Social Media Tribes

Geoffrey F. Hughes is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Kinship, Islam, and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan: Affection and Mercy.

List of Illustrations Note on Transliteration Introduction: Tribalism and the Politics of an Accusation Chapter 1. The Many Faces of the State-The Sheikh, The Policeman, and the Journalist Chapter 2. Tribalism Chapter 3. Envy Chapter 4. Face Chapter 5. The Deep State Chapter 6. Mercy Epilogue: Locking Down Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index

"Social Media Tribes offers a fascinating, original, and wonderfully written political anthropology of social media use among Jordanian tribesmen. Geoffrey Hughes sidesteps the rather stale debates about the political effects of the internet by shifting the lens toward richly observed ethnography of how Jordanians actually use social media-and, crucially, how they themselves think about how their social media use has changed their lives, politics, and culture. Along the way, Hughes gives one of the best observed descriptions of the practice of journalism in a country like Jordan that I've read recently." - Marc Lynch, author of America's Middle East: The Ruination of a Region "Geoffrey Hughes offers a rich, on-the-ground perspective that adds depth and local context to the discussion of tribalism, a theme that is often avoided or underexplored in the field. One of the key contributions of Social Media Tribes is its reframing of tribalism, not as a relic of the past but as a dynamic political force that continues to shape governance, social structures, and online interactions. This book expands the theoretical vocabulary available for analyzing Middle Eastern societies beyond conventional state-centric and modernist frameworks and offers a more nuanced take in which tribalism is dynamic and evolving rather than obsolete." - Haian Dukhan, author of State and Tribes in Syria: Informal Alliances and Conflict Patterns