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Tribalism refers to the "us versus them mentality" often ascribed with tribal societies.
While ethnocentrism is one of a small handful of cultural universals in human society, "tribalism" has become especially associated with tribal societies since the 18th century--owing primarily to the ethnocentrism of early European anthropologists (see cultural evolution)
Many tribes refer to themselves with their language's word for "people," while referring to other, neighboring tribes with various ephitets. For example, the term "Inuit" translates as "people," but they were known to the Ojibwe by a name translating roughly as "eaters of raw meat."
While tribes are no more or less ethnocentric and violent than any other type of society, the effects of such evolutionary dispositions among actual tribes is often restricted by environmental realities and the general inability to sustain conflict against one another, for lack of surplus resources and population. Opinions differ widely on the pervasiveness of such conflict in tribal societies, but it seems clear that horticultural societies, if not forager peoples, are often engaged in, at the very least, low-level conflict with their neighbors on a rather constant basis.
In larger, agricultural societies, nations and empires, such attitudes become more dangerous, as groups are forced into regular and extensive contact with one another, while also providing the resources and populations to wage much larger conflicts. Ethnocentric "tribalism" then manifests with larger, more theoretical organizations, such as states or corporations (see nationalism, jingoism, chauvinism).
Some contend that anthropological research over the past 50 years has shown tribal peoples to be no more or less afflicted with "tribalism" than any other categorization of human society. This has led to attempts to redeem the term from its usual, disparaging associations. "Tribalism" is now sometimes used to refer to the open, egalitarian nature often supposed for tribal societies (see Jean Jacques Rousseau, New tribalists). However, the older, deragatory usage is still far more commonplace.
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