Customer Reviews

Urban Tribes

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Ethan Watters has a droll, engaging writing style that reads so smoothly it sometimes masks a much deeper thought process. In this volume he poses many questions about the social phenomenon of singles who stay that way for many years longer than their parental counterparts. He coins the term Urban Tribes after seeing several groups of friends gathering at Burning Man and realising that what made his own group special and unique to him, is at work in small networks across society.

The book is most potent when it describes some of the tribal dynamics - for example the propensity of a group to put up barriers to those who threaten the harmony of the group of friends, and the capacity of a group of friends to encourage the best in each person, while overlooking and forgiving their foibles. The central question is: as singles are they still desperately seeking a partner - or is single life, surrounded by a supportive network a totally satisfactory alternative? Watters' answer to that one remains up in the air, and - as we learn at the end as he tells his story in first-person, he has to resolve his thoughts as he himself gets happily hitched and honeymooning in Hawaii.

Urban Tribes is a refreshing read, and the book is like a good mirror to hold up to your own life and values. It allows the reader to reflect on how their community of friends operates. Watters makes a good point when he reminds us that the casual life of urban tribes is made possible, to a great degree, by the wealth of our parents' generation. Are we dining off the fact that our parents got married in their early 20s, worked hard, saved hard and we stand to inherit a generation's worth of real-estate?

I'm a researcher by trade, and this book dug into social dynamics that greatly informed my own work as we examine issues of social currency and the way we glue ourselves into vibrant networks of strangers in a shifting, sometimes uncertain landscape.