TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

economic dependence on non-tribal societies. 123 Thus, the effects of external changes are
usually direct and deep in tribal societies. Tapper, for this reason, puts primary emphasis
on external forces as main variables determining the emergence of central leadership in a
tribe. 124 William Irons also, as many other anthropologists, underlines external relations
as primary determining parameter in tribal polity. As he has put it, “Among pastoral
nomadic societies hierarchical political institutions are generated only by external
relations with state societies and never develop purely as a result of the internal
dynamics of such societies.” 125 Thomas Barfield, furthermore, examines Inner Asian
Turko-Mongolain tribal organizations ad he also comes up with a similar conclusion. 126
To sum up, the response of tribal society to the internal and external needs
appears on the basis of genealogy. As Lindner has already put it, “The ideology which
bounded the tribesmen together in a communality of thought and emotion was, then,
kinship. Binding them together for action was the chief, whose position evolved as a
result of the shared interests of the tribesmen and the strength of the external
pressure.” 127
123 Gellner, “The Tribal Society and its Enemies”, p. 442.
124 Tapper, “Anthropologists, Historians, and Tribespeople on Tribe and State Formation in the Middle
East”, p. 66.
125 William Irons, “Political Stratification among Pastoral Nomads”, in Pastoral Production and Society,
Cambridge, 1979.
126 “…such tribal societies (vast majority of whom engaged in pastoral nomadism in distant and large
territories with low population density and relatively undifferentiated economy) could not support largescale
political structures with their own resources; nor was there any pressing need for much supratribal
cooperation to organize the nomadic pastoral economy itself or to handle internal political affairs beyond
what could be provided by segmentary opposition. When large-scale organization did emerge, it arose to
deal with surrounding sedentary states.” See Barfield, “Tribe and State Relations: Inner Asian
Perspective”, p. 166.
127 Lindner, “What was a Nomadic Tribe?”, p. 700.
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