Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations
Written by Amy Chua
Narrated by Julia Whelan
4.5/5
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Currently unavailable
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About this audiobook
The bestselling author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua offers a bold new prescription for reversing our foreign policy failures and overcoming our destructive political tribalism at home
Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter most – the ones that people will kill and die for – are ethnic, religious, sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to see the world in terms of nation-states engaged in great ideological battles – Capitalism vs. Communism, Democracy vs. Authoritarianism, the "Free World" vs. the "Axis of Evil" – we are often spectacularly blind to the power of tribal politics. Time and again this blindness has undermined American foreign policy.
In the Vietnam War, viewing the conflict through Cold War blinders, we never saw that most of Vietnam's "capitalists" were members of the hated Chinese minority. Every pro-free-market move we made helped turn the Vietnamese people against us. In Iraq, we were stunningly dismissive of the hatred between that country's Sunnis and Shias. If we want to get our foreign policy right – so as to not be perpetually caught off guard and fighting unwinnable wars – the United States has to come to grips with political tribalism abroad.
Just as Washington's foreign policy establishment has been blind to the power of tribal politics outside the country, so too have American political elites been oblivious to the group identities that matter most to ordinary Americans – and that are tearing the United States apart. As the stunning rise of Donald Trump laid bare, identity politics have seized both the American left and right in an especially dangerous, racially inflected way. In America today, every group feels threatened: whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, liberals and conservatives, and so on. There is a pervasive sense of collective persecution and discrimination. On the left, this has given rise to increasingly radical and exclusionary rhetoric of privilege and cultural appropriation. On the right, it has fueled a disturbing rise in xenophobia and white nationalism.
In characteristically persuasive style, Amy Chua argues that America must rediscover a national identity that transcends our political tribes. Enough false slogans of unity, which are just another form of divisiveness. It is time for a more difficult unity that acknowledges the reality of group differences and fights the deep inequities that divide us.
Amy Chua
Amy Chua is the John M. Duff Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, translated into eight languages, was a New York Times bestseller, an Economist Best Book of the Year and one of the Guardian's Top Political Reads of 2003. Her second book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall, was a critically acclaimed Foreign Affairs bestseller. Amy Chua has appeared frequently on radio and television and her writing has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and the Wilson Quarterly. She lives with her husband, two daughters and two Samoyeds in New Haven, Connecticut.
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Reviews for Political Tribes
51 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I know Hillary Clinton wrote "What Happened," but Amy Chua explains conflict along tribal identity, inequality, and foreign policy with precision and clarity. She revisits the failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and provides thoughtful context for today's rise in American nationalism. Riveting, persuasive, and remarkably readable; I couldn't put this down.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The problem with people is always the differentiation in the focus of a sets of problems. The priority established by any group of people is naturally inclined to oppress the priority of the individual. How to make sure that the priority of individual can manifest is the most important question regarding American policies.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing insight to the current American political landscape. Loved it
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very fine book. Lots of good examples about “tribalism” in other countries, totally ignored or misunderstood by American policy makers. Then very good discussion of racism and tribalism within the US.
I’m sad that the very useful term “tribalism” comes off as a slur against various indigenous people who may be described (or describe themselves) as tribal. But I don’t know a better word for the phenomenon. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The part dissecting how we didn't consider all the factors in previous wars seemed to go on and on and likely won't be that useful for the average person. But, as a whole, it was informative.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a book which gives a reality check on United State politics in the second decade of the 21st century. Group identity and identity politics have come to the fore and Amy Chua describes this pretty well. Unraveling ethnicities in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Daris, Pashtuns, and Punjabis disentangled and the presence of the Chinese minority highly resented by the Vietnamese majority in Vietnam.