tribal cultures
Traditional clan communities
Tribal cultures are societies organized around kinship, shared ancestry, and traditional customs rather than formal state institutions.
The term describes indigenous and small-scale communities with distinct languages, rituals, and social structures: The museum's exhibit on tribal cultures of the Pacific Northwest.
In casual use, tribal culture sometimes describes any group with strong in-group loyalty and distinctive practices.
- animismSpirits inhabit all things
- ancestral spiritsSouls of deceased kin
- spirit animalPersonal animal representation
- patrilinealTraced through fathers
- totemSpiritual clan symbol
clan · chief · fire · pottery · cosmology · sacred fire · communal living · hunting grounds · folklore · herbal medicine · subsistence farming · shamanism · medicine man · vision quest · kinship · blood ties · elder · proverbs
- AfricaEgypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania
- culturemusic taste, beliefs, food preferences, custom, festivals
- East AfricaKenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi
- multiculturalismmulticultural, multiethnic, ethnic diversity, diverse, pluralism
- ethnographyethnic groups, field notes, ethnographies, thick description, nomadic cultures
- naturesun, moon, sky, trees, water
tribal culturesnation-states
Self-governing territorial polities
tribal culturesindustrial society
Civilization centered on manufacturing
tribal culturessecular society
Culture separating state from religion