Tribes: how our need to belong can make or break society

In 2007, inspired by the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and looking to explore his own African roots, David Lammy took a DNA test. Part memoir, part call-to-arms Tribes explores how David Lammy felt reading his DNA results, and how they led him to rethink what it meant to need to belong to a tribe, and the results of being part of one. How this need – genetically programmed and socially acquired – can manifest itself in positive ways, collaboratively achieving great things that individuals alone cannot. And yet how, in recent years, globalisation and digitisation have led to new, more pernicious kinds of tribalism. David Lammy (@DavidLammy), MP for Tottenham, is most renowned for leading the fight for a referendum on the final negotiated Brexit deal. However, when David Lammy was named Politician of the Year by both GQ and the Political Studies Association, he dedicated both awards to his parents, the Windrush Generation and his friend Khadija Saye who lost her life in Grenfell Tower. David was the first to call for independent inquiry into the Grenfell Tower Fire. He has also secured a Compensation Fund for the victims of the Windrush scandal, placing pressure on the government to treat their plight as an injustice to be rectified. Armine Ishkanian is Interim Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme in the International Inequalities Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy. Her research focuses on the relationship between civil society, democracy, development, and social transformation. She has examined how civil society organisations and social movements engage in policy processes and transformative politics in a number of countries including Armenia, Egypt, Greece, and the UK. The International Inequalities Institute (@LSEInequalities) at LSE brings together experts from many LSE departments and centres to lead cutting-edge research focused on understanding why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.