A segmentary lineage

society A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. ...

has equivalent parts ("segments") held together by shared values. A segmentary lineage society is a type of tribal society. A close

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

is usually the smallest and closest segment and will generally stand together. That family is also a part of a larger segment of more distant cousins and their families, who will stand with each other when attacked by outsiders. They are then part of larger segments with the same characteristics. If there is a conflict between brothers, it will be settled by all the brothers, and cousins will not take sides. If the conflict is between cousins, brothers on one side will align against brothers on the other side. However, if the conflict is between a member of a tribe and a non-member, the entire tribe, including distant cousins, could mobilise against the outsider and his or her allies. That tiered mobilisation is traditionally expressed, for example, in the Bedouin saying: "Me and my brothers against my cousins, me and my cousins against the world." The segmentary state has been used as a theoretical frame of reference for historical theories. For example, by Aidan Southall in "Illusion of Tribe" and by Burton Stein in India. The latter used the term to explain the structure of a number of Indian polities. Brian Schwimmer has described a system in which complementary opposition and genealogical principles of unilineal descent are used by residential groups as a basis for political mobilization in the absence of centralized political leadership.Brian Schwimme
Segmentary Lineages
a chapter o

from University of Manitoba

Examples

* The ancient

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

nation (the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

) is one of the better-known examples, with biblical tradition denoting 12 tribes originating from one common ancestor (

Jacob Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...

). * The largest segmentary lineage society today is believed to be the Pashtun people, originally from

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

but now also in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

, with some 50 million members organised into a vast tribal structure. *

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

tribal officials say that Bani Tamim, an Adnanite tribe, has more than 42 million members, who all trace their lineage back to one man called Tamim.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Segmentary Lineage Anthropology Political anthropology