| Summary/Abstract |
The Middle East is frequently looked upon from an angle of tribalism.1
1 Philip Carl Salzman, ‘The Middle East's Tribal DNA’, Middle East Quarterly, 15(1) (2008), pp. 23–33; Philip Carl Salzman, ‘Tribes Today: In Anthropology and in the World’, The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 6(3–4) (2015), pp. 353–365.
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This is specifically true for Kurdistan,2
2 In this paper, we use Kurdistan to denote the area where Kurdish people live across the four countries Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. We use southern Kurdistan referring to the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), and Iraqi Kurdistan to refer to the northern part of Iraq, governed by the KRG.
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with Kurdish people often regarded as the quintessential tribal society.3
3 Fredrik Barth, Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan (Oslo: Brødrene Jørgensen boktr, 1953).
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While the concept of tribalism has been considered by a large number of social scientists, and in particular anthropologists, it has remained ambiguous especially in relation to similar concepts such as ethnic groups or nation. While we agree on the importance of tribal affiliation as one of the components of social identity and social organization in the Middle East,
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