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© Kamla-Raj 2004 Stud. Tribes Tribals, 2(2): 113-118 (2004)
Tribe: Chimeric or Polymorphic?
Peter T. Suzuki
School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE 58182-0276, U.S.A. E-mail: peter_suzuki@unomaha.edu
KEYWORDS Anthropological concepts of tribe; Morton Fried; secondary tribe
ABSTRACT The essay is an attempt to circumscribe the commonly used concept of tribe by anthropologists. History has shown that, either through conquest or contact, the term has been equivalent to “The Other.” The most satisfactory approach to the concept has been offered by Morton H. Fried. His perspective is that all tribes are creations of a more politically powerful entity, viz., the state. However, Fried himself has not succeeded in finding a suitable substitute for “tribe,” which is essentially a derisive term, in that he concludes that all such units are “secondary tribes.”
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