About "tribe" as an analytical category and teaching the term:
Every term early in my courses I ask students to write anonymously
on a notecard a short definition of a tribe and to name one African
tribe of which they have heard. Almost invariably the specific
answers include Zulu, Maasai and Bushman/ San,often Ashanti, Igbo or
Ibo, and Kikuyu, plus various others (spelling erratic).
The short definitions vary a lot, some stressing awareness of the
term as an outside label, others stressing kinship, others
association with a village or face-to-face relationships. The
general definitions usually bear no connection to the specific
examples.
I use the results to explain to students why I think the term is
*analytically* worse than useless and confusing. If a tribe is both
a gatherer-hunter band of 40 people, a kin-group, a village, and an
ethnic group or nation of 8 million (I focus on the Zulu example for
reasons I will explain), what does it help us distinguish?
I also point out to them that the variation in their own definitions
is going to make our discussions uncertain and confusing if we use
the term. I have them talk about the problem I've posed for a while.
Only at that point do I bring up the historical background of the
term in relation to colonialism (often this arises out of their own
discussion). I return to the Zulu example, and discuss how the Zulu
kingdom was formed by one chiefdom conquering and absorbing various
other chiefdoms. I talk about how colonialists came to use the term
"tribe" both for the Zulu as an ethnic/ political group, and for its
constituent chiefdoms (according to the old South African government,
there were well over 200 Zulu "tribes").
Relating to the idea of a tribe as a kinship group, I talk about how
Zulu chiefdoms were made up of members of many different clans. I
point out that we have three or four different key principles which
are more useful to work with than tribe: locality, kinship, political
units (chiefdom and kingdom), and language.
I usually put Zulu terms on the board and explain translation
difficulties, making clear that students are not expected to remember
the details. I try to have them talk about what the difference
between "tribe" and "nation" might mean in a colonial setting.
Finally I make some observations about the pejorative connotations
of "tribe" as associated with primitive, savage etc. (although often
students have raised this already).
This sequence makes clear to most students that my objections to our
using the term are analytical and intellectual, and aren't merely an
arbitrary "p.c." imposition of my authority. Even the discussion of
primitivism gets situated in a context of a wider discussion of the
images of Africa which they bring with them to class, and where they
come from.
This method takes place in a small-group discussion class and would
not work in detail in all settings, I suppose, but I think the
general principle of eliciting variant definitions and examples from
the students themselves could apply pretty widely. I find that my
students respond well. They are usually aware of their own ignorance
and relieved to find out that they are not alone and to be able to
talk about it.
BTW, for an interesting attempt to overcome rigorously the sort of
analytical confusions alluded to above, see Isaac Schapera,
_Government and Politics in Tribal Societies_. He argues that the
only coherent use of the term "tribe" is for the group of people who
adhere to a "chief", and explicitly *not* as a synonym for ethnic
group or nation (which has to be larger than a chiefdom or tribe in
his view).
My personal view is that the term "tribe" ought to be an object of
study, but is worthless as a tool of study. Harold Marcus' point,
that African use of the means that we shouldn't be hostile to the
term per se, seems wise. Yet we should see such use as a
translation, being retranslated back into its language of origin.
Since the term has wide, naturalized colloquial meanings in
Anglophone indigenous contexts, and moreover has a deep history of
destructive and unjust exercise of power behind it, our usual caution
about translation should be redoubled.