Attempted Socialism wrote:Can you give me an example of a RL country that is not composed chiefly of numerous families, clans, or generations having a shared ancestry and language, and of a RL tribe that is? How did you figure it out? What criteria did you use for evaluation?
For instance, I would guess Scotland easily qualifies with all your criteria, but then I came to think about other nations; depending on timeframe, British colonisers in New Zealand or Australia could claim tribal status; they fit with some 6-8 generations. Next, if you go all-in on the clan part, you can exclude a lot of nations, but you'd still include Scotland and Ireland. You'd also include the Iroquois Confederacy. But to my knowledge, most Central and Southern American tribes are not clan-based. The Mexican tribal villages were not, for instance, and I don't think the Zapatista would be thrilled if you told them they weren't protected because of the clan criterion.
As a minor grammatical thing, your definition reads as an enumerated list, but there are at least two ways to read it, as demonstrated:
1) numerous families, (or) 2) clans, (or) 3) generations having a shared ancestry and language
Alternatively:
1) numerous families, (or) 2) clans, (or) 3) generations (any of which has to have) a shared ancestry and language
The reason why anthropologists generally have abandoned "tribe" as a term is because almost any definition is either overinclusive (Includes European nations or settler colonies, for instance) or plays into outdated and infantilising ideas of the Indian as a noble savage lower on the civilisational development ladder. But ethnic group has the issue here that it includes both the victims and the perpetrators of colonisation and imperialist conquest. So would a better definition include some kind of analysis of the histories and relative power-relationships between ethnic groups? Possibly. You could also draw more explicitly on RL history and protect conquered ethnic groups, but there might be flaws in that approach as well.
When I initially said...... it wasn't to insult you, but to warn you that the topic is hard even for RL scholars before politics enter into it.Attempted Socialism wrote:I don't think this is a workable topic; it's hardly a workable topic IRL either.
"While your points are quite fair Ambassador, and even as such, make more sense now than before, this is still a major oversight of the World Assembly, and as such, can't stop, even fretting how difficult defining a tribe may be. Internally, we've discussed your inclusion in this process as a co-author and all of us in the government have agreed to your inclusion, that is, if you agree as well." - The Makko Oko Ministry Of Diplomatic Affairs, World Assembly Affairs Division