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Paper short abstract:

In what contexts should an analytical and descriptive discipline like Anthropology use 'tribe' or 'tribal' to describe populations under study, and how do the connotations differ from 'ethnic group' or 'ethnicity'? Anthropologists must capture both local meanings and develop more general analytical categories, but in only a few contexts does the notion of 'tribe' usefully carry out this descriptive and analytical work.

Paper long abstract:

The notion of 'tribe' arose in Anthropology to depict particular forms of social organization, but at the same time was used in colonial administration to describe cultural-linguistic and quasi-ethnic groupings in general. This generalized notion that African identities are essentially 'tribal' has often been embraced by Africans themselves to signify who they are. In East Africa, the Arabic-derived notion of 'kabila' is often rendered as 'tribe' in English or 'tribu' in French. This paper asks in what contexts an analytical and descriptive discipline like Anthropology should use the term 'tribe' or 'tribal' to describe populations under study, how the connotations of the term might differ from 'ethnic group' or 'ethnicity'. The argument will be developed that Anthropologists must both capture local meanings and develop more general analytical categories, especially regarding collective identities of a public sort, but that in only a few contexts does the notion of 'tribe' usefully carry out this descriptive and analytical work.