askchapo

Now, an anthropologist is likely to dedicate some paragraphs of his work to just talk about the history of the terms and how they are applied and then choose, either arbitrarily or in accordance to what their teachers do, what meaning they want to ascribe to it. Which means it, funnily enough, kinda depends on where you're from.

Some traditions/places will claim that both clans (families) and tribes are tied to a common ancestry (which is either real or invented). The difference there being a matter of clans being sub divisions of tribes.

Other places will claim tribes as a cultural subgroup, somewhat similar to the older european notions of 'nation', while clan is what's driven by common ancestry.

If this sound arbitrary it is because it is. These words - tribe, clan, ethnicity, nation, etc - are arbitrarily translated between languages and cultures. Tribal belonging for the native tribes in the United States is a concept of their own, which exists for their own needs. Tribal belonging for an arab levantine in a modern nation state is, likewise, different from tribal belonging in the valleys of Afghanistan. Notions of cultural ties, commonalities and ancestry are essentially in a spectrum and they affect which word is used. And then there's what we used to have in industrial and post industrial societies, 'cultural tribes' forming around aesthetics and fandoms.