Paper short abstract:

I investigate the changing role played by named descent groups, called here ‘tribes’, in Libya. Focusing on the relationships between tribes and the Senussi religious fraternity of the early 1900s, the revolutionary committees of the 70s and 80s, and the contemporary civil war, highlights this change.

Paper long abstract:

I investigate the changing role played by named descent groups, which I will refer to as 'tribes', in Libya from the early 1900s to now. Focusing on the types and instances of reported interactions between Libyan tribes and the Senussi religious fraternity, Qaddafi's revolutionary committees, and the modern militias that prosecuted Libya's most recent war, shows how Libyan tribes have changed and adapted to new socioeconomic circumstances. For instance, tribal interaction with the Senussi was a seemingly structural instance of inter-group mediation through shared religious sentiment (Evans-Pritchard 1949, Peters 1968), whereas tribal influence on local elections (circa 1975) seems a clearer instance of political complimentary opposition wherein local Shaikhs attempted to equalize the respective representation of oppositional parties (Davis 1987). Drawing nearer to the present it becomes more difficult to ascertain - with history's ad hoc precision - categorical instances of tribal interaction with Libyan life and politics. Granting this, media reportage of the war in Libya points, in most cases, to some level of tribal participation/influence inside of the various rebel militias that supported the National Transitional Council. Research I conducted in the summer of 2012 aimed to more fully discern the nature of this involvement.