What is the definition of tribe? Definition, Concept and Characteristic

The anthropologists, sociologists, social workers, administrators and such people who have been involved with tribes and their problems either on theoretical plane or on practical grounds are still not on the same wave length of concept and definition about “Tribe”. No doubt with the passage of time, the differences on the concept and definition of a tribe have certainly narrowed down to an appreciable extent, but a theoretical discussion seems imperative to understand this problem in its proper perspective.

 

World wide anthropologists, sociologists, social workers, administrators and such people used various type of summaries for clarifying the concept and definition. According to Oxford Dictionary a tribe is a group of people in a primitive or barbarous stage of development acknowledging the authority of a chief and usually regarding themselves as having a common ancestor. Similarly Ralph Linton said In its simplest form the tribe is a group of bands occupying a contiguous territory or territories and having a feeling of unity deriving from numberous similarities in culture, frequent contacts, and a certain community of interest.

An Indian anthropologist “D.N Majumdar stated that a tribe is a social group with territorial affiliation, endogamous, with no specialization of functions, ruled by tribal officers, hereditary or otherwise, united in language or dialect, recognizing social distance with other tribes or castes, without any social obloquy attaching to them, as it does in the caste structure, following tribal traditions, beliefs and customs, illiberal of naturalization of ideas from alien sources, above all conscious of homogeneity of ethnic and territorial integration.

Now let’s look for some key characteristic factors for being a tribal.

1. A tribe to be a ‘tribe’ should have the least functional interdependence within the community .

2. It should be economically backward, which means the full import of monetary economics should not be understood by its members. Also exploiting natural resources should be used and the tribe’s economy should be at an underdeveloped stage.

3. There should be a comparative geographic isolation of its people from others.

4. Culturally, members of a tribe should have a common dialect which may be subject to regional variations.

5. A tribe should be politically organized and its community Panchayat should be an influential institution.

6. The tribe members should have the least desire to change. They should have a sort of psychological conservatism making them stick to their old customs.

7. A tribe should have customary laws and its members have to suffer in a law court because of these laws.

The above discussion shows that it is not easy to define a tribe or a tribal society conclusively and any standardization in this regard is very difficult to obtain. In spite of that if really want to summarise the definition of tribe then we can say a tribe is a social group with a shared ancestry, culture, language, and geographical ties, often with their own governance and kinship systems. Tribes can be indigenous, nomadic, or sedentary, and examples include Native American, African, and Indigenous Australian communities.