The Concept of the Clan: Between the Person and the Society
This paper argues that the prosopographic approach to reconstructing social networks and power relationships can be enhanced by incorporating the concept of the clan as an associative structure positioned between the individual and the broader social sphere. While introduced in 19th-century social anthropology by Lewis H. Morgan to analyze both the Roman gens and pre-modern societies (such as Native American tribes), the term is used here differently than its traditional anthropological definition. Rather than a “unilateral exogamous descent group” focused on primal kinship, protection, and basic juridical or economic functions, this paper views the historical reality of the clan as more amorphous and porous. Originally the concept of the clan has been employed to explain all that was believed not to belong to modernity. Indeed, it was conceived as a stage in history’s development and as a premodern form of power. Such developmental theory of historic time is rooted in a historiosophic conception of history, that is, in the idea that history is on the move in itself and by itself towards an end. Drawing on Christopher Smith’s work on Roman Clan (2006), this study proposes that while clans rest on blood ties, they expand by co-opting new members based on fidelity and trust, making friends and acquaintances highly influential figures within the structure. Finally, the paper explores the utility of this concept in medieval studies, analyzing the accounts of the clan provided by Otto Brunner and Jacques Heers.
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Ivan Dimitrijevic teaches philosophy at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. Since 2024 he is the vice-dean for international cooperation and faculty development. His research interests include political philosophy, philosophy of praxis, and conceptual history. His last monographs have been devoted to the conceptual history of political and practical aspects of concepts of madness, work and movement: Critique and Care: Madness Before and After Basaglia (2022, in Italian), Dispute on Work (2022, in Polish), To Go and to Arrive at the Same Time: Four Essays in the Critique of Therapeutic Politics (2023, in Polish), The Society without Government and the Recovery of Political Praxis: Alessandro Biral between Crisis and Politics, in The Resistible Crisis of Italian Thought, ed. F. Dal Bo and C. Salzani (SUNY Press 2026).
E-mail: i.dimitrijevic@uw.edu.pl
