colleen_parks 's review for:

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

2.0

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I disliked this not because of the ideas that Junger presents necessarily, but the way he presents them and he evidence he uses for them. The main themes are the problems that come with individualistic societies and how that contributes to modern anxiety, depression, and the incidence of PTSD, and how that is related to the (lack of) ways we reintegrate soldiers into society after their service (whether they were in combat or not). He points out that depression and suicide are less frequent, if not unheard of, in more tribal societies and old societies. For instance, he notes that Israeli soldiers have a suicide rate of about 1% (it is surprising to hear Israel in this context of 'tribal'), far lower than that of US service men and woman and that it was basically unheard of in Indian (Native American) societies. He points to the fact that everyone serves in Israel, and so it's simply not a big deal. Military vets are not treated like victims or people to be handled with kid gloves. In Native American cultures, there were (are?) various rites and rituals to bring soldiers back into society, or the situation was similar to Israel--it simply wasn't that big a deal. I agree with the idea that we don't integrate those who've served back into our society very well; that something like memorial day and veterans day are kind of meaningless in the face of vets not being able to get the medical care they need, or people not know what they might have been doing at all. However, pointing to this as the cause of problems like PTSD completely ignores the cross-cultural problems in comparing mental illness, even just defining what counts as a mental illness in different societies and the likelihood of reporting it. He also argues that some people like serving because the military creates a tribal-like community. And that the same thing happens after disasters. On the one hand, it makes sense and I don't completely disagree. On the other hand, this is an idea that needs a lot more study than he gave it here. Here it felt like he was trying to justify his attraction to war.

In the end, what I dislike is the shoddy journalism. Not all of his sources are cited, he relies on cherry-picked evidence, and makes leaps of logic based on that evidence. I don't like the fact that he exoticizes other cultures, particularly Indian (Native American) cultures. He treats them, and tribal societies in general, as somehow very different from us at an individual level. He treats modern society as inferior. He glosses over the idea that there are pros and cons to all societies, especially the cons of tribal and collectivist societies. He doesn't really acknowledge our commonalities that stand out regardless of our culture. Compared to his other work, particularly the excellent documentary Restrepo, this was disappointing.