"Tribalism": National Representations of Tribal Life In Jordan

Using Bakhtin's concept of dialogue, I show how two Jordanian formulations of "tribalism" are informed and conditioned by other discourses including regional political ones such as the Israeli's 'Jordan is Palestine' discourse and international discourse concerning "folk culture," "traditions," and "heritage" as well as "modernity," "nationhood," and "political development." The later has many manifestations including the literature of anthropology. Through comparison with the historical and political development of tribalism concepts in the Africanist literature, I show how the Jordanian pro-tribalism position with its cultural construction of the romantic Bedouin resonates with the portrayal of tribes in the early Africanist literature in its emphasis on the cultural coherence and consensus of an imagined golden era and how the Jordanian anti-tribalism position resembles the "primordial ties" theme in the post-independence period of African tribalism literature. While serving Jordan well in many ways, the concept of "tribalism," in both its portrayal of tribal life as an idealized past, or as a retrogressive barrier to development, is essentializing and misleading when applied to real, living communities in the process of recreating themselves in a changing world.