Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4-Postscript

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Introduction-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction Summary

The Introduction to Tribe is a tight, five-page recollection of why Junger set out to hitchhike across the northwestern United States after college. He describes growing up in a sedentary New England suburb where nothing ever happened that was dangerous enough to test people’s ability to rely on each other. For Junger, this meant that his neighbors were never connected in the sense of being part of each other’s tribe—because, as he puts it, the “sheer predictability of life in an American suburb” never warranted it (xiv).

For Junger the young man, this scenario gnawed at his desire to test himself, to put himself in a situation where he had very little control: “How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage?” (xiv). He thus finds himself on the side of a highway in the middle of Wyoming, where a man approaches him and hands him a lunch box containing a sandwich, chips, and an apple. Junger explains that the man was an out-of-work and homeless coal miner who had walked a mile out of his way to make sure that the young hitchhiker was ok. This man had very little of his own to share, and for Junger, his action epitomized the meaning of tribe: “the people you feel compelled to share the last of your food with” (xvii).

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Men and the Dogs”

In “The Men and the Dogs,” Junger explores the stark contrast between modern Western society and indigenous American societies. He marvels at how the former developed at breakneck pace over the course of three short centuries, all the while directly abutting the latter, populated by “Stone-Age tribes” that had barely changed technologically in 15,000 years (1). For Junger, the proximity between the two kinds of civilization made the contrasts between the two even more significant. While the United States became an industrialized and hierarchical society in which individuals enjoy rights against the group, indigenous people continued to live communally in mobile or semi-permanent settlements largely typified by consensus decision-making and egalitarian relations. Individuals in American Indian societies had no rights that took precedence over the group.

Junger points out that with two remarkably divergent kinds of society right next to each other, many generations on both sides inevitably faced a stark choice about how to live. It was not uncommon for whites to leave colonial society to join the neighboring Indian tribes, and whites who were captured by and subsequently liberated from Indian societies and brought back to colonial society inevitably sought to return to their adoptive indigenous tribe. Often when whites were forced to leave the tribes, both the Indians and their adopted white kin were anguished and grief-stricken.

At the same time, instances of the reverse—of Indians voluntarily leaving their tribe to join colonial society—were virtually unheard of. Junger notes that the appeals of tribal life are self-evident, but the vexing question is why Western society is so unappealing. Junger discusses the contradiction of the modern world wherein technological advances make possible ever greater levels of affluence and protection from the harsh unpredictability of the natural environment, while at the same time requiring more, rather than less, time and commitment from the individual.

The !Kung tribespeople of the Kalahari provide an instructive counterpoint for Junger. He notes that the !Kung were so well adapted to their environment that they enjoyed a relatively relaxed pace of life, even during times of adversity, and exercised much greater personal control over their lives than Westerners do today. Anthropologists generally agree the !Kung accurately represent the lives our hominid ancestors lived a million years before the dawn of agriculture.

With the rise of personal property in modern Western society, however, came more individualistic choices that ultimately diminished group efforts toward a common good. Junger contrasts tribal society with the high degrees of corruption and excess tied to Wall Street and corporate culture. The hoarding, greed, fraud, individual privilege, cowardice, suicide, schizophrenia, anxiety, poor health, and depression that characterize modern Western society would have been unheard of, or swiftly expunged, in tribal societies. As wealth and authority have increased, health and community have diminished.

Introduction-Chapter 1 Analysis

Junger opens Tribe with the story of the man of the highway in order to pose the question he explores throughout the book: Why did that man’s sense of responsibility for his tribe extend to an utter stranger, and how did such sentiment come to be in such short supply in modern society?

In Chapter 1, Junger’s discussion of the contradictions and ill-effects of modern society is both familiar and fresh. One additional contradiction of society today is that it is generally self-conscious about the fact that things are not going well for many people, and yet many people feel disempowered about finding or creating an alternative way of living. Junger’s discussion of the colonial situation, therefore, in which whites had a viable option to opt out by joining the Indians, is instructive and illuminating. It suggests that many people today would jump at the opportunity to leave modern society if a viable option presented itself. By opening the book with this discussion, Junger is signaling his intention to expose the harmful effects of the modern world. At the same time, he is foreshadowing his conclusion that the answers to what ails society have been among us all the while.

Chapter 1 also introduces us to Junger’s eclectic sources and multi-disciplinary approach to his topic. In this chapter he is especially reliant upon anthropological studies of indigenous peoples in the Americas and in Africa. Junger makes good use of colonial-era histories to document white society’s generally astonished take on indigenous life and its horrified response to seeing its own people’s preference for the so-called savages. Although he does not use these terms, Junger is clear that the actions of everyday folk who sought genuine reciprocity with other human beings, regardless of their race and ethnicity, undermines Eurocentric history and ideas of white supremacy in American society.

At the same time, Junger’s reliance on anthropology for information about indigenous people is risky. There are no references to American Indian scholars or sources among Junger’s citations, and this omission seems to lead Junger into repeating some of the historical pitfalls of the anthropology discipline—for instance, a tendency to universalize human experience. Within anthropology this universalism has notoriously taken the form of exoticizing “the Other.” Junger does not repeat the overtly supremacist Western interpretation of native peoples, but holding tribal societies in high esteem does not undo the universalism of Western thought. In Tribe, this universalism appears in the form of a monolithic portrait of American Indian tribes as drawn by their external observers, non-native social scientists.