Exploring the Tribal Network
by Steve ThomasJason has written of the breakthrough that occurred at Fall Ishcon. This event leads us to a new or different understanding of the New Tribal Revolution, in which tribes perform a mixture of subsistence and business-occupational activities. This leads to a few questions. How might this look? Are we talking about two discrete groups—occupational tribes which are only occupational tribes and subsistence tribes which are only subsistence tribes, or something more flexible? Can a tribal society actually be composed of a mixture of occupational and subsistence tribes? Or, to put it better, can a large tribal network perform both subsistence and occupational activities?
The question is a bit complex.
One answer is: Yes. Looking only at hunter-gatherers, indigenous tribes do more than simply acquire food. Every tribe has a range of non-subsistence activities open for participation. Tribes include shamans, singers, sorcerers, storytellers, arrow-makers, potters, sewers, cooks, . But in most cases, these activities are not performed tribally. That is, the shamans of a tribe did not consist of a semi-discrete group of people who collectively practice shamanism. The shaman is, first and foremost, a member of the subsistence-group. She or he is expected to be able to provide for him/herself and for the rest of the group, just as any other tribe member. The difference is that in the shaman’s case, “providing for the rest of the group� might mean healing the group’s best hunter’s chest cold and driving off the quasi-psychological demons that have caused the ailment, in addition to or in stead of hunting for him/herself.
In our own tribes we will see the same thing happen. Certain individuals will possess specialized knowledge in certain areas, including some which would have been unthinkable to our ancestors. Like the operation of solar panels, or the purification of water.
But what about occupational tribalism, as described by Quinn in Beyond Civilization (link). Can full-scale occupational tribalism function alongside subsistence tribalism?
Right now, the answer is: of course. While the civilized infrastructure is intact, we need both occupational and subsistence tribes, and we need mutual inderdependance among them. We need a sustainable way of getting food—that’s subsistence tribes’ jobs. And we need to be able to maintain ourselves within the present economy. That’s where occupational tribes come in. But more than that, we need to stop drawing that distinction. In the long run, a tribal society divided between discrete groups of food-providers and laborers is a caste society. I suppose that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if every caste-member enjoys their position; and if the castes are open. But the potential for hierarchy in any caste system is very great, especially when we’re looking at basic issues like control of the food supply.
What we need instead is an open-tribal network which performs a spectrum of activities. Some individual groups might only hunt or gather or garden or dumpster-dive; some might only take part in the market economy. (And we could imagine a wonderful reciprocal relationship between these two: for instence, a hunting-farming tribe furnishes meat and vegetables for a tribal restaurant, which in turn pays the former’s taxes and other costs). But most tribes would fall somewhere in the middle. For instance, one tribe’s permaculture system might provide most of its food, and also marketable medicinal plants. This sort of thing already occurs among extant tribal groups. Think of the Amish selling pies and gobs along the side of the road.
But is this viable in the long term? After civilization is gone, can we have this system—this partial-occupational tribalism—in which at least some tribe members perform non-subsistence activities, at least some of the time (and for some possibly all of the time)?
As always, the answer is: If and only if the food is there. We can have a tribal society in which some tribes perform no subsistence activities if and only if they can be supported by others who do perform subsistence activities. In our current context this is of course possible, because of the vast food surplus provided by civilization. When that is removed, things become a little more complicated.
Let’s return to that idea I described above, of the tribal restaurant supported by hunter-gatherers. Let’s assume we have sufficient land for our needs—a rural area like central Pennsylvania, consisting of tracts of wilderness, farmland and small towns—and the entire population has “gone tribal.� In town there is a tribal restaurant like I described, set in a specially designed earthship; perhaps its members live in strawbale houses nearby. Meat and food plants are provided by a foraging tribe living in bivouacs off in the woodland.
Is such a system stable? (We are, of course, only looking at one simple relationship in a vast web. But this can provide a model.) The system is stable if it is not prone to collapse. In this case “collapse� means two things: 1. ecological collapse, and 2. the collapse of egalitarianism into hierarchy (usually the reverse of what we mean by “collapse� of course…).
Ecological Collapse: The foragers are going to have to be gathering a surplus. Presumably this tribal restaurant will provide at least some of the food for the restaurant tribe and for other groups living in the town. So, the game and plant populations (let’s say the foragers are prov) will have to be sufficiently large to support the hunter-gatherer band and a number of townsmen. This may be possible with sound game-management practices. If we’re talking about occupationalism, we’re talking about business. And sound business practice involves not depleting your capital (game). (Yes, I’m uncomfortable referring to living animals in this manner. Presumably this will all be undertaken in a much more respectful manner than analytical language can describe). It is possible for the operation to be sustainable if 1. the game population is large enough to support the hunters and all the others 2. the restaurant-business operation is NOT based on growth and profit (otherwise game supplies will be depleted as quickly as possible).
What about Definition 2? Can this relationship collapse into hierarchy? Yes, absolutely. The restaurant is a redistributive center, in which a surplus from somewhere else is brought to a central location to be redistributed. This is how the food supply was placed “under lock and key� in the first place. Incipient elites gained control of the new agricultural surplus, which they used to force the new commoner class to build their monuments, fight their wars and generally kowtow to them.
But with a little creativity this can be overcome. The restaurant—forager band network could act as a single organization, with members trading off working in the restaurant or hunting in the woods as it suited them. It would be best for even those tribespeople who really preferred the restaurant work to know how to perform subsistence activities in order to prevent the mutual-support relationship from degrading into a dependency relationship.
Possibilities of hierarchy exist with relation to the restaurant’s customers. If they are BUYING food with money, then, although things are a little better than they were back in civilization, a power relationship exists. There are other ways to do this. I can imagine a few. Food could be freely given out, in exchange for any number of favors, labors, et cetera. If the town in question finds it convenient to hold onto the money system, its harmful effects could be ameliorated with the adoption of a local currency system, along the lines of Time Dollars.
Again, this is just one example, picked and examined at random. Other tribal businesses will have other, similar problems to overcome. The basic points remain: the system is stable if it does not deplete its resource-base or collapse into hierarchy. If it remains tribal, and it remains sustainable, there is no problem.
Creativity will be needed. And imagination. As per Daniel Quinn’s oh-so-important dictum: Be inventive.
The restaurant is just one example. I’m sure we can think of any number of others. A neo-tribal society of this variety would consist of a complex web of relationships and interdependencies. I think a good axiom over all is: Fluidity is best. Flexibility is best. Some degree of individual specialization occurs even in the simplest tribal societies; it will stick around and probably adopt new shapes we can’t conceive of in there hereandnow.
But we don’t NEED full-time occupationalism. Even now, we only “need� it to the extent that some of us don’t want to take part in the market economy at all (as is our right), and others don’t want to take part in the subsistence economy at all (as is their right). If we retain occupationalism, in full or in part, into the post-civilizational future, it will only be because we WANT to. Because there are some aspects of civilization that we like and that we want to hold on to. And in fact we can hold onto them, if we can do so without collapsing our ecosystems and without returning to hierarchy.
excellent article.
I am currently trying to get my pipe dream off the ground, which would be a occupational and subsistence tribe. Long story short, think full scale production company(music, film, etc.) operating out of an ecovillage. I personally don’t see any deal-breakers as long as everyone is committed to both “working” and raising some of their own food. this could mean as little as a garden of fruit you love or raising chickens,etc. 15 people raising various food would adequately provide for their needs. and there is always hunting-gathering.
I would deal with those individuals that insis on heirarchal power relationships in this way. two warnings and then get lost or get dead.
I would use the “Complete Dick” standard promoted by Dave Sim, author of the amazing comic “Cerebus”. Twelve people must all vote that so-and-so is a complete dick, then those same twelve people would kill the dick. to quote the man himself, “if you have a really good extermination program in place, it will be hard for the dicks to procreate faster than you wipe them out.”
I have no aversions to violence, but i understand why such a system would not be used by pacifists(pu**ies).
just a little joke there, probably not funny and in poor taste like the rest of my jokes.
Comment by Rory — 15 October 2005 @ 1:48 PM
I’m thinking that a primitive skills school/primitivist think tank arrangement might be a good way for the Tribe of Anthropik to muddle its way through the early collapse years, say 2007 or so till 2015.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 October 2005 @ 1:52 PM
Rory–
I wish you the best of luck getting that underway. It sounds amazing.
What you describe sounds like the sort of thing I’m thinking of… What I hope is possible is to be able to do a lot of this in the cities–because that’s where most of us already are, and if they can’t be made sustainable, they’re going to collapse into a bloodbath. I think it’s possible if we apply a combination of the really revolutionary stuff, tribal organization and non-industrial modes of food production, with some of the “green” technologies that have already been developed. I’m imagining a tribe run out of an old warehouse–whatever grounds it had for a parking lot and so forth are now covered in a permaculture system; a green roof (which is also permaculture-based) has been installed, providing cheap insulation in addition to food; greywater is recycled in the permacultures and humanure is used as fertilizer. The tribal business (which can be whatever) applies Paul Hawken’s natural capitalism in its business practices. I wonder if we could run a largish-scale society this way, with combinations of all the good ideas that are out there.
Hmm…if only time were a little more on our side…
Comment by Steve Thomas — 16 October 2005 @ 12:02 PM
Uhhmm … that’s fine for the interim, but the whole idea of a city is inherently unsustainable. Dense, sedentary populations require intensive cultivation. The most intensive you can get without becoming totally unsustainable is permaculture–and that only gives you, at best, a village.
Cities can’t be made sustainable. The cities will first become killing fields, and then, ruins. Our best hope is to get out of them, and as far away as possible.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 October 2005 @ 12:09 PM
Yes, Jason, my point was How can we prevent this?
Clearly it will involve spreading out a little. Apartment buildings aren’t going to work anymore. But I don’t think it’s impossible, provided the cities stop functioning as cities. That is, if they stop being a giant sink for resources form everywhere else.
It is more than possible that we can support fairly dense populations with permaculture. I recall that the originators of forest gardening provided themselves with a significant amount of food on a 1/8th acre lot. That’s in London. We know several thousand Tikopians are currently practicing a quasi-permacultural system on a 1.7-square-mile island, and have managed to live on that island without destroying it for 3,000 years. It’s possible that such systems will become unsustainable with time. That’s okay, as long as the time we’re talking about is long enough. Every living system will become unsustainable, given sufficient time.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 16 October 2005 @ 12:28 PM
When I said “I don’t think it’s impossible,” the full thought was–
I don’t think city collapse has to look like Easter Island or Rwanda. The cities are going to collapse. They are going to cease to be a single, centralized political-economic unit and become many smaller political-economic units. That collapse could take the form of a bloodbath. Some days I feel certain it will. It could take the form of the voluntary adoption of various technologies, social and economic systems. This is hardly impossible. It could look like something in the middle.
We don’t know how long the overall collapse is going to take. If we have a twenty year recession-depression, that’s going to be a long time during which people will 1. still be around but 2. possibly very open to alternative ideas, since global capitalism will have failed them. If it comes “like a thief in the night,” or if martial law is imposed, the bloodbath scenario will be much, much more likely.
A place like New York or Chicago is probably mostly screwed. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, has a great deal of land that could be put to use. Could we support our present population density (which I believe is something like 6,500 per square mile, within city limits)? Probably not. And given the class-race stratification here, violence is probably going to occur. But we can probably avoid Rwanda.
Comment by Steve Thomas — 16 October 2005 @ 12:40 PM
Okay, let’s stay on Pittsburgh. What is possible here?
Water is not an issue if we’re willing to use the rivers (and we will, when it comes to it). Shelter is not an issue.
Food, then. Assuming all lawns and parks and parking lots can be converted into food forests, how many acres does that give us, and how many people can that feed?
Well. The 4 PPC parks cover something like 1700 acres. How many more acres are available? 55 square miles. Perhaps 20 total useful? Or 10? If 10 in addition to the park, that’s 8100 acres; if 20, that’s 13,500 acres.
How many people can we feed, then? A family of 4 on one acre? So, between 30,000 and 50,000 people, provided everyone has adopted The Sustainable Way (let’s call it). I expect that, if things collapse slowly, with time for people to flee to the country and all around adopt sustainable living methods, this is possible.
I know that depends on a whole lot of things going as well as they possibly can. Bringing about such a situation will require a huge combination of fortune and commitment and mass-scale willingness to change. On the other hand, the roving-gangs-of-cannibals scenario depends on things going as poorly as they possibly can. Unfortunately, that does seem a bit more likely. Kunstler might be right that small towns will be the best place to be…
Comment by Steve Thomas — 16 October 2005 @ 1:07 PM
Dreaming of the abandoned suburban big-box retailer. Say, a typical Home Despot…
The building is essentially a giant, steel and cinderblock shell with few/none interior partitions - total interior area ranging from 45,000 to 165,000 ft2 (1-4 acres!). The total grounds can be 10 times the store area. Considerable effort will be needed to rip up the parking lots and start the food forest process.
Abandon pretensions of maintaining the existing interior lighting and heat/ac, and simply utilize the exterior shell as a weather shield (from wind, rain, snow, summer sun). The roof as a rainwater collection system. Swap out sections of roof panels with glazing to make skylights for daylighting. Greenhouses & drying rooms (for hides/ plants/ materials) and common public areas can be erected in the southern side of the shell to take advantage of passive solar gain & daylighting.
Anything we wish can be set up inside the shell; private, tents, yurts, freestanding structures of all kinds. These will utilize superior insulation and be independently heated/lighted by any number of sources. (biomass heating will require some chimney work through the shell.) The roof can also serve as a rack for solar thermal and photovoltaic panels, if we chose not to ground-mount them. A wind turbine may be set up on the grounds, as applicable.
Large garage sized doors will allow for easy entrance/ egress/ storage/ maintenance of materials/ vehicles/ tools/ equipment. The will also serve as for venting and airflow in the summer months. Essentially, I envision a large shop within the shell for biodiesel production/ maintenance &repairs/ pottery/ weaving/ crafts, etc.
And other interior areas within the shell reserved for performances/ ceremonies/ common functions.
Hmmm…
Comment by JCamasto — 16 October 2005 @ 2:48 PM
Not to mention — if you get there first, you have all these lovely building materials to choose from
Janene
Comment by Janene — 16 October 2005 @ 3:30 PM
John Roughan: Decent Into Tribalism!
Monday, 17 October 2005, 11:36 am
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00206.htm
“Recently an overseas newspaper ran this headline about the likely outcome of what would happen if Melanesian tribes would suffer a law and order breakdown.
[snip]
Yes, certain parts of the Solomons experienced social collapse but these were very much the exception, not the rule. In this country, for instance, 95%+ of villagers got on with the life; they never faced famine, hundreds were not taken away by dreaded diseases and people’s customs and traditions guaranteed peace and order. With a barely functioning police force, no military presence (the Solomons has no army) nor any other kind of security body at all to call upon, village people through their own strength and skill held the nation together.”
Thought that you might find this article interesting.
Comment by Peter — 16 October 2005 @ 8:52 PM
Exercises in completely missing the point:
My God… it turns out that people don’t need government. Totally ordinary people can work together to create a peaceful society. Well, you know what that means… we NEED the government to SUPPORT these ordinary people so they can continue to resort to such things as “peace” and “equality” in times of horrible, despot-deprived peril!
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 17 October 2005 @ 10:52 AM
A couple of thoughts.
First, you might want to ask the folks at such intentional communities as Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Oran Mor how they are juggling subsistence/occupational issues.
There’s a work commitment in all cases, with broad definitions of what constitutes work. I don’t think any of those communities…I’m not sure they would term themselves tribes…is fully self-sufficient in terms of food. I suspect all are trying to up their percentage of homegrown…and food too, har har.
What they have done is deal with the ongoing governance and maintenance issues that are important to the long-term viability of any intentionally created tribe. So have other communities, such as The Farm, that require members to have outside income. 21st century north american tribes mostly won’t have access to the bonds of kinship and history that will evolve over time, so decision-making methodologies are critical.
East Wind, for example, has been around for 30 years now, so they’ve seen a lot of folks come and go and they’ve got some good ideas on what works and how and why.
Tribes that come together under conditions of social and economic collapse are going to have that much more to deal with, to understate the case, including a lot of depression and hopelessness and anger on the part of people whose lives have fallen off the cliff.
As for Pittsburgh, I suspect the available agricultural land will turn out to be greater, with rooftops and depaving factored in. And at least initially, there will likely be a lot of malnourishment and poaching, in addition to racial and economic conflict. It won’t be fun.
Kunstler is almost certainly right in that small towns are better positioned for The Long Emergency. But I’m not sure that “heading for the hills” is a viable strategy. Come the collapse, countryfolk aren’t going to take kindly to having more mouths to feed, especially strangers. And a lot of them have guns and know how to use ‘em.
My take is that the folks down in West Virginia, for example, are just going to blow all the bridges leading into the state and tell the rest of the country to go to hell. They’ve got water, they’ve got coal and timber, they’ve got game, and they’ve got no use for city slickers and revenuers.
Vermont is already talking secession, and the Libertarians are trying to take over New Hampshire.
There will surely be a Pittsburgh, and a Baltimore, and a New Orleans, post-Peak. Geography says so. Do you and your tribe want to be there to help decide what they look like?
Rick
“…we must cultivate our gardens.”
Comment by Rick — 16 December 2005 @ 3:52 PM