1/ Within political science, sociology, or anthropology, tribalism alludes to something technical that isn't defined w.r.t. Native Americans. It is a sociocomplexity classification, roughly discretized by Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, and States. https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/985657017569370112 …
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Replying to @generativist
That said, the term may be a bit, er, dated. It's like "groupthink" or "mob psychology" or "brainwashing" or "cult of personality", all of which aren't really referential & persist because of non-academic popularity.
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Replying to @yungneocon
Perhaps. I may be reading my meaning to much in others' words. For me, when I speak of tribalism in American politics, I'm referring to cognition conditioned by experientially-constructed stereotypes which partition people into highly-coupled sub-units.
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Replying to @generativist @yungneocon
Tribalism as an analogy works well -- especially during transition periods towards chiefdoms consequent to scarcity -- because physical space affords the same shape of cognition. But...that may not be the common meaning. And, it's really hard to compress.
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Replying to @generativist
Not to get super pedantic here, lol, but this reversed it—the hierarchies induced scarcity not the other way around :) . That said there are plenty of other ideas (cliques, in groups, cognitive dissonance, halo effects, empathy w authority etc which capture the key idea).
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Replying to @yungneocon
So, that's the hard part (as always). I don't think those are good substitutes. But as amalgamation (of those terms):
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Replying to @generativist @yungneocon
Tribalism is cliques with cues that afford the generalizable perception of in-groups and out-group which condition cognition and social perceptions in a way that reinforces and generates isolated groups. (Or something.)
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Replying to @generativist
Yeah but is that a negative thing? How would academic disciplines work without that dynamic for example?
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Replying to @yungneocon
Ah hah -- good point and demonstration! My whole dissertation is basically saying it's an extraordinarily good information architecture. But, it's a bad fit when chronically-activated in States which require different architectures. And, I just used it both ways!
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Replying to @generativist
A classic dynamic optimization problem!—With too much solidarity, the group never learns or adapts, but with too little the group can’t do anything at all...
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Yep. I've structured it as just that :) (Now I'm really going to ask you to read it once it's a full draft ;))
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