Cyber Tribes
Social Media and the Representation and Revitalization of Arab Tribal Identities in the Internet Age
In: Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSearch for other papers by Hassan Hussain in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
Tribal identity is an intrinsic part of the histories and cultures of the Gulf. Nonetheless, tribal communities rarely had access or the ability to control what was being said about them in media. The emergence of social media as a platform for sharing information and affirming social identities has transformed the way tribes interact, disseminate information and identify with others. This paper argues that Arab tribes, despite constantly being threatened by modernizing impulses that undercut nomadic ways of life, have enthusiastically embraced social media as an effective tool to revitalize tribal identities in the internet age. Historically, while maintaining nomadic lifestyles and oral literature, they were outside the circles of material literary production, which were usually based in urban areas and among settled populations. However, the internet and social media now allow tribes to overcome societal marginalization and material limitations to self-representation. In this manner, tribal communities no longer need the affirmation of the literate world; they can speak for themselves in a direct manner previously unavailable.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Almahmoud, Shaikha (2015). The Majlis Metamorphosis: Virtues of Local Traditional Environmental Design in a Contemporary Context. MA thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3880
-
Baram, Amatiza (1997). Neo-tribalism in Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s tribal policies 1991–96. International Journal of Middle East Studies 29(1): 1–31.
-
Baron, Naomi (2008). Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Blunt, Anne (1969). A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race. Vol. 2. Farnborough: Gregg.
-
Bramah, Edward and Joan Bramah (1989). Coffee Makers: 300 Years of Art & Design. London: Quiller Press Ltd.
-
Carroll, Katherine (2011). Tribal Law and Reconciliation in the New Iraq. The Middle East Journal 65 (1): 11–29.
-
Chatty, Dawn (1986). From Camel to Truck. New York: Vantage Press.
-
Chatty, Dawn (2010). The Bedouin in Contemporary Syria: The Persistence of Tribal Authority and Control. Middle East Journal 64 (1): 29–49.
-
Cole, Donald (2003). Where Have the Bedouin Gone? Anthropological Quarterly 76 (2): 235–267.
-
Cooke, Miriam (2014). Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Creswell, K.A.C. (1946). The Lawfulness of Painting in Islam. Ars Islamica 11–12: 159–166.
-
Dukhan, Haian (2018). State and Tribes in Syria: Informal Alliances and Conflict Patterns. New York: Routledge.
-
Eram News (2018). Al-saʿudiyyah … hadhihi ʿuqubat al-masiʾ li-qabaʾil al-junub. Eram News (11 June 2018): https://www.eremnews.com/entertainment/society/1369142.
-
Faegre, Torvald (1979). Tents: Architecture of the Nomads. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
-
Fattah, Halah (1997). The Politics of Regional Trade in Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf, 1745–1900. New York: State University of New York Press.
-
Flood, Finbarr (2002). Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum. Art Bulletin 84 (4): 641–659.
-
Foley, Sean (2019). Changing Saudi Arabia: Art, Culture, and Society in the Kingdom. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
-
Guarmani, C. (1938). Northern Najd: A Journey from Jerusalem to Anaiza in Qasim. London: Argonaut Press.
-
Haj, Samira (1991). The Problems of Tribalism: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Iraqi History. Social History 16 (1): 45–58.
-
Hilden, Joy Totah (2011). Bedouin Weaving of Saudi Arabia and its Neighbours. London: Arabian Publishing Ltd.
-
Iraq Today (2017). Daf’ 10 malayin dinar baʿdama taghaal bi-habibatihi ʿala Facebook. Iraq Today (31 July 2017): http://iraqtoday.com.
-
Jabar, Faleh A. (2003). Sheikhs and Ideologues: Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Tribes under Patrimonial Totalitarianism in Iraq, 1968–1998. In Faleh A. Jabar and Dawod Hosham (eds.), Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East, pp. 69–101. London: Saqi.
-
Juwayd, Nawal (2018), Shuʿar al-najmah wa-l-hilal ʿala al-bayariq al-ʿiraqiyyah. al-Marsa News (23 May 2018): http://www.almarsa-news.com/?p=28995.
-
Kasaba, Reşat (2009). A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
-
Khalaf, Sulayman (1990). Settlement of Violence in Bedouin Society. Ethnology 29 (3): 225–242.
-
Khalaf, Sulayman (2000). Poetics and Politics of Newly Invented Traditions in the Gulf: Camel Racing in the United Arab Emirates. Ethnology 39 (3): 243–261.
-
Khatib, Mahmoud and A. Sabbah (2008). Language Choice in Mobile Text Messages among Jordanian University Students. SKY Journal of Linguistics 21: 37–65.
-
Khuwaytir, Khalid (2013). Kawn al-sarif: dirasah tarikhiyyah shamilah li-waqaʿi maʿrakat al-sarif. Beirut: Jadawil.
-
Köksal, Yonca (2006). Coercion and Mediation: Centralization and Sedentarization of Tribes in the Ottoman Empire. Middle Eastern Studies 42 (3): 469–491.
-
Kubba, Sam (ed.) (2011). Iraqi Marshlands and the Marsh Arabs: The Maʿdan, Their Culture and the Environment. Reading: Ithaca Press.
-
Lange, Katharina (2015). ‘Bedouin’ and ‘Shawaya’: The Performative Constitution of Tribal Identities in Syria during the French Mandate and Today. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (1–2): 200–235.
-
Maisel, Sebastian (2009). Who is Right? Legal Representation within the Tribal Society of Saudi Arabia. In Laila Prager (ed.), Nomadismus in der Alten Welt, pp. 212–232. Berlin: LiT-Verlag.
-
Maisel, Sebastian (2013). The Construction of Virtual Identities: Online Tribalism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond. In Sherine Hafex and Susan Slyomovics (eds.), Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the New Millennium, pp. 285–299. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
-
Maisel, Sebastian (2014). The New Rise of Tribalism in Saudi Arabia. Nomadic Peoples 18 (2): 100–122.
-
Malaʾikah, Milham (2017). Qanun ʿashaʾiri li-Facebook fi l-Iraq. DW News (16 March 2017): https://p.dw.com/p/2ZK4b.
-
Mohammad, Ibahrine (2008). Mobile Communication and Sociopolitical Change in the Arab World. In J. Katz (ed.), Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, pp. 257–272. Cambridge: MIT Press.
-
Ochsenschlager, Edward (2004). Iraq’s Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
-
Prager, Laila (2014a). Introduction: Reshaping Tribal Identities in the Contemporary Arab World: Politics, (Self-)Representation, and the Construction of Bedouin History. Nomadic Peoples 18 (2): 10–15.
-
Prager, Laila (2014b). Bedouinity on Stage: The Rise of the Bedouin Soap Opera (musalsal badawi) in Arab Television. Nomadic Peoples 18 (2): 53–77.
-
Qassemi, Sultan (2012). Tribalism in the Arabian Peninsula: It Is a Family Affair. Jadaliyya (1 February 2012): https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/25199.
-
Raseef (2016). Niqash muhtadam fi al-saʿudiyyah: hal al-qabaʾil niʿmah am niqmah? Raseef 22 (6 December 2016): https://raseef22.com.
-
Raswan, Carl (2016). The Black Tents of Arabia: My Life among the Bedouins. New York: Routledge.
-
Saidel, B. (2009). Coffee, Gender, and Tobacco: Observations on the History of the Bedouin Tent. Anthropos 104 (1): 179–186.
-
Samin, Nadav (2008). Dynamics of Internet Use: Saudi Youth, Religious Minorities and Tribal Communities. Middle East Journal of Culture & Communication 1 (2): 197–215.
-
Samin, Nadav (2014). Our Ancestors, Our Heroes: Saudi Tribal Campaigns to Suppress Historical Docudramas. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 41 (3): 266–286.
-
Samin, Nadav (2019). Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
-
Shryock, Andrew (1997). Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Oakland: University of California Press.
-
Shryock, Andrew (1996). Tribes and the Print Trade: Notes from the Margins of Literate Culture in Jordan. American Anthropologist 98(1): 26–42.
-
Sowayan, Saad (1985). Nabati Poetry: The Oral Poetry of Arabia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
al-Sumariyya [News] (2013). Fasl ʿashaʾiri bi-qimat 20 milyun dinar fi-l-Basra bi-sabab Facebook. al-Sumariyya [News] (15 December 2013): https://www.alsumaria.tv.
-
Thesiger, Wilfred (1954). The Marshmen of Southern Iraq. Geographical Journal 120 (3): 272–281.
-
Toth, Anthony (2005). Tribes and Tribulations: Bedouin Losses in the Saudi and Iraqi Struggles over Kuwait’s Frontiers, 1921–1943. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 32 (2): 145–167.
-
UNESCO (2015). Arabic Coffee, a Symbol of Generosity. Intangible Cultural Heritage: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/arabic-coffee-a-symbol-of-generosity-01074.
-
al-Wazzan, Salim (2014). Shuyukh ‘ashaʾir al-Basra: la li-l-internet wa-l-mubayil fi al-dawawin. Niqash (17 July 2014): http://www.niqash.org. [Content moved to https://almadapaper.net/view.php?cat=109669, with title: Ilghaʾ istikhdam al-internet wa-l-mubayil dakhil dawawin ʿashaʾir al-Basra.]
-
Wheeler, Deborah (2017). Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
-
Zayani, Mohamed (2015). Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia. New York: Oxford University Press.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 703 | 164 | 21 |
| Full Text Views | 48 | 8 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 113 | 22 | 2 |
Cyber Tribes
Social Media and the Representation and Revitalization of Arab Tribal Identities in the Internet Age
In: Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSearch for other papers by Hassan Hussain in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Tribal identity is an intrinsic part of the histories and cultures of the Gulf. Nonetheless, tribal communities rarely had access or the ability to control what was being said about them in media. The emergence of social media as a platform for sharing information and affirming social identities has transformed the way tribes interact, disseminate information and identify with others. This paper argues that Arab tribes, despite constantly being threatened by modernizing impulses that undercut nomadic ways of life, have enthusiastically embraced social media as an effective tool to revitalize tribal identities in the internet age. Historically, while maintaining nomadic lifestyles and oral literature, they were outside the circles of material literary production, which were usually based in urban areas and among settled populations. However, the internet and social media now allow tribes to overcome societal marginalization and material limitations to self-representation. In this manner, tribal communities no longer need the affirmation of the literate world; they can speak for themselves in a direct manner previously unavailable.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 703 | 164 | 21 |
| Full Text Views | 48 | 8 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 113 | 22 | 2 |