CIVIL SOCIETY, TRIBAL PROCESS, AND CHANGE IN JORDAN: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW

Abstract

In the 1990s, the concept of civil society has inspired a variety of publications by Western scholars studying the Middle East and has become the rallying cry for representatives of Western governments interested in promoting democracy in the region. The great majority of such publications and government promotions assume that the Middle East does not have, or has only in very weakly developed forms, the institutions that constitute a civil society. By “civil institutions” they mean such things as labor unions, political parties, independent newspapers and universities, and, most important, voluntary associations—for example, human-rights organizations, professional associations, charitable organizations, and non-governmental organizations.¹ Discounted in this discussion is the possibility that the Middle East has its own resilient civil institutions undergoing their own transformations in the global society at the end of the century. In Jordan, this gigantic oversight reflects a misunderstanding of what “tribal” institutions are and do.