored how the tribal form relates to the other TIMN
forms that societies use to organize themselves. Yet excessive commitments to
the T form lie behind most of the violent troubles we now face around the
world; and its pernicious entanglement with the +I institutional and +M market
forms accounts for much of the systemic corruption and political illiberalism
we see in so many societies.
That doesn't apply to this author. He has an excellent
understanding of the tribal / clan form, it's effects and implications. His
understanding is not as thorough as TIMN proposes, but it’s the best I’ve seen
so far.
So I'm doing my write-up differently from others in this
series. For the others, I've tried to show they advance a recognition of the T
form. But this reading is already so advanced that I'm going to emphasize
instead where it matches TIMN, such that they mutually validate each other.
Also, the points I make below fit with today's reading, but I use quotes from
all the articles noted above. (See source note at end for clarification.)
• Weiner, much like TIMN, views clans as a variant of the
tribal form — as "a subset of tribes". Clans first took shape around
biological kinship principles to become the initial "basic building blocks
of civic life”, as “a natural form of social and legal organization.” Later,
some clans also became based on "the adjunct principle of “fictive
kinship” — in which a non-consanguineous group is treated “like family”."
Thus, says Weiner, clan rule "is more explicable in human terms than that
most historically anomalous of institutions: the modern liberal state. …
Clannism is tribalism’s historical shadow.”^
• Weiner finds, much like TIMN, that clan structures are so
decentralized and collectivist that clan system depends on imposing a “culture
of group honor and shame”. Indeed, he says, "Group honor and shame allow
the rule of the clan’s devolution of power to work by promoting both internal
self-regulation within extended kin groups and coexistence among them". In
other words, "Honor and shame form the cultural circuitry of such a
collectivist system."
• Weiner observes, again like TIMN, that as societies
progress, the clan form does not go away — it persists. This persistence occurs
not only via the clan's traditional blood-kin form, but also via morphed modern
forms based on "fictive kinship". Indeed, people may remain partly if
not wholly beholden to the clan form for both defensive and offensive purposes,
for it gives them a place from which to defend and/or expand their personal as
well as clan interests. In TIMN terms, people will remain in clan forms to the
extent that they cannot find appropriate places in sectors structured by the
institutional, the market, or now the new information-age network forms.
• Weiner recognizes, as does TIMN, that people revert back
to clan forms especially when societies break down — this is true not only for
far-away societies but also, increasingly, right here at home in America.
Accordingly, "People … reflexively turn to it as a principle of social
organization, especially when state alternatives break down." “For when
there is no such thing as society, eventually there are only cousins and
clans.” Thus, "people who live under clan rule often — and sensibly — hold
it in high regard, just as they rationally return to it when other social
structures break down."
• Weiner’s analysis is evolutionary, somewhat like TIMN, in
that he looks beyond clan rule to the rise of government rule. As he sees
matters, “When clan rule diminishes, two aspects of a society change: its legal
and political structure and its culture." What's needed, then, "is
the transformation of clans from hard institutions with legal and political
significance to purely soft institutions with cultural and psychological
importance. From clan to club. From kinship to social networks.” Indeed, Weiner
often notes as a theme, that clans must soften into clubs, and their exclusive
kinship networks must loosen and evolve into broader more inclusive social
networks, in order for social evolution to advance.
• Weiner, like TIMN, warns that clannism is becoming rife
and risky here at home as well as abroad. According to Weiner, “The second
reason to study clans … has to do with our own political discourse here at
home. You could say that I became interested in clans because of widespread
ideological attacks against the state within liberal societies — that is,
attacks on government.” As he notes elsewhere, "… today, clan rule poses
grave international challenges, not just in tribal societies, but in more
developed nations, and even in modern liberal democracies.” Extensive clannism
has the effect of "making it more likely that conflicts will escalate and
spiral out of control."
• Because of the above, Weiner advises, much like TIMN, that
foreign-policy and national-security strategists acquire a better understanding
of the clan form. Indeed, "appreciating the range of forms it takes are
vital to solving a surprisingly long list of foreign-policy challenges."
In particular he highlights how “The social and cultural consequences of
clannism are insidious.” He sees, as does TIMN (though I lag in writing it up),
that "clannism" explains corruption in systems where institutions do
not take hold properly: “One step up the development ladder, nations that
posses the outward trappings of a modern state but are still firmly in the grip
of clannism — like the Palestinian Authority or Egypt — suffer from corruption
and stifled economic development.” Weiner also sees urban gangs as another
manifestation of clannism in modern societies.
A couple of final points:
While TIMN treats tribes as a cardinal form of organization,
Weiner's focus on clans has resonance in other comparative organizational
frameworks: notably, William Ouchi’s typology about clans, hierarchies, and
markets; and Clay Spinuzzi’s typology about clans, hierarchies, markets, and
networks. Weiner’s work helps validate these. Jim Gant deserves credit as well
for his efforts to gain recognition of the significance of the tribal/clan form
in all sorts of societies. For more on this, see my blog post and accompanying
charts here:
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/…/organizational-forms-comp…
Finally, let’s notice that Weiner wrote about "rule by
clan" years ago — well before Donald Trump became president. Yet Weiner's
analysts bears on this, for in some ways Trump, more than any American
president, operates like a clan chieftain who is seeking to install a familial
loyalty-driven clan-state inside our nation-state. (An example of a country
that has always been more a clan-state than a nation-state is North Korea.)
SELECTED PASSAGES FROM WEINER'S ARTICLE
• First, here's how Weiner describes the nature of clans and
"rule by clan":
“What do the European sovereign
debt crisis, the difficulty of building a liberal democracy in Afghanistan, and
a Mexican drug cartel have in common? To begin with, all three are the
predictable result of weak government institutions. On a deeper level, however,
they are products of a single basic impulse: They all implicate the fundamental
human drive to live under the rule of the clan. Grasping this impulse and
appreciating the range of forms it takes are vital to solving a surprisingly
long list of foreign-policy challenges.
“So what is the rule of the clan?
Ancient Highland Scotland provides a helpful example. Until well after the failed
1745 Jacobite rising, when Britain roundly defeated the cause of "Bonnie
Prince Charlie," no robust public identity or state institution in the
Highlands effectively superseded clans. Society was organized around kinship
groups -- like the MacGregors, Macphersons, and MacDonalds, each associated
with its own region -- and the ever shifting confederacies they established
over centuries. Under clan rule, groups of extended families formed the basic
building blocks of civic life. They remained largely autonomous from central
government authority, maintaining their own law and settling disputes according
to local custom.”
• Here's how Weiner describes the corrosive corrupting grip
of "clannism" in clan-riven societies:
“One step up the development ladder,
nations that posses the outward trappings of a modern state but are still
firmly in the grip of clannism -- like the Palestinian Authority or Egypt --
suffer from corruption and stifled economic development. Although they possess
stronger state institutions, they nevertheless govern through informal
patronage networks, especially those of kinship. President Bashar al-Assad
centralized and maintained his power through such patronage in Syria. So did
Yasir Arafat after his return to Palestine in 1994. Where clannism reigns,
governments are co-opted for purely factional purposes, and states, conceived
on the model of the patriarchal family, treat citizens not as autonomous actors
but rather as troublesome dependents to be managed. At the same time, kin-based
patronage groups have the power to discipline their members in accord with
their own internal rules."
“The social and cultural
consequences of clannism are insidious. Corrupt governments regularly set
factions against each other to avoid scrutiny of their own practices, and a
lack of economic dynamism encourages out-migration of workers and fosters
social unrest. More profoundly, in the words of the 2004 Arab Human Development
Report, by "implant[ing] submission, parasitic dependence and compliance in
return for protection and benefits," clannism destroys "personal
independence, intellectual daring, and the flowering of a unique and authentic
human entity." But clannism is not just a relic of the developing world.
Modern liberal democracies can and do succumb to clan rule when their
central-government institutions are weak or perceived to be illegitimate. In
inner cities of the United States, for example, where the writ of the state
often runs out, petty criminal gangs enforce their own social order. Likewise,
in countries like Italy and Mexico, international criminal organizations and
drug syndicates dictate their own internal codes of discipline and engage in
intergroup behavior -- like blood feuds -- strikingly akin to that of
traditional clans. Even the weakening transnational institutions of the
European Union have accelerated the rise of right-wing parties, such as
Greece's fascist Golden Dawn party, which claim to provide alternative social
orders based on ethnicity."
• Here Weiner again contrasts clan values with liberal
values, arguing that the former must soften if the latter are to take hold:
“The rule of the clan everywhere
challenges liberal values. But it need not. Over time, as they did in Scotland,
clans of all sorts will transform from hard political entities to soft -- if
cherished -- markers of personal identity. Over a long span of history, clans
will become clubs -- even in the most difficult parts of the world."
SOURCES FOR THIS POST
I’ve based this post mostly on today’s reading — Mark Weiner's
”The call of the clan: why ancient kinship and tribal affiliation still matter
in a world of global geopolitics" (2013), at:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/15/the-call-of-the-clan/
This post also draws on two other sources I mentioned up
front. One is the interview by Deven Desai, titled “Bright Ideas: Mark Weiner
on his new book Rule of the Clan”
(2013), at:
https://concurringopinions.com/…/bright-ideas-mark-weiner-o…
The other is Weiner’s “The Paradox of Modern Individualism”
(2014), which is published in a special issue of the periodical Cato Unbound,
along with discussion articles by several other analysts, located at:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/…/mark-s-weiner/paradox-modern…
For a review of Weiner’s book, including comments I made
that reappear above, see Mark Safranski's illuminating blog post "Review:
The Rule of the Clan" (2016), at:
http://zenpundit.com/?p=49580
All quotes above are from these sources. However, my write-up
here does not specify exactly which quotes are from which sources. I lost
track, and I hope to take care of that tiresome slip-up later.
To read for yourself, go here:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/15/the-call-of-the-clan/
[I posted an earlier write-up of this reading on my Facebook
page, on June 26.]
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