Class lecture on the concept bilingual, meant for my students
Introduction
Different words like French Tribu, English
Tribe and Latin Tribus were used to designate social divisions among the Roman
population. Similarly the Greek word Phule also represented Indo-European
Social Organisations. The word “tribe” has a long and ignoble history
and remains one of the most variably used terms within and outside of
anthropology (Helm 1968). Anthropologists often use it as a catch-all
substitute for “primitive,” avoiding the invidious comparison of
“nonstate.” But most who use the term analytically narrow it to mean
some form of political unit, as distinct from “ethnie” or
“nation,” which suggest a cultural identity.
The foundation structure of the tribe is
Kinship. The smaller Kinship unites were known as Genos in Greek and Gens in
Latin. Scottish people used to call them Clan. One can only be a member of a
clan if s/he is connected through kinship relationships. A person is a member
of a tribe by birth. Each of these clans had a separate name and a tribe
constituted a number of clans. Since, tribal system is pre-state condition,
there is no centralised administration among the tribal societies. The social
order is maintained by the kinship organisations. Kin rules framed primarily on
the basis of systems of affinity and consanguinity were used to determine the
right over a geographical location or selection of the headman.
The idea of
tribe as a pre-political and pre-contractual society is rooted in the
evolutionary schema of which dominated anthropology during the 19th
century. The evolutionism of 19th century saw human beings as making
uniform ‘progress’ and evidences such as the continuation of ‘primitive’ traits
like pottery is example of cultural survivals (Tylor 1871). At the same time,
the society was moving through a variety of stages like Savagery, Barbarism and
ultimately the civilisation (Morgan 1877). Tribal people around the world have
then provided the empirical evidences to support the theory of social
evolution.
It was L.H.
Morgan’s Ancient Society (1861) and Systems of Consanguinity and
Affinity of the Human Family (1871) that made investigation on Tribal
society a systematic enterprise. Morgan emphasised that even though there is a
general absence of state system, yet, tribes are quite organised and
disciplined society. He noted that there is a general absence of hierarchical
division between Clans and Lineages. In “Ancient Society” (1877) Morgan defines
tribe as a completely organised society where all forms of social relation are
dominated by kinship. For Morgan, tribal society is organised in such a way
that their form of social organisation is capable of reproducing itself. A
tribe, according to him, is a collection of a number of clans who have distinct
nomenclature, separate language, distinct political organisation and a
territory under their own possession. It is important to note that Morgan’s
conception of the tribe and Durkheim’s conception of the polysegmental society were
both rooted in the same evolutionary perspective. Their successors chose their
examples not from India, China and the Islamic world, but from Australia, the
Pacific Islands and North America where recent historical experience brought out
the disjunction rather than the co-existence of tribe and civilization.
Along the similar
line of generalised and universal idea of social evolution Sir Henry James
Maine has given a theoretical idea of the emergence of human civilisation. His
theory that political organization had originally been based on blood (kinship)
and later moved to territory, which is part of that famous transition from
societies based on status to ones based on contract that he developed in
Ancient law (1861), has provided a solid foundation for much work in political
anthropology. His work on the difference between early communities and modern
associations strongly influenced the contemporary work of Tönnies and Durkheim and
later that of Redfield. His analysis of corporate institutions helped lay the
foundation of modern studies of kinship as developed by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard. Maine showed the complexity of the
“bundle of powers” in property and the way in which these had been
gradually separated into the institution of private, individual property. He
outlined the importance of the development of notions of primogeniture and
impartibility and the central device of wills. Supplemented by the work of F.
W. Maitland, his characterization of the nature of property rights within
feudalism is still valuable because he saw very clearly the mixing of political
and economic power and the different layers of tenure in the feudal
period. His most famous work is on the
development of the “individual” from the “group,” that
movement whereby status (family) is replaced by contract as the basis of modern
nation-states. Although many other great Victorians, including Spencer and
Marx, were developing parallel ideas, his insight is unique. There is much
debate concerning his methodological importance and some criticism of his
accuracy. Some believe that he introduced a new comparative and historical
approach that laid the basis for the disciplines of anthropology and
comparative jurisprudence. Others argue that his work was distorted by an
evolutionary bias. In fact part of the tension in his writing results from the
fact that he straddled the paradigm shift to evolutionism. He believed that
stability was the norm and that the evolution of certain
“progressive” societies was the exception. He was much more cautions
in his generalizations than most of his critics realize. As Pollock wrote of
him in the year of his death, “Maine can no more become obsolete through
the industry and ingenuity of modern scholars than Montesquieu could be made
obsolete by the legislation of Napoleon,” for “At one master-stroke
he forged a new and lasting bond between history and anthropology”
There are several major aspects of the classical
approach that sees tribe as pre-political and pre-contractual society. These
are as follows:
1.
The general presence of the
spirit of 19th century unilineal evolutionism as a theoretical
background
2.
For Morgan society’s progress
through three stages is important and tribal people from various corners of the
world exemplify such progress.
3.
For Maine, society has
progressed from status to contract with law
4.
There is a rough parallel to
the Durkheimian idea of progress from mechanical to organic solidarity.
