Neo-tribes have been defined as ephemeral, fleeting groupings of people that gather together. They may be made up of people from differing of walks of life who are bound by a mutual passion for a particular issue or object. In our daily lives, whether at work, during our leisure time, in person or via digital media, we are all members of neo-tribes. Indeed, over the past few decades, the term âtribesâ has been used in a range of different spaces, especially in advertising. The concept has also been the focus of much scholarly research, and has been developed in a range of disciplines that come together in this book: from sociology and cultural studies, through to marketing and tourism research. Recognition and uptake of the neo-tribal construct has occurred rapidly, and this book is an attempt to capture some of the breadth of research that makes use of neo-tribalism as a conceptual model for understanding contemporary experiences of belonging.
But what is a neo-tribe? Where do they occur? What is the conceptual genesis of neo-tribalism? How has the term been conceptualised across different disciplines? Has the use and possible overuse of the term lead to dilution of its potency? The concept of the neo-tribe is most closely associated with the work of French sociologist Michel Maffesoli and in particular his book Le temps des tribus (1988), later published in English in 1996 as The Time of the Tribes. However, the term neo-tribe itself was first introduced by Shields (1992) to serve as an English translation of Maffesoliâs original term âtribusâ. Proving to be highly influential across a range of academic disciplines, the concept of the neo-tribe works as a counter-thesis to discourses of social fragmentation and individualisation propagated in the work of risk theorists such as Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991). For these and other scholars influenced by their work (see, for example, Furedi 1997) the process of modernity has led to a fracturing of social bonds as individuals become increasingly focused on self-gratification together with a pronounced emphasis on issues of personal security and well-being. Such pathological traits, it is argued, culminate in the emergence of a ârisk societyâ, where preservation of the self results in a marked decline of the social and concomitant emergence of a new ethos of individualism.
According to Beck and Giddens, a further underlying cause of this trend towards individualisation in risk society is the withering away of the social bonds that characteristically shaped industrial society; bonds that were underpinned by class, kinship, community and nation as well as other forms of ritualised practice including religion. From the risk perspective, with the decline of industrial society the meaning and value of such bonds became critically undermined as individuals were cast into a new state of anomie (Durkheim 1984). Some exponents of risk theory, notably Giddens, have sought to apply a more positive spin to individualism. Thus, for Giddens (1991), the withering of the social bonds associated with pre-risk societies has resulted in a new level of liberation for individuals through the facilitation of a heightened level of reflexivity. Engaging with such changed conditions in their everyday lives, argues Giddens, individuals are free to effectively construct identities of their own choosing, drawing on the increasing range of cultural commodities that results in the shift from industrial to consumer capitalism in an age of what Giddens refers to as âreflexive modernityâ.
Although in one sense presenting a more progressive picture of risk and its impact on the individual, there is little sense in Giddensâs work of an attempt to recover or redraw the lines of connectivity that exist between individuals; rather, a meaningful everyday existence as portrayed in Giddensâs writing is staged through the individual project of the self rather than the realisation of the self as a social project. It is in this context that Maffesoliâs (1996) concept of neo-tribe provides its most critical intervention though attempting to identify and uncover new and emergent forms of sociality in the radically altered landscape of post-industrialism. Accepting that the former pillars of social connection have been undermined through the rapid transformations associated with a contemporary climate of risk, Maffesoli nevertheless argues that residual elements of the social remain and serve to feed an ongoing desire among individuals to realise themselves as âsocialâ beings. As such, suggests Maffesoli, the â public spacesâ of the late modern city, for example, shopping malls, sports stadiums, concert halls, art galleries, and restaurants, become arenas for new expressions of sociality. For Maffesoli, however, it is precisely this aspect of such social gatherings that provides them with a quality distinct from previous forms of social connection. Thus, if individuals living in pre-risk societies experienced a sense of permanence in social bonds grounded in notions of physical community and common bonds of kinship and class, individuals in late modernity experience the social as a more temporal and fleeting experience; more as short-lived flashes of âsocialityâ (Shields 1992) than permanent and cohesive markers of identity, place and belonging. Indeed, according to Maffesoli, the neo-tribe is âwithout the rigidity of the forms of organization with which we are familiar, it refers more to a certain ambience, a state of mind, and is preferably to be expressed through lifestyles that favour appearance and formâ (1996, p. 98).
As Crook (1998) observes, however, if Maffesoli can be seen as attempting to reinsert a sense of the social into a world where risk and uncertainty have ostensibly produced a waning of social bonds and a growing concentration on the self, his detractors have argued that this was achieved at the expense of attaching any sense of political or subversive agency to the individual actor. Indeed, even proponents of neo-tribal theory have drawn attentions to such limitations in the capability of the neo-tribe to offer a basic social action. Thus, as Bauman notes:
Neo-tribes âexistâ solely by individual decisions to support symbolic tags of tribal allegiance. They vanish once the decisions are revoked or the zeal and determination of members fades out⊠They are much too loose as formations to survive the moment from hope to practice. (1992, p. 137)
Nevertheless, the concept of neo-tribe has not merely found critical support among many fields of academic work, but has also formed part of a major shift in the conceptualisation of the relationship between the individual and the social. This is illustrated through the range of contexts in which neo-tribe is now applied as a conceptual framing device in studies addressing an array of themes including electronic dance music (Bennett 1999; Malbon 1998), health care (Johnson and Ambrose 2006), peer-shared housing (Heath 2004), new bohemians (Wang 2005), social media use (Robards and Bennett 2011) and travel and tourism...