Libya

The article is dedicated to tribes and tribal narratives in the political life of contemporary Libya. While it is widely acknowledged that the tribal factor is crucial in the Libyan history, its role in the political process of the last 10 years remains unclear. The tribes do not seem to become key military and political actors, they remain at the fringes of various reconciliation projects. Their political subjectivity itself brings out a number of controversial interpretations. Considering all that, the author aims to research the role of the tribal factor in social and political processes and discover manifestations of tribal narrative among non-state actors, particularly so-called militias. The following research is based both on published sources and author’s interviews with Libyan informants. The first part of the article looks into historical dynamics of the tribal factor. The second one analyzes the transformation of this role in the conditions of social modernization. The third part demonstrates specific traits of tribal strategies in the 2010s. The fourth one identifies elements of the tribal narrative in the actions and agendas of urban militias that have emerged after the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. The article shows that even though the urbanization process of the 1970-80s indeed led to the downfall of tribes as main socio-political structures, it has not yet fully replaced the tribal narrative by the times of the Arab Spring. As a result, the decomposition of statehood brought out the reconstruction of tribal structures according to the new social conditions

Economic growth · Modernization theory · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Urbanization · African history and culture analysis · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Global Political and Social Dynamics · Law