ABSTRACT
Fredrik Barth’s Introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries is one of the most well-known and highly cited works in anthropology. Fifty years after its publication, any student learns about ethnicity, or scholar writing on myriad issues of identity or ethnic relations, simply must take Barth’s piece as a conceptual cornerstone. Social organization was a key theme for Barth over many years, exemplified not least in a range of titles including Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan, Models of Social Organization and Scale and Social Organization. The conceptual tools at the actors’ disposal for these purposes severely affect the kinds of social situations they can define and, thereby, the patterns of organization they can establish. The way in which Mitchell interpreted ‘tribalism’ as shifting or malleable in content and closely related to shaping hierarchies and ordering interactions largely prefigured the seminal way in which Barth conceived of ethnicity.
