Random Variable

Christian Bleuer is unimpressed by the growing popularity of a paper on “tribalism” amongst Pashtuns in Afghanistan, written by a Maj. Jim Gant -

Gant writes:

The central cultural fact about Afghanistan is that it is constituted of tribes. Not individuals, not Western-style citizens—but tribes and tribesmen. It is my deep belief—and the thesis of this paper—that the answer to the problems that face the Afghan people, as well as other future threats to US security in the region, will be found in understanding and then helping the tribal system of Afghanistan to flourish.

Afghanistan is not constituted of tribes, no matter what wikipedia or your local friends tell you.

I don’t profess to be an expert on Afghanistan, but I was struck by the certain type of thinking about societies that lead to these stereotypes. In particular, the Anglo-American emphasis on social contract theory – the idea that we’re all atomised individuals bound by a contract into our society. Durkheim set about to show this is false.

So, jump to 2010, and the US enters Afghanistan, notices their undersocialised social contract theories don’t work, and reach for the conclusion that it must be tribalism. But, Bleuer continues:

The decisions of individuals and of men who are not identified as tribal leaders have always had, and still have a huge amount of relevance. Examples, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hizb-i Islami is a Kharoti Pashtun. But he is no tribal leader. Communist-era President Najibullah was an Ahmadzai Pashtun. But he is no tribal leader. Mullah Omar is a Hotak Pashtun. But he is no tribal leader. All of these men recruited from a broad spectrum of Pashtuns and even non-Pashtuns (Omar less successfully). At times they used tribal networks. But mostly they totally disregarded them. These men need to be considered individuals, not prisoners of a tribal system that dictates their moves. The insurgents have members from every tribe, the government has members from every tribe. These people often made decisions independently.

Rather than identifying the social conditions on the ground that make people bind together in ways that we could identify a nation-state, Gant & Co. assume from the outset that the state can be imposed from above, and when it doesn’t, “tribalism” stands in as a shorthand for the complete eradication of individual agency.

From there, it’s only a short step to the negative legacy that Durkheim left us, at least in the American social sciences – functionalism. It suggests that every social condition is necessary, and therefore unchangeable. Harrison White rightly attacked the functionalist school in favour of concentrating on networks and identity. How is it possible to describe Afghanistan as an unchanging tribal region, when the Taliban mobilised Afghans based on a Deobandi identity originating from the Indian subcontinent?

That legacy misses what Durkheim got right. The utilitarians couldn’t give an account of society based solely on hyper-idealised liberal, rational individuals. Durkheim correctly identified that social solidarity was far more complex, and resulted from feelings generated by “social facts”, these are ever-present in every society, and they’re subject to massive upheaval and change, as they did so in Durkheim’s early 20th Century France.

But go read Christian’s post in full. It’s got much more nuance than my paltry attempt to shoehorn a Durkheim narrative into everything just because I’ve got an essay to write on the guy.