Tribalism, Populism, and Contemporary Identity | Francis Fukuyama

Tribalism is a stage of human social development that occurred
in virtually all human cultures as we transitioned from small localized communities. Tribally organized societies proliferated because they could scale up and overpower their smaller predecessors. In turn, they were replaced by state-level ones beginning around 10,000 years ago. The latter’s centralized and hierarchical form of organization conferred collective benefits in terms of scale, fighting power, and ability to provide public goods. However, while states concentrate power, they cannot assert authority without some form of legitimacy or normative authority over at least parts of their populations.

Dr. Fukuyama explains that this can take the form of religion, where transcendental religions began replacing the shamanism and ancestor-worship characteristic of band and tribal societies. Legitimacy could also flow from cultural and ethnic identities driven by our innate tribal propensity for altruism towards family (kin selection) and friends (reciprocal altruism). One problem of modern, large-scale states is that these feelings of belonging and cooperation continue to operate more powerfully in smaller, more homogeneous groups than in large and diverse ones, leading to civil divides and conflict.

This talk was part of a Leakey Foundation Survival Symposium entitled, "Our Tribal Nature: Tribalism, Politics, and Evolution." The symposium was held in September 2019 at the Morgan Library in New York.

About the speaker:
Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He also serves as director of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy, and the Mosbacher Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Dr. Fukuyama is a political scientist and economist, and the author of The End of History and the Last Man, Political Order and Political Decay, and Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, among other books.

He is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and was formerly a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for Global Development. He served in the U.S. Department of State as the deputy director for European political-military affairs (1989), and prior to that as a specialist in Middle East affairs for the Policy Planning Staff (1981–1982). He was also a member of the U.S. delegation to the Egyptian–Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy (1981–1982).