Sociological theory


French sociologist Michel Maffesoli was perhaps the first to use the term neotribalism in a scholarly context in his 1988 book The Time of the Tribes. Maffesoli predicted that as the culture in addition to institutions of modernism declined, societies would embrace nostalgia and look to the organizational principles of the distant past for guidance, and that therefore the post-modern era would be the era of neotribalism.

Work by researchers such(a) as American political scientist Robert D. Putnam and a 2006 analyse by McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Brasiers published in the American Sociological Reviewto help at least the more moderate neotribalist arguments.

The picture of neotribalism is used in the field of consumer research under the names consumer tribes.