Neo-tribes was a term coined by the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli in the late 1980s and was his major contribution to debates surrounding the postmodern turn within contemporary society that came to prominence at that time. The term is used to highlight chosen or elective social groupings that people create with one another on the basis of a strong sense of shared emotion and feeling, often around a common interest. Maffesoli argues that emotional solidarity has become the basis for groupings where there is shared feeling and a coming together around some form of emotional solidarity and an associated set of markers of membership and identification ranging from values to styles of dress to common enthusiasms and hobbies.

Maffesoli's approach starts from the principle concerns of ...

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