Well, in a tribe everybody knows everybody else -- at any rate its
social cohesion depends on face-to-face interactions. A nation could
perhaps be defined as an anonymous mass of people trying to regain
lost tribal ties and the psychological comfort they used to offer.
Civilisation is not a matter of ethnic identity. A civilisation is a
large and stable cultural unit with distinctive material and
intellectual achievements. You can have civilisations composed of any
number of ethnic groups, and of course such civilisations have
existed since the dawn of history. You can also have political units
such as states and empires without a national basis.
We talk of the Roman Civilisation and the Roman Empire, but there was
never a Roman nation. There was a `Roman way of life' instead, a
Roman army, a Roman administration, and a tendency to use Latin as
lingua franca. It mattered very much if one was legally a citizen or
not, but it was a thing of secondary importance which particular
ethnic group of the hundreds that had been absorbed into the empire
one belonged to. Surviving traces of tribalism were systematically
eliminated. For example, the state religion was initially based on
the old tribal myths and beliefs of Rome and Latium, but soon
absorbed all kinds of exotic influences and was eventually replaced
with a universal religion that knew no ethnic, linguistic or social
barriers.
If, say, modern Romanian nationalists go in search of the "roots" of
their nation, they find nothing sufficiently romantic (pun intended)
to identify themselves with in the bureaurocratic Roman Empire. They
have to exaggerate the glamour of the obscure history of Dacian
tribes instead.
Piotr
--- In cybalist@..., "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:As I
> said, tribal > traditions and attitudes may live on in nationalist
> ideologies (which > exploit and manipulate such historical heritage
> to great effect), but > should not be confused with them.
>
> Why not? All nations do not have 10 million people or more. There
are
> nations with a lot smaller number. Is a tribe defined only with
> reference to numbers? I think the use of the term, 'tribe' itself
is
> an elitist tendency to assume that civilization is a modern,
> nationalistic invention. It all evolves; it all depends. It can be
> argued that a nation is an evolved tribe.