Rethinking What “Tribes” and “Networks” Are Good For (Part II)
New Revelations About Tribes, Networks, Civil Society, and Beyond
FRONT NOTE: Once again, I’ve drafted an exhaustingly wordy post and find myself too whatever to overcome my flagging abilities. Yet the more I move deeper into this set of three posts, the more I think they offer the most significant improvements to TIMN in 15 years, maybe 30. If you find this post too wordy to keep reading, my advice is skip to where the concluding section recaps key points (windy, wīndy, and wordy as that too may be).
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Questions I keep asking for TIMN’s sake: Am I sure the Tribes form gave rise to the realm we call civil society? What will the Networks form ultimately give rise to? How different are the Tribes and Networks forms from each other? How does my rethink improve my earlier answers? Can I draw new implications for theory and strategy?
TOWARD A REVISED COMPARISON OF “TRIBES” AND “NETWORKS”
TIMN identifies Tribes as the first form to emerge for organizing societies. Classic early tribes bound people together by making kinship and lineage matter more than any other dynamic, thereby giving a tribe’s members a distinct sense of identity and belonging. Structurally, these tribes were, as sociologists like to say, acephalous, segmental, and egalitarian — meaning no head leader, no specialized parts, and lots of communal sharing. Culturally, tribes stressed four values for governing relations with each other and with outsiders: respect, honor, pride, and dignity — all pursuant to gaining prestige, reputation, and standing.
Yet Tribes is not only the first form — it’s also a forever form. Based on feelings of kinship and other affinities that are vital for keeping people together, Tribe’s importance persists as the TIMN progression advances and other forms/realms get added on. Getting the Tribes form/realm right, mainly by emphasizing its bright sides over its dark sides (e.g., community care over clannish corruption), is a foundational necessity for every healthy society. The Tribes form amounts to the original safety net and launch pad for the subsequent evolution of all societies.
Of course, as a society becomes more complex, we don’t say it has a Tribes realm. Since several centuries ago, particularly since Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy In America (1835, 1840), we’ve come to see this realm as “civil society” — the realm of families, communities, voluntary associations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), patriotic displays of ethnic and/or national pride, not to mention fan clubs, sports teams, etc. And we’ve come to see civil society as a realm apart from the realms of government and business.
By comparison, TIMN’s information-age Networks form — the fourth form to finally emerge — serves to connect dispersed people and organizations so that they can coordinate and act conjointly to unprecedented extents, without requiring a shared tribal identity. Enabled by digital information technology, this form is still coming into its own. It seems to favor flat non-hierarchical interwoven organizational designs. But exactly which types remains unclear, and it may accommodate to some components being hierarchical.
At first, back in the 1990s, I figured the rise of +N would strengthen civil society more than the realms of government and the market economy. The development of “global civil society” did become a trend for a couple decades. But it waned as government and business actors contrived their own networks to counter initiatives from CSOs, NGOs, and other civil-society activists — in keeping with a maxim from earlier RAND work on social netwar that “It takes networks to fight networks” (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1996, 2001).
At present, the emergence of +N doesn’t appear to be favoring any of the existing three realms. All sorts of actors from all three — civil society, government, economy — are exploiting network forms of technology and organization for purposes across the cooperation-competition-conflict spectrum. Indeed, the rise of network forms has had unsettling effects around the world — it alone is a key cause of conflicts everywhere, perhaps all of them.
Of note for this post is that the spread of information-age network forms of organization and technology has enabled both networked tribalism and networked cooperativism to go global. For example, note the subversive transnational networks uniting Far Right actors in Europe and the U.S., as well as the militant transnational networks linking Islamic jihadis across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — toxic us-vs-them networks full of tribalized actors longing to reimpose medieval biform (T+I) systems rather than advance toward post-modern quadriform (T+I+M+N) systems.
Note too that networked cooperativism is also spreading globally via communities working to advance commons-centric ideas and activities (e.g., Mondragon, Sensorica, Zukas). I don’t know much about this trend; but I know it’s happening and being documented and facilitated. For fuller information, see writings by Michel Bauwens, David Bollier, and Jose Ramos, among others.
Meanwhile, the currently trendy “network state” phenomenon also expresses the rise of +N forces and factors. But so far it looks to me like an effort to create a circuit of post-medieval principalities where ultra-wealthy right-wing tech-bro barons and other tribalists and escapists can live large above the world’s general fray. The network-state idea does not look like a step toward quadriform (T+I+M+N) societies. It looks more like a dreamy reversion to medieval (T+I) societies where outside market (+M) ideas and forces are kept limited by exalting clannish (T) and hierarchical (+I) principles.
TIMN’S RECURRENT SYSTEM DYNAMICS NEWLY IN PLAY AGAIN
These recent trends reflect a set of system dynamics that occurred in past phase transitions in the TIMN progression from monoform (T-only), to biform (T+I), to triform (T+I+M) societies. Some of these dynamics show up early when one of TIMN’s seed-forms begins to emerge for the first time, but before it starts to evolve a new realm of society. Other dynamics come later, and apply to the development of the next/new realm.
It’s the early dynamics that are recurring now with the emergence of +N. According to these early dynamics,
The rise of each form in turn has disruptive subversive effects on a society’s existing realms before it has additive combinatorial effects in favor of generating the rise of the next-new realm of society.
This happens not only because of contradictions between forms, but also because “bad guys” — warlords, smugglers, pirates, terrorists, etc. — often adopt and exploit a new form quicker than “good guys.”
The more entrenched an older form, the more difficult it will be for a newer form to emerge and develop on its own merits.
New modes of cooperation, competition, and conflict arise during each major evolutionary transition.
Each transition generates new philosophies, ideologies, and value orientations that alter public policy dialogue and redefine a society’s political spectrum.
Reversions to tribalism tend to increase during a phase transition.
All these dynamics are currently evident. Even so, as I keep lamenting, I still see no clear evidence that +N’s early effects are preferentially energizing and benefiting a distinct set of actors who may then go on to constitute a next-new realm per TIMN’s dynamics — this time, meaning a +Networks realm whose structural-functional differentiation will add a higher (fourth) level of complexity to societies. Plus, as I’ve also said before, the likeliest candidates for constituting this fourth realm appear to be a set of care-centric actors in the fields of health, education, welfare, and the environment (collectively, HEWE) — but, again, I see no evidence they’re gaining ground from +N’s emergence. Instead, corporate business actors are using new network designs and technologies to further tighten their already controlling grips on health and education properties.
I point to the HEWE set because, according to the TIMN progression, it’s +N’s turn, and the realm it promises will attract whatever set of actors and activities may best address the most critical complicated set of problems challenging societal evolution at this stage. HEWE consists of a set of societal problems that have grown so serious they cannot be resolved by continuing to rely on the old public-private (government-market) framework, nor by turning back to civil society as a solution. It’s not clear yet that the information-age +N form is better suited to addressing care-centric matters than are government (+I) and market (+M) actors who have controlled and often mishandled these matters in recent decades. But I’m sticking with my deduction for now. If there’s a better set of candidates than HEWE for constituting a +N realm, please tell me.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THE INTERIM TO TRACK +N’S EMERGENCE
TIMN suggests three signs to look for in the interim: One is the appearance of organizational hybrids that are not fully +N, yet combine aspects of +N with one or more of the earlier TIMN forms. Thus chiefdoms (a T+I hybrid) held sway during the transition from tribe-centric to early state-led societies. Centuries later, state-led mercantilism (a T+I+M hybrid) marked the transition from feudalism (a T+I economy) to capitalism (a +M economy). The recurrent system dynamic is this:
Intermediate hybrid forms of organization arise during a transition, as people experiment and adapt to a new form before it fully takes hold.
Today I see plenty of organizational hybrids that are owned and operated by private businesses who treat health and education as commodities. But these for-profit entities resemble the “monstrous moral hybrids” that Jane Jacobs (1992) warned against, in case her framework’s guardian (+I) and commercial (+M) modes of endeavor are mingled improperly. From a TIMN standpoint, the positive kinds of hybrids to look for should be non-profit, like a cooperative or set of cooperatives, be independent of government and business, bring civil-society actors back into play, span at least two of HEWEs four problem areas, and emphasize network principles. I don’t see anything like that developing right now.
A second thing to look for is new forms of organization, no matter the field of endeavor. Today’s pioneering ideas about network forms of organization — e.g., “decentralized autonomous organizations” (DAOs), “distributed cooperative organizations” (DisCOs), “open value networks” (OVNs), holacracy, holarchy, and the like — are steps in the right direction. But they look insufficient for scaling upwards and sideways to structure an entirely new realm. Something grander in scale, more inter-connectable across “silos,” perhaps “cosmo-local,” looks needed. Its functionality — top to bottom and side-to-side across multiple issue areas, especially if it’s to be a realm for HEWE matters — may be manageable only if Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) systems are adopted. So, we need to keep looking and hoping.
A third sign to look for is promising shifts in public-policy dialogue and discourse. Each TIMN seed-form and its ensuing realm comes with its own set of values and norms, thus its own “language” reflecting those values and norms. People who work in one or another realm — civil society, government, business — have their own ways of discussing what matters in that realm (sector, sphere) of society. Government officials talk in terms of policies and programs, business actors in terms of profits and losses, etc. — and somehow all these specialized languages for evaluating and strategizing are supposed to come together to the benefit of society as a whole.
I took heart years ago when I saw ideas variously floated during the 1990s–2010s advocating for a “social sector” (Peter Drucker), a “commons sector” (Michel Bauwens, David Bollier, Kate Raworth, Jonathan Rowe), a “third sector” (Jeremy Rifkin, Lester Salamon), a “fourth sector” (Heerad Sabeti), a “4th sector” (Tiberius Brastaviceanu), a “citizen sector” for “social entrepreneurs” (William Drayton), a “social benefit sector” (Paul Light), a “plural sector” (Henry Mintzberg), and a “care sector” (Ina Praetorius). All these ideas sought to strengthen civil society, directly or by adding a new sector to the market economy that would indirectly benefit civil society. They aimed to strengthen civil society’s roles relative to government and market forces.
This meant they wanted to re-balance and reform our existing triform (T+I+M) systems. They were not about moving to develop quadriform (+N) systems. But they appealed to me as positive steps for shifting policy-oriented discourse and dialogue that could lay groundwork for later stepping in quadriform (+N) directions.
Little has come of these stirrings so far, and I’ve seen no new sectoral ideas to add to the list in recent years. I gather a pro-commons movement is gradually taking shape in some circles on the left in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere, partly in connection with the above commons- and 4th-sector ideas. But not in ways pertinent to my interests in the future of HEWE actors and activities.
As for HEWE matters, I keep looking for indications that actors in the fields of health, education, welfare, and the environment are beginning to talk together, make common cause, find mutual concepts, and develop a language around care that spans all their fields horizontally — much as civil-society, government, and business actors have done for their own realms of activity. And I’ve wondered what would happen if someone (not me) took the initiative to put some doctors, teachers, welfarians, and environmentalists in a room together and asked them to talk about their mutual concerns. Would they indeed find common cause around common good? Find ways to move ahead and be done with the debilitating talk of profits, losses, and investment returns that private insurance companies and venture capital firms currently impose? That’s what I’m looking for — a liberation and de-colonization of the terms of discussion around HEWE matters that leads to a “new sectorism” — and it seems the looking will go on for a while.
[Two serendipitous last-moment updates: I just found that the editors of Noema, a favorite magazine that I’m still behind on reading, wrote about their concept of planetarity last year (Gardels & Miles, 2024) in a way that parallels my updated equation of Tribes with in-reaching and Networks with outreaching identities:
“While the emergent world-spanning cognitive apparatus may be sprouting the synapses of a synchronized planetary intelligence, it clashes with the tribal ingathering of nations and civilizations that remain anchored in their historical and spatial identity. Consequently, this new domain of encompassing awareness is — so far — as much the terrain of contestation as of common ground.”
I also just came across a proposal for a “Socialist Health Club model” that the author (Ho, 2025) says “is inherently scalable: from healthcare, it can gradually extend into food, retail, education, and even housing, thereby laying the groundwork for a comprehensive transformation of human civilization.” The write-up is too Marxist for me, but the general idea is right on the mark for forecasting a +N realm — it’s the kind of sign I’m looking for.]
KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TIMN’S TRIBES AND NETWORKS
To reiterate my revised understanding of TIMN, the Tribes form is as much about networks as is the Networks form. Tribes and Networks both rest on network forms of organization, belief, and behavior that are meant to assure mutual togetherness. Tribes and Networks qualify as network-centric forms in ways that further distinguish them from Institutions and Markets. As such, Tribes and Networks operate primarily sideways, amid the primarily top-down and bottom-up operations of Institutions and Markets.
Even so, I’m seeing more ways than before in which TIMN’s Tribes and Network forms are structurally and functionally different from each other — not really polar opposites, but contradictory evolutionary opposites in some regards, as follows:
Their organizing principles are different, as are their organizational elements: The Tribes form is mainly about personal people relations: the Networks form seems ultimately about professional relations. The ancient-yet-still-essential Tribes form is the cradle of identity and belonging. It derives from kinship and other affinity networks that define people’s identities and bond them as a social group. It’s elements, mainly people, mean the Tribes form tends to be personal in nature. In contrast, the Networks form looks to be mainly professional in nature — it’s for connecting actors whose missions and activities require massive coordination and collaboration across great distances. +N looks to excel at enabling organizational networks that are purpose-built for addressing societal challenges apart from whatever may be a person’s individual or group identity from a Tribes perspective.
Their motivating impulses are different: People operating in the Tribes form look primarily inward, at least initially — the form emerged in ancient times to assure in-group cohesion and reject unwelcome outsiders, a necessity for group survival back then (and often today). In contrast, the Networks form excels at reaching outward — more so than any other form. Tribes originally favored exclusivity; Networks aim for inclusivity. Tribes are for self-validation; Networks are for validating relations with others — eligible outsiders. Tribes tend to be closed-circuit, compact, tight-knit; Networks tend to be open-circuit, capacious, loose-knit. People in Tribes like to set boundaries, draw lines; people in Networks like to build bridges, span gaps. Each favors and caters to a different kind of group mentality: Tribes to group introversion, Networks to group extroversion.
Their key cultural values are different: Tribes, with their emphasis on group kinship and identity, value displays of pride, honor, dignity, and respect, along with rites and rituals to affirm togetherness. Tribes in their raw form tend to treat sensitive matters in divisive us-vs.-them tones, unless people are deliberately trying to be peaceable, even altruistic toward outsiders. Tribes emphasize past provenance more than future providence. In contrast, the Networks form favors cooperative bridge-building and collective endeavor on a grand scale — it’s not designed for divisive distancing (though it can be adapted to that). Networks tend to focus on future providence more than past provenance. Plus, in economic typologies where Institutions favor public goods and Markets favor private goods, it can be said that Tribes favor club (clan) goods, while Networks seem likely favor commons goods (see Ronfeldt, 2016).
If we suppose +N does eventually form around HEWE actors and activities as I’ve speculated, their key values will likely be the common good, community care, and public service. If we could gather a bunch of doctors, teachers, welfarians, and environmentalists together and ask them to talk about their mutual concerns, the common good etc. are the kinds of values that seem likely to rise to the top — evoking an entirely different ethos than generally found in Tribes.
Their scalabilities are different: Both Tribes and Networks can be scaled-up from local to global and even planetary levels. Even so, people operating in Tribes may, in keeping with the form’s origins, prefer compact groupings and localized identities — homeland and bloodline seem ever-present markers, especially for ethno-nationalists and Far Right actors. Moreover, smaller-scale Tribes is the form people revert to when they’re sure larger-scale Institutions and Markets have failed them. Yet there are plenty of examples of scaled-up Tribes, like the Far Right and Islamic jihadi networks I mentioned earlier, and a range of religious and spiritual movements I’ve not mentioned. Plus, it looks increasingly important for people to begin acquiring planetary identities for ecological and other reasons. That can’t be accomplished without keeping the Tribes form in play and grandly scaling it up.
In contrast, it’s my sense that the Networks form, given the value orientations and impulses embedded in it, was “born” to be scalable in all directions, and to impel people using it to seek scalability. But with a crucial difference. The Tribes form scales to generate its home realm, namely civil society, affecting the other form’s prospects along the way. Networks, on the other hand, can be scaled not only to assist with whatever is going on in civil society, government, and/or the economy, but also to generate a new round of structural-functional differentiation that can result in the formation of a next-new realm. If my deductions prevail, this will be a commons-centric realm defined by HEWE actors and challenges. Which leads to my final point.
Their corresponding realms are different: According to my sense of TIMN, the Tribes form generates and then remains at the core of its home realm, namely civil society. In my first paper on TIMN (1996), I said that the rise of the Network’s form would initially favor civil-society actors more than actors in other realms. But I did not mean to imply that civil society would become +N’s home realm. Far from it, for a defining implication of TIMN is that +N will generate its own home realm, as I’ve said many times. My latest rethinking accords with that, yet offers some new insights too — so much so it requires extended explanation in the next section.
RETHINKING CIVIL SOCIETY FROM A TIMN PERSPECTIVE
Defining “civil society” is a slippery task. The concept’s origins date back to ancient Greek philosophy. It gained its modern liberal momentum during the 18th and 19th Centuries when British Enlightenment philosophers Adam Ferguson, John Locke, Adam Smith, and German idealist G.F.W. Hegel used it to denote a layer of civic-minded people and associations that mediated between the state and society at large, with its many uncivil as well as civil folks. Later definitions emphasized voluntary associations (à la Alexis De Tocqueville) that were independent of the state — with business, labor, and other economic actors included as part of civil society.
Newer definitions, still emphasizing voluntary associations, have viewed civil society as a family-, community-, work-, and morality-oriented realm that is increasingly distinct from the realms of government and the market economy. It’s been popularly termed the “third sector” by advocates who favor strengthening civil society’s roles relative to the government and the market economy, which they deemed the first and second sectors. Newer definitions have recognized that economic entities like massive powerful private-sector business corporations should not be considered part of civil society
While that’s all fine, two clarifications are needed from a TIMN perspective. (1) It makes sense for civil society’s early definition to include market actors like businesses that contributed to the growth of home towns and whose personnel participated in local community associations. But too few modern definitions make clear that massive private-sector corporations should not be counted as part of civil society — they’re solidly part of the capitalist market realm, and often indisposed toward civil society. Leaders of the World Economic Forum (Davos) do not regard their entities as part of civil society. (2) From a TIMN standpoint, it’s a misnomer to call civil society the “third sector.” Since civil society is an outgrowth of the Tribes form, it’s historically the first sector to begin evolving, not the third.
Against that background, here’s my updated take on civil society: TIMN’s Tribes, as I’ve noted, is the foundational form for what evolves over time into the realm we call civil society. The original form bonded families, clans, and their extended variants into small communities, settlements, and towns with local identities. Later, these bonds and identifies often fractured when people migrated to anonymous cities where urbanization and industrialization were occuring. So people turned to form new bonds and identities by joining workers guilds, labor unions, clubby voluntary associations, religious organizations, etc., all as parts and partners of civil society. Later, the rise of nationalism provided a still broader sense of family and community togetherness.
This evolution meant that people began to increasingly reach out to each other in new ways. Which raises theoretical questions for TIMN: Are people doing this in keeping with dynamics of the Tribes form that value reaching inward — but now doing so with a widened sense of in-group boundaries? Or is there an outreach aspect to the Tribes form I’ve missed recognizing? Possibly — something to keep mulling.
But there’s another possibility, and that’s what I’m going to emphasize: Remember, all four TIMN forms are present as seed-forms when people first begin to assemble into societies. Thus, even though Tribes is the first form to take hold, some members are already operating in the Networks form, albeit on a minor scale — say by trying to exchange views or gifts with someone in a neighboring settlement. Over time, the quantity and variety of people operating in the Networks form may then increase and become more influential — for example, by way of long-ago religious missionaries or peace activists — even though the clear emergence of +N still lies centuries in the future.
This idea — that the Tribes form becomes more inclusive as people’s identities expand over time, and that the quantity and variety of people operating in the Networks form expands as well — leads to a revised TIMN perspective. I’ve previously viewed civil society simply as a manifestation of the Tribes form — ideally, civil society as “one big family.” However, for so many people from different families, clans, communities, associations, etc. to learn to mingle and get along, cooperating side by side in all sorts of endeavors, it appears that more is going on for TIMN than a progressive morphing of the Tribes form into civil society. And that “something more” is the progressive growth in the minority of Networks actors alongside Tribes actors as a society moves through the TIMN progression.
In summarize this new realization, the civil-society realm is the result of a morphing of the Tribes form under the influence of the Networks form. The growing presence of actors operating in the Networks form helps bring out the bright sides of the Tribes form. In this revised view, Tribes remains the foundational form for what evolves into civil society. But the pace and nature of that evolution depends partly on what’s going on simultaneously with the Networks form (not to mention what may be also be going on with people operating in the order-loving Institutions and freedom-loving Markets forms too).
In TIMN’s grand scheme, both forms are needed for societies to continue progressing. Tribes cannot be substituted for Networks, nor converted into it — nor vice-versa, The two forms, including their motivating impulses and mentalities, are too different for that. Yet, one can become (and be made) stronger than the other. Plus, T can grow in the direction of +N, and the two can become (and be made) more compatible and mutually reinforcing over time. Hybrids are also possible, and may have occurred, and still be occurring, far more than I currently realize.
Rotary International looks to be an illuminating example. I read that it began in 1905 as a single club in a single city, Chicago, for the purpose of promoting professional fellowship and exchanging ideas. It then spread nationally and internationally, changed its name to Rotary International in 1922, and broadened its sense of mission beyond professional fellowship to emphasize humanitarian service, notably with its campaign to eradicate polio worldwide. Rotary International also began engaging in projects with outside actors — for example, it gained consultative status with the United Nations in the late 1940s, and has partnered with the Gates Foundation in recent decades. All of which strikes me as meaning that Rotary began its evolution as a Tribes formation embedded in local communities to the benefit of civil society, then morphed into a transnational Tribes-Networks hybrid, while also evolving a global capacity for some parts to operate as a Networks formation — never shedding its Tribes origin, but transcending it along the way. Have I got that right? Could Rotary be a model example of my updated understanding of TIMN? I mean to keep an eye on it.
I look forward to the future possibility that civil-society actors operating in an expanded Tribes form will someday help call for adding a +Networks realm. We should want America to be a nation of Tribes and Networks, not a country riven by malignant Tribes and polarized Networks. I’m well aware the two forms can be rent asunder, as domestic and foreign Far Right forces are currently campaigning inside American society and culture — a point for another post, not this one.
PRELIMINARY IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND STRATEGY
About time I surfaced something new for TIMN’s sake. For the past 30 years, since first unearthing it, I’ve mostly kept dusting and shining lights on its fundamental design elements: Four major forms of organization. All present at societies’ origins. Each with its own preferred ways of believing and behaving. Each with its own bright and dark sides. Seed-forms that, when their time and technology comes along, generate societies’ major realms. With all the forms and their realms constantly interacting and affecting each other. In progressions from ancient monoform (T-centric) societies to today’s prospects for the emergence of next-phase quadriform (T+I+M+N) societies. Following a set of system dynamics that recur during each phase transition. And so forth, as of the mid 1990s.
By my reckoning, the best new piece I added after that is the recurrent system dynamic I call decontrol: “To advance through the TIMN progression, control must give way to decontrol” (Ronfeldt, 2009). I first found it over 15 years ago. It’s a powerful piece for both theory and practice. I still yearn to finish writing it up — two posts to go, after making a start with three posts during 2023–2024.
Meanwhile, I’ve supposed there’s still lots more embedded inside TIMN that I have yet to dig up and dust off. Thus what I’ve come up with in recent weeks feels revelatory. As I related in Part I, I’ve been stewing for years over the difficulties I’ve had clarifying the nature of the Networks form and its standing vis à vis the Tribes form. So it’s quite a relief to have these clarifications finally bubble up and take shape front-and-center in my weary mind.
They occurred to me in two rounds. The first provided the ideas and observations I’ve laid out in Part I and this Part II:
1. Tribes and Networks are both network-centric forms of organization. But they have enough differences to be distinct separate forms. Tribes is mostly about kinship and lineage networks; it’s very personal and social. In contrast, Networks looks to be primarily about professional operational networks; it’s for connecting and coordinating mission-driven actors across great distances, whatever their Tribal identities. More to the point, Tribes pull primarily inward; Networks reach mainly outward. Whereas people in Tribes are primarily concerned with in-groups (in-nets?), people in Networks are mainly concerned with out-groups (out-nets?). While I would never rename Tribes as Endonets or Ectonets, I am tempted to rebrand Networks as Exonets (Exo-equinets?) in order to help distinguish +E (nèe +N) from all the other trendy uses of the word networks.
2. As factors in the TIMN framework, Tribes and Networks work primarily sideways. It’s long been the case that Institutions are seen as operating primarily top-down, Markets primarily bottom-up. As I discussed above, I now see Tribes as primarily side-in, Networks as side-out. They can work bottom-up and top-down too at times, just as Institutions and Markets can affect matters sideways. But their primary flows of energy, influence, information, and initiative are as I just noted. I’ve hinted at this before, but making it explicit feels like a significant improvement in my grasp of TIMN and, hopefully, in my ability to lay it out for others.
3. Tribes remains the seed-form that generates the realm we call civil society. But for Tribes to do that well, I now sense that it must undergo progressive morphing to broaden and soften its emphasis on identity matters. Moreover, civil-society actors operating as Tribes must arise who want to form alliances and hybrids with actors operating in the Networks form. I like the Rotary International example. I’m still mulling over these ideas, but this revised conception appears to improve TIMN’s take on civil society. Meanwhile, Networks remains the seed-form that will generate the next-new (fourth) realm, probably a commons-centric realm. So, I’m not changing where T and +N fit in the TIMN framework, just improving how and why they fit.
For me, at this late stage of not getting enough done, that’s a meaningful set of new insights for TIMN. I feel extra-satisfied. But then, while writing them up as I’ve done in these Parts I and II, a second round of revelations showed up. Not because my thinking capacities suddenly improved, but — I’m sure of it — because I drew Figure 1 to use in Part I.
Most figures I’ve drawn for TIMN are Venn diagrams with a round circle for each form. This time, since I was intent on using arrows to denote top-down, bottom-up, side-in, and side-out impulses, I drew Figure 1 as a single big rectangle representing a society, then divided it into pointy triangular shapes, one for each form, each positioned according to its spatial impulse. Afterwars, as I related in Part I, I saw that the drawing abstractly resembled a dynamic landscape painting — a vast wide river flowing across the middle where Tribes and Networks lay, mountain ranges towering in the background where Institutions lay, and fields flourishing in the foreground where Markets lay.
Here, take another look, this time as a tilted Figure 2. See the mountains, the river, the fields? See what I mean?
In past write-ups, I’ve pointed out that all four TIMN forms and their ensuing realms are in constant interplay, all mutually entangled and interactive. But now I’m sensing that something is amiss with that bland generality. Maybe the forms’/realms’ interactions are more patterned than I’ve seen so far. For, while I stared at that diagram and mulled over its possible meanings as an evolutionary model and metaphorical landscape, a second round of “Ahas” surfaced:
4. That flowing Tribes-to-Networks river looks a lot like it a horizontal axis of some sort (maybe even a double helix). If so, that would mean a networks-based axis runs sideways through the TIMN framework, marking the beginning of societies in limited locales, then reaching a planetary culmination. It might also mean there’s a vertical axis comprised of the Institutions-and-Markets (cliffs-and-fields) interactions. Aha, maybe TIMN’s evolutionary dynamics function largely around two axes — maybe it’s a dual axis model?
5. That flowing Tribes-to-Networks river also seems to oscillate back and forth a lot. Maybe I better take a further look at Michel Bauwens’ ideas about the “pulsation of the commons” and Howard Odum’s “pulsing paradigm”? Plus, Kojin Karatani’s forecast that the rise of what he calls Mode D (equatable to TIMN’s +N) will transcend while also enfolding his Mode A (equatable to Tribes)? And if that axis is oscillating so much, maybe some sort of oscillation is also going on between Institutions and Markets? Time to revisit Karl Polanyi’s observations about a “double movement” affecting state-market relations?
6. Hmm, with all that in mind, now Figures 1–2 look less like a dynamic landscape and more like an engine, a dynamo. With the horizontal Tribes-to-Networks axis resembling a crankshaft-to-driveshaft assembly, and the vertical Institutions-and-Markets axis corresponding to powerful cylinder-piston assembles. Overall, a pulsing dynamo that drives creative evolution.
That’s not going to be easy to write up. I better get going on drafting Part III, hoping my wits and energies don’t flag too much. I also better settle on what all this may imply in a practical sense for policy and strategy as we try to move ahead and make America whole again. I never did finish that draft post calling for a “new sectorism” a few years ago. Maybe it’s worth revisiting and finishing. Stay tuned?
REFERENCES
Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, The Advent Of Netwar, RAND Corporation, 1996. Online at:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR789.html
Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, RAND Corporation, 2001. Online at:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382.html
Gardels, Nathan, and Kathleen Miles, “Introducing Noema Issue V: Threshold,” Noema, August 1, 2024, online at:
https://www.noemamag.com/introducing-noema-issue-v-threshold/
Ho, Zyn Wann, From the Logic of Capital to the Logic of Cooperation: The Theory and Practice of the Socialist Health Club Model, thesis(?), September 26, 2025. Online at:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=5533323
Ronfeldt, David, “Organizational forms compared: my evolving TIMN table vs. other analysts’ tables — revised & expanded,” Materials For Two Theories, (old personal blog), May 12, 2016, online at:
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2016/05/organizational-forms-compared-my.html
CODA: A LITTLE NIGHTCAP MUSIC
So, speaking of shaking things up with pulsing oscillations, how about these two landmarks of American civilization:
Jerry Lee Lewis – Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On – 1957
Steve Reich – Music For 18 Musicians: Pulses – 1997 [excerpt]
Steve Reich – Music For 18 Musicians – 1978 [full recording]