"Do goups like Friends and Seinfeld actually exist in the real world?"

Reading Ethan Watters' URBAN TRIBES is like watching an investigative report analyzing the characters and groups depicted in sitcoms such as Friends or Seinfeld. When I watch these shows I often ask myself, do similar groups or relationships actually exist in the real world?

Apparently, they are alive and kicking, and Watters cleverly has named these groups "Urban Tribes," of which he personally was a member. When you consider all of the facts that shape these groups, the author has convincingly shown that they are in fact an important trend, although they have their advantages and disadvantages.

The author tells us that the members of his group had a relationship with him; however, they also had distinct relationships with each other. "These relationships created an intricate web of lives that added up to more than the sum of the friendships. It was not a loose group of friends but a single entity of which he personally was a critical part." The group activities that they enjoyed was not the only element that kept them together, there was more to it. In fact, Watters does confess that he initially erred in describing these groups and had probably fallen into the trap of simplistically trying to define them.

Looking at these groups from the outside, it is difficult to conceive of them as a national trend. After all, there is no membership rolls, official meetings, no organization sponsoring them, no money to be made in their promotion, or as the author succinctly states, "whatever forces created urban tribes seemed not to come out of a conscious, directed process." Groups also differ among themselves when it comes to cultural style and interests. They seem to come in all sizes and shapes, and their members take on different roles that are expressions of their personal characters within the group's setting.

What seemed, however, to be common to many of these groups is the loyalty, the support, the caring for each other, the devotion, the encouragement and the safety net they provide for one another. Many members are at a stage of their life between post- college and marriage that sometimes can be daunting and they crave for the comfort and emotional shelter the tribe can offer them.

Watters does not purport to be a sociologist or anthropologist, however his microscopic examination of this complex subject matter mixed with his own personal story makes for a compelling read. In addition, the topic raises some very interesting questions that I am sure many readers will want to explore further in order to arrive at a better understanding of their own relationships and urban tribes they may belong to.

Reviewed by Norman Goldman
Courtesy Bookpleasures
Posted November 23, 2003

Summary

"Playful without being ironic and meaningful without being sappy, Urban Tribes will be a seminal book. In a decade, we will look back and realize that this book changed how we look at the period during which young adults live between families."-Po Bronson, New York Times bestselling author of What Should I Do With My Life? The numbers can't be ignored: the current generation of young Americans is delaying marriage longer than any other generation in history. But while the media trumpets this fact in a way that seems designed to scare us, until now no one has really taken the time to understand what people are doing instead. Driven by his personal desire to understand why his single life stretched far into his thirties, Ethan Watters explores the cultural and social forces that have steered his generation away from the altar-and discovers many reasons to be optimistic about the course his generation has chosen. Central to his thinking is the idea of Urban Tribes: the closely knit communities of friends that spring up during the ever-increasing period of time between college and married life. Tribes are revealed to be the key to understanding this generation, explaining not only why its members are putting off marriage, but also why singles often live outside of families so happily. In the end, Watters makes the case that the tribe years engender the self-respect critical to successful partnerships. A funny, deeply insightful, and compulsively readable book that dares to suggest that the generation in question just might be interested in more than buying the latest SUV and drinking lattes at the local coffeehouse, Urban Tribes is destined to become one of the most talked-about books of the year. "This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Urban Tribes redefines the debate over the nature of community and social cohesion in society today. Ethan Watters provides powerful insight into the rise of new kinds of cities and support structures for the growing class of creative, single people inhabiting leading urban centers in the United States and around the world." - Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life