(no subject)

[teddywolf]

Today I was in my Imperialism class. The discussion went around the pre-modern empires and the notion of tribe. Historical tribe, by my professor's definition, is bound by bonds of blood. He brought up the Jews as the first historical pre-modern empire and, among other things, said that this was based on Jewish tribal notions which had no conversions until the modern era.

I decided I had to speak up at this point. I mentioned we had a strong history of conversions, even though they were less common before the modern era. I brought up Ruth, I brought up the Khazars, and mentioned that a number of converts were notable in our history. He then said, "Then why are you a tribe? You can't be G-d's Chosen People by blood while allowing others to join your tribe, it's not logical." I mentioned the distinction between religiously Jewish and Jewish by birth; he said the notions were still incompatible.

Do bear in mind I like my professor. He makes me think and is academically rigorous.

His definition of tribe is as something immutable, you are born to it or not, or might get forced into it by conflict.

I want to present to him examples of tribes that accepted in outsiders to become "of the tribe". I will be doing some research into this because I want to present it to him - yes, I have been looking. If any of you know of an historical example, off the top of your head, something not involving a marriage or slavery, I would appreciate a pointer. It could be somebody joining a Native American tribe, or brought into a particular African tribe, or a Chinese family, a Germanic village, what-have-you - in fact, the more diverse the better. I want to show that a tribe may have been primarily about blood but also could be something a person chose and, under exceptional circumstances, be accepted into.

Please feel free to signal boost this.

Comments

[ceo]

In early American Colonial times there were numerous examples of white colonists running off to join a local Native American tribe. Indeed, colonists who were abducted by Native tribes frequently chose to stay, whereas Natives abducted by colonists never did. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus discusses this a bit.

[tehuti.livejournal.com]

To piggy back on this, in the 18th century, many Indians congregated into villages after their own tribes were destroyed, forced to move or somehow became non-viable. The most famous of these settlements was at Saint-Francis, in Quebec, known as Odanak both then and now. The Abenaki were particularly hard hit doing the colonial conquest of North America, and refugees (from nearly every nation or tribe that once lived in New England) gathered in great numbers at this settlement, forming a new tribe in the process. Partially because of this, the Abenaki have a very hard time proving that they are a "tribe" that meets the US federal definition, although they are recognized in Canada.

[asimaiyat.livejournal.com]

... what about escaped/freed Black former slaves in the US marrying or converting into Native American tribes? I know there are some of those in my husband's family tree.

(hi, btw! I'm a friend of Ayesha's.)

(I hate having that kind of conflict in class, also. :( Last year it led to a very anxious office hours meeting with a professor where I had to really awkwardly explain what it means to me to allow for queer readings of classic texts.)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Howdy and welcome :-)
His definition was looking at tribes with, I suspect, a demarcation at the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). I need to doublecheck this with him; at the same time, he did point to Native tribes as the only currently-extant example of tribalism in the US.

While I am admittedly worried about debating with the professor over a point he considers settles he has shown that he is willing to talk from and about other viewpoints. A critical example of this was him taking a viewpoint during the previous summer session class about what he considers a legitimate and proper use of state power but then not letting it be the sole or even a necessary criteria in our sole paper.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Herman Lehmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Lehmann) leaps to mind. He was captured as a child and raised by Apaches. He became a Apache brave as an adult, but fled the band he lived with after he killed a medicine man. He then went to the Comanches and was adopted as an Comanche.

Your professor's definition of tribalism is a false one, based on incorrect 19th century ideas of race. It certainly wasn't true of the original three tribes of Romans, from whom we get the very word "tribe." Those tribes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe), the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, were groups of families who lived in the same area but who were not -- in general -- closely related.

It is true that there are identifiable ethnic groups which are strongly endogamous (only allowing marriage within the group) and which have thus come to be seen as a tribe using that 19th century definition. But as tribes go these are the exception rather than the rule. Most historical tribes have been endogamous, continuously bringing new genetic stock into the tribe via intermarriage and adoption from outside the tribe.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Typo alert - I think the second time you mean "exogamous".

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

What about the Shakers?

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I don't know much of anything about the Shakers - do they consider themselves a tribe?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Your professor is..... a normal human being.

I'll see if I can get you some information about what the Talmud says about conversion-- that would be considerably pre-modern.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Thank you; don't feel you have to spend time doing this as such. I appreciate any help given but also don't want to put people out of their way.

I like my professor. I don't always agree with him and his grasp of Judaism is not the best (hey, he's not Jewish) but that doesn't stop me from liking him.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I am not sure how he would consider the Haudenosaunee League. It is more than a single tribe, which puts it in a different category. He had his own discussion about confederations of tribes that did not fit the definition of empire, but the League looks to have had a few points that would qualify as colonization.

And this is why I need to bounce discussion back to him :-)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I think he was not thinking so much of adoption. I will need to bring it up with him. My professor is a political scientist as opposed to an anthropologist.

William Adams will definitely be a good discussion point to bring up to him, even if he uses the Treaty of Westphalia as a demarcation point. Thank you.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The entire Roman Empire. At one point, TEN PERCENT of the Roman Empire was Jewish, the vast majority of it not being born Jewish.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much, I didn't know we'd gotten that big in the Roman Empire. I hate to trouble you but, off the top of your head, do you have a citation for the conversion part?

[sethg]

Well, obviously, if your professor wants to define “tribe” in a way that excludes anything that you can convert or be adopted into, his statements are true as tautologies. I don’t see the sociological value in doing so, of course. I would even hazard to guess that an exclusive focus on family membership “by blood” is, itself, a modern idea.

Aside from the conversion narrative of Ruth in the Bible itself, references to conversion in Jewish legal documents go back to the Mishnah (see, for example, Kiddushin 4:1), which dates to the first or second century. When does this professor consider the “modern” period to have begun?

Among the American Indians of the Northeast (possibly elsewhere as well), children captured in wartime were adopted into families of the tribe that captured them, often to make up for the adoptive parents’ dead or missing children. In wars with English settlers, some white children were adopted into Indian tribes into this fashion. I recall from my undergrad days that one girl who was adopted in this way remained part of the tribe and later wrote a memoir (which, with each revised edition, became more anti-Indian), but I can’t remember her name and Wikipedia/Google/Amazon are not helping.

There is also the case of William Adams a.k.a. Miura Anjin, the Englishman who became a samurai and retainer to the shogun Togukawa Ieyasu in the 17th century; Adams was the model for the main character in James Clavell’s novel Shōgun.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

He wanted to demarcate between a more original definition of tribe and what consider tribes to be today in casual usage of the term. He describes it as a subconscious/unconscious state of being, belonging to a tribe.

Thank you for the citations; those will be useful for talking with him.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

The professor has been a bit shaky on Jewish thought and history before. While I cannot speak for his personal beliefs I do want to assure you that from what I can see he is no more against Judaism than he is against any other religion. I am not sure what his religion is currently and have not asked, but of the Abrahamic faiths (as some people call them) he is most likely to have been grounded in Islam. He does talk about shortcomings in Israel but he also talks about shortcomings in every *other* country in the Middle East too.

The academic rigor, with him, is what he wants: logical thought processes which do not confuse definitions or self-conflict. I do not always agree with him, as is evidenced by the post; but he does show himself to be of an open mind and willing to change it if the evidence is there. He has at times challenged us to challenge him.

[avram]

Have you asked him why he defines tribe as he does?

It's possible that Jews aren't a tribe. Whatever word ancient Jews used to describe themselves was probably Hebrew, and any translation of that word into English is going to be approximate. Jews don't actually have any sort of obligation to live their lives according to your professor's definitions.

The traditional view has it that Jews are all subscribers to the Covenant of Abraham. Now, Abraham himself was not a Jew by birth, so presumably the Jewish god has the power to make people Jews who weren't born Jewish. If the Jewish god has that power, then it makes sense that religious ritual can invoke that power, and transform non-Jews into Jews.

Though this invites a new argument about whether we should use the word Jew to describe people prior to the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I did ask him how Abraham converting people to Judaism was different from Mohammed converting people to Islam. I think I need to press him a little more on the answer.

I did bring up the difference between cultural Judaism, religious Judaism and the tie of blood, but then he talked about dismissing the religious side. To be fair, he talked about dismissing the religious side to every single religion at that point. Still, if he has to dismiss a major faith-based component that was a central part of ideology it brings up more questions.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

If he's not accepting Ruth, I'm not sure that any logical argument will work - she's pretty much the classic example.

[cellio]

And if he won't accept Ruth because of some perceived vagueness, the talmud is pretty specific and Maimonides, a prominent medieval scholar, answered questions about conversion without seeming to blink. (The famous one is the convert who asks him if he should refer to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov as "our" fathers when they aren't his ancestors. The Rambam replies that when you join the people you get the ancestors.)

The professor has a peculiar-sounding definition of tribe. If he means bloodline only, well, he's free to structure his world-view that way, but it doesn't have much to do with Judaism.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Simply (though likely harshly) put, I think he's misinterpreting Morton Fried's work for his own bias. The issue is that if you accept Fried's concept, tribes bond/are created out of kinship. He's making an assumption that kinship MUST equal blood kin (consanguinity), and not sympathetic kinship (affinity), which even in pre-modern times, was simply not the case.

Oddly, I find this is refuted not by historical proof (of which there is plenty, and I suspect if your professor was female, and therefore part of the half of the gender that got swapped around like trading cards by these tribal states to avoid inbreeding, he would recognize more readily). Instead, it's more readily disproved by Dian Fossey, who was accepted, eventually by the mountain gorillas not because of any sort of modern conversion, but instead because eventually, the primate brains recognized her as a benefit to their tribe, and as a result, 'one of us'. That was not a 'modern conversion', but in point recognition that when a group recognizes an advantage to inclusion, they will absorb. It's an instinctual movement, not an intellectual one, as modern conversions are.

The problem isn't the stories that will convert his PoV are not the big showy stories like Ruth...they're the more day to day issues of genetics that pushed for the alliance theory of anthropology (if you interpret Fried's work under the work of Levi-Strauss' usage of kinship, you get a better idea of how blood kinship is often put aside for practical reasons, like not wanting to sleep with your sister).

[thespian.livejournal.com]

uhm. I don't get to talk anthropology much, and I was really into it once.

Just sayin'.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I will observe that any professor who dismisses actual facts because they do not fit his hypothesis is, misguided. Although Toynbee's famous "fossil" comment comes to mind.

There are a variety of answers to his question, btw, embedded in the religious literature.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Well... I have not heard him dismiss facts to fit theories so much. More importantly he has shown an ability to accept that he is still learning too.

[janice-lester.livejournal.com]

During the early days after the arrival of European traders and colonists in New Zealand (pre-1840), it was not unheard of for white men (I don't know of any women) to join local Māori tribes by choice. They did so because they were curious, because it was convenient (they were on the run from something) or simply because the lifestyle called to them. They lived with Māori, learned te reo (the language), married, had children, and sometimes took the facial tattoos which were/are a huge deal (Māori today remain hugely uncomfortable with outsiders appropriating their symbols--it's become a bit of a craze, cf Robbie Williams's arm tattoo--and I can't imagine they would have been prepared to put the full warrior's facial tattoos on someone who was not respected and felt to belong). They were termed Pākehā Māori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pākehā_Māori), which could be viewed as a sign that they were regarded as different, as not entirely of the tribe, but could also be read as meaning that they brought something new to the tribe.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... thank you. The Maori make a good extra data point.

[redbird]

The obvious answer is that if the notions are incompatible, he should get rid of the abstraction (the specific definition of "tribe") rather than dismiss the evidence of what lots of people have done over time.

The snarkier answer is "Who is he to tell God how to choose his people?"

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I want him to look at tribe as having a scale continuum myself. I'll have to see what I can do. People have been most helpful here, which I appreciate.

*wry sad smile* Alas, there seem to be a number of ultraOrthodox Jews in Israel who seem quite set on determining just how God chooses His people. This makes me extremely sad and not a little angry.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Religion has to be logical? o.O Certainly people attempt to paint a double-coat of logical appearance over it. One could argue that all mythology is an attempt to make sense out of life, the universe, and everything (thank you Mr. Adams for summing it up so nicely), to make what appears to defy logic to in fact serve logical ends. Doesn't make it so.

His definition is his definition. His is an academic one used as a label with no actual value to tribal societies or people. I will bet you dollars to drafts that any examples you present him, he will already have labelled as part of other social arrangements which will all be part of a internally-consistent set of logical arrangements... none of which matter outside his head and your recorded grades. Tell him what he wants, pass the class and move on to wider mental vistas.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Hey, I told him we have contradictory beliefs. I think I need to make the point clearer to him on that. After all, there are plenty of scientists who know the Big Bang theory but still religiously worship a God (or gods) that created the world only millennia ago. So long and thanks for all the fish, Mr. Adams... you are still missed.

If this were a low-level class I might be tempted to just give him a pass, but this is upper-classmen level and as such calls for rigorous thought and definitions, which is what he asks us to do. He does welcome debate in class and he never seems to be annoyed with me during break or after class if I have argued with him, so long as I do so in good faith and only argue against his points as opposed to against him.

Being Chosen

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

To begin with, the very term itself, "Chosen People", is entirely Christian, and semantically unrelated to the proper Hebrew term. This is very deliberate bastardization of the term, that was created to serve Christian Replacement Theology. By saying that the Jews are Chosen, we can then say G-d can later chose somebody else, i.e. the Christians. This "mistranslation" has SO thoroughly entered the public discourse, that most people today (inc. many Jews) simply have no idea what being "Chosen" means. The term has even been translate "back" into Hebrew, increasing the confusion.

The proper term in Hebrew is {Ahm Segulah}. The best way to translate/explain "Segulah", is by finding another example this root/word is used in, such as the Periodic Table of Elements. In English we speak of the "Specific gravity" of an element, that value which uniquely identifies it (see streaker Archimedes and the Gold Crown). The term for this in Hebrew is {Mishkal S'guli} - that weight/density which is [uniquely] inherent to the element itself.

So as a group we have those innate qualifications to make G-d chose us. Basically, we were the only ones qualified for the "job". Thus Abraham could become, by his behavior, the proto-Jew, and thus so can any non-Jew, who chooses to follow the path of Abraham, also become a Jew, and are in fact referred to as the children of Abraham and Sarah.

In this regard, the transfer of this "innateness" by blood is the "odd" exception - if ones' mindset is limited to the "natural world", and chooses to ignore the metaphysical one.

[mrgoodwraith.livejournal.com]

He brought up the Jews as the first historical pre-modern empire.

Um, no. The Akkadian, Sumerian, Mitanni (Hurrian), Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian empires all predated any "Empire of Israel" (if such a thing could ever be said to have existed).

"Then why are you a tribe? You can't be G-d's Chosen People by blood while allowing others to join your tribe, it's not logical."

This is simply boneheaded. Sure, genes from outsiders can be (and have been) viewed as undesirable or "dilutive," but if one's tribe is the Chosen Race, it is also possible to conclude that the tribe's genes are so powerful that they can dominate any outside genes (rather than vice versa).

I want to present to him examples of tribes that accepted in outsiders to become "of the tribe".

The Wikipedia "Proselyte" article has this helpful section:

"The Law of Moses made specific regulations regarding the admission into Israel's community of such as were not born Israelites. The Kenites, the Gibeonites, the Cherethites, and the Pelethites were thus admitted to levels of Israelite privileges. Thus also we hear of individual proselytes who rose to positions of prominence in the Kingdom of Israel, as of Doeg the Edomite, Uriah the Hittite, Araunah the Jebusite, Zelek the Ammonite, Ithmah and Ebedmelech the Ethiopians. According to the Books of Chronicles, in the time of Solomon (c.971-931 BCE) there were 153,600 proselytes in the land of Israel and the prophets speak of the time as coming when the proselytes shall share in all the privileges of Israel."

I've been trying to dig up Wikipedia examples of tribal adoption that don't involve slavery or capture, but I'm not having much luck.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the citations. Please don't feel you have to go out of your way to research this, the research is my job. I was asking for stuff you might remember off the top of your head - not that anything brought up is not appreciated, because it very much is.

Conversion and Genetics

[(Anonymous)]

I can't speak for any other cultures, but in Judaism, the conversion process (involving ritual immersion and, for men, circumcision) is a symbolic act by which a convert experiences a bodily rebirth into the Jewish people, and is thus no longer considered to be genetically related to his family of orgin, but is instead considered to be a member of the Jewish "tribe" in all things.

Your professor also seems to be unfamiliar with the wonderful Trilbian couplet, "How odd of God /To choose the Jews" to which Ogden Nash is believed to have replied, "It was not odd/The Jews chose God."

Clearly a different concept of chosen-ness.

Re: Conversion and Genetics

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

You remind me that I am far behind on my perusal of the silliness of Ogden Nash. I very much appreciate his whimsy.

[gingicat]

Paula Washington, on my Facebook, considers herself to be both African-American and Cherokee. Some of this is genetics, but she did have to be re-adopted to the tribe.

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

You said he's a political scientist; which is to say, someone who applies statistical tools he doesn't understand to history he doesn't understand. He sounds like one.

Conversion to a tribe can be relatively difficult; the chief exception is by marriage, like Ruth. There is, however, a long tradition of tribes which have done so; Roman adoption law is perhaps the most accessible example: a Roman without sons would adopt a stranger as his son - and so into his tribe. See Fustel de Coulange's La Cite Antique (the title is in French, even on the English translation) for much much more, and examples all over the ancient world.

If Rome is too advanced to have tribes to this gentleman and scholar, American colonial history is full of examples of colonists taken by the Indians and adopted; some of them chose to stay when they had the chance to return.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Aren't there rules listed in the O.T. about how to convert into the tribe?

But part of the problem is that the whole blood-kinship thing is implemented via doublethink: Yes, it's possible to change tribes, but even if you joined last month, you and everybody else "believes" that you're all ultimately descended from The Patriarch, or whatever, no matter how obviously bogus that is as a matter of fact. A corollary is that you implicitly renounce your kinship with everyone in your old tribe.

For a more modern example, look at the dominant faction of US culture through the centuries. In each generation it rants about outsiders, but is generally willing to assimilate outsiders who are willing to sign on to the program. And sometimes this assimilation is done to/for whole ethnic groups. Right now, how many nearly pure-blooded descendants of Irish immigrants are ranting about the invasion of Hispanics?

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Jared Diamond mentions that all armies of state-level societies are explicitly bound together by a fictive kinship. The prof's problem is not with his idea that Tribe = Kinship, but that he doesn't realize the degree to which people will manipulate the concept of Kinship to provide what is useful and necessary in collective life.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

cellio posted this today, which seems pertinent:

http://cellio.livejournal.com/846213.html