David Ronfeldt on the Differences Between Tribes and Networks
Discussion
David Ronfeldt:
"KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TIMN’S TRIBES AND NETWORKS
To reiterate my revised understanding of TIMN, the Tribes form is as much about networks as is the Networks form. Tribes and Networks both rest on network forms of organization, belief, and behavior that are meant to assure mutual togetherness. Tribes and Networks qualify as network-centric forms in ways that further distinguish them from Institutions and Markets. As such, Tribes and Networks operate primarily sideways, amid the primarily top-down and bottom-up operations of Institutions and Markets.
Even so, I’m seeing more ways than before in which TIMN’s Tribes and Network forms are structurally and functionally different from each other — not really polar opposites, but contradictory evolutionary opposites in some regards, as follows:
Their organizing principles are different, as are their organizational elements: The Tribes form is mainly about personal people relations: the Networks form seems ultimately about professional relations. The ancient-yet-still-essential Tribes form is the cradle of identity and belonging. It derives from kinship and other affinity networks that define people’s identities and bond them as a social group. It’s elements, mainly people, mean the Tribes form tends to be personal in nature. In contrast, the Networks form looks to be mainly professional in nature — it’s for connecting actors whose missions and activities require massive coordination and collaboration across great distances. +N looks to excel at enabling organizational networks that are purpose-built for addressing societal challenges apart from whatever may be a person’s individual or group identity from a Tribes perspective.
Their motivating impulses are different: People operating in the Tribes form look primarily inward, at least initially — the form emerged in ancient times to assure in-group cohesion and reject unwelcome outsiders, a necessity for group survival back then (and often today). In contrast, the Networks form excels at reaching outward — more so than any other form. Tribes originally favored exclusivity; Networks aim for inclusivity. Tribes are for self-validation; Networks are for validating relations with others — eligible outsiders. Tribes tend to be closed-circuit, compact, tight-knit; Networks tend to be open-circuit, capacious, loose-knit. People in Tribes like to set boundaries, draw lines; people in Networks like to build bridges, span gaps. Each favors and caters to a different kind of group mentality: Tribes to group introversion, Networks to group extroversion.
Their key cultural values are different: Tribes, with their emphasis on group kinship and identity, value displays of pride, honor, dignity, and respect, along with rites and rituals to affirm togetherness. Tribes in their raw form tend to treat sensitive matters in divisive us-vs.-them tones, unless people are deliberately trying to be peaceable, even altruistic toward outsiders. Tribes emphasize past provenance more than future providence. In contrast, the Networks form favors cooperative bridge-building and collective endeavor on a grand scale — it’s not designed for divisive distancing (though it can be adapted to that). Networks tend to focus on future providence more than past provenance. Plus, in economic typologies where Institutions favor public goods and Markets favor private goods, it can be said that Tribes favor club (clan) goods, while Networks seem likely favor commons goods (see Ronfeldt, 2016).
If we suppose +N does eventually form around HEWE actors and activities as I’ve speculated, their key values will likely be the common good, community care, and public service. If we could gather a bunch of doctors, teachers, welfarians, and environmentalists together and ask them to talk about their mutual concerns, the common good etc. are the kinds of values that seem likely to rise to the top — evoking an entirely different ethos than generally found in Tribes.
Their scalabilities are different: Both Tribes and Networks can be scaled-up from local to global and even planetary levels. Even so, people operating in Tribes may, in keeping with the form’s origins, prefer compact groupings and localized identities — homeland and bloodline seem ever-present markers, especially for ethno-nationalists and Far Right actors. Moreover, smaller-scale Tribes is the form people revert to when they’re sure larger-scale Institutions and Markets have failed them. Yet there are plenty of examples of scaled-up Tribes, like the Far Right and Islamic jihadi networks I mentioned earlier, and a range of religious and spiritual movements I’ve not mentioned. Plus, it looks increasingly important for people to begin acquiring planetary identities for ecological and other reasons. That can’t be accomplished without keeping the Tribes form in play and grandly scaling it up.
In contrast, it’s my sense that the Networks form, given the value orientations and impulses embedded in it, was “born” to be scalable in all directions, and to impel people using it to seek scalability. But with a crucial difference. The Tribes form scales to generate its home realm, namely civil society, affecting the other form’s prospects along the way. Networks, on the other hand, can be scaled not only to assist with whatever is going on in civil society, government, and/or the economy, but also to generate a new round of structural-functional differentiation that can result in the formation of a next-new realm. If my deductions prevail, this will be a commons-centric realm defined by HEWE actors and challenges. Which leads to my final point.
Their corresponding realms are different: According to my sense of TIMN, the Tribes form generates and then remains at the core of its home realm, namely civil society. In my first paper on TIMN (1996), I said that the rise of the Network’s form would initially favor civil-society actors more than actors in other realms. But I did not mean to imply that civil society would become +N’s home realm. Far from it, for a defining implication of TIMN is that +N will generate its own home realm, as I’ve said many times. My latest rethinking accords with that, yet offers some new insights too — so much so it requires extended explanation in the next section."
(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/rethinking-what-tribes-and-networks-9ec)