tribal nationalism

is the idea that racial and ethnic categories of group identity would become an important lens through which they perceived the world and those unlike themselves. As opposed to an emphasis on the legal category of citizenship, ethnic identity would become a fundamental moral reality.

Combined with the rise of what Arendt calls 'tribal nationalism' in central and Eastern Europe, imperialism more or less guaranteed that racial and ethnic categories of group identity (as opposed to the legal category of citizenship) would become the fundamental moral reality for huge numbers of Europeans, the lens through which they perceived the world and those unlike themselves.' (Villa 2000: 4). . .'Arendt begins with a contrast between what she calls 'Western nationalism' and what she calls 'tribal nationalism' corresponding more or less to what is now standardly referred to as the distinction between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. (Villa in Villa 2000: 50)

tribal nationalism, n.Definitions

tribal nationalism