Rating: 
Summary: It's about time...
Review: ...someone saw the positive aspects in the meandering explorations of young adults. Our society suffers from too much group think as it is, with everyone trying to follow the same paths toward professional and personal success. What has made this country strong is the irreverent, iconoclastic explorations of the young - the people who are not content with how others have defined the world, and who dare to look for something more meaningful. Watters captures this spirit among young adults thoughtfully and respectfully. Hopefully his contribution will give American youth even greater confidence to strike out in ever more brave directions. Hoorah.
Rating: 
Summary: don't believe the hype
Review: By the time the reader realizes that Urban Tribes doesn't even merit the genre "pop-sociology", he/she is sucked into the narrative of Ethan Watters' personal quest for meaning. The first several chapters explore human social behaviour in a form that many young adults are familiar with. With self-congratulatory tones, we read about how our post-college lifestyles have been beneficial not just to ourselves, but to the world. I, for one, wasn't concerned about whether or not my lifestyle had meaning and had never sought to prove its worth. This author, however, was clearly very concerned about the merit of his choices and uses the first half of the book to demonstrate that the Urban Tribe lifestyle is both steeped in human sociology and a novel way to deal with the vagaries of singlehood in the early twenty-first century. Even this section, while peppered with statistics, consists mainly of anecdotal evidence.The second half of the book descends into personal narrative. Although I did find it quite amusing, Ethan's exploration of male/female relationships as they pertained mostly to himself and his friends did not as I saw it further the message of the earlier part of the book. I laughed as Ethan attempted to navigate various pop-psychology theories about mating, particularly when he tried to convince his friends that evolutionary psychology should dictate the rules of the game. Then there is his analysis of the latest dating advice books, such as The Rules. I hadn't realized that anyone had taken them seriously, but there was an astonishing amount of articles pressuring women to marry. It is all very entertaining. At the end, as Ethan describes his happy marriage and the transition from tribe-life to married-life, I felt dissatisfied. If this was to be a book about the Urban Tribe, it should not have become a book about marriage. If this was a book about marriage, why muddy it with the concept of Urban Tribes? In the beginning, he takes great care to describe how the "never-marrieds" of his generation are much more than single people, and how they are forging a new type of life for the coming century. However, his ending reveals that he too believes that marriage is the eventual goal for all people. I don't have a problem with marriage, but I think he lost his way on his own argument. In summary, this book contains a great introduction to the Urban Tribes concept, followed by a very funny personal narrative about dating, and ends with an analysis of marriage in our times. I cannot say it was a good book, but if I had read each of its parts individually, I would have said I enjoyed them all.
Rating:
Summary: don't believe the hype
Review: By the time the reader realizes that Urban Tribes doesn't even merit the genre "pop-sociology", he/she is sucked into the narrative of Ethan Watters' personal quest for meaning. The first several chapters explore human social behaviour in a form that many young adults are familiar with. With self-congratulatory tones, we read about how our post-college lifestyles have been beneficial not just to ourselves, but to the world. I, for one, wasn't concerned about whether or not my lifestyle had meaning and had never sought to prove its worth. This author, however, was clearly very concerned about the merit of his choices and uses the first half of the book to demonstrate that the Urban Tribe lifestyle is both steeped in human sociology and a novel way to deal with the vagaries of singlehood in the early twenty-first century. Even this section, while peppered with statistics, consists mainly of anecdotal evidence. The second half of the book descends into personal narrative. Although I did find it quite amusing, Ethan's exploration of male/female relationships as they pertained mostly to himself and his friends did not as I saw it further the message of the earlier part of the book. I laughed as Ethan attempted to navigate various pop-psychology theories about mating, particularly when he tried to convince his friends that evolutionary psychology should dictate the rules of the game. Then there is his analysis of the latest dating advice books, such as The Rules. I hadn't realized that anyone had taken them seriously, but there was an astonishing amount of articles pressuring women to marry. It is all very entertaining. At the end, as Ethan describes his happy marriage and the transition from tribe-life to married-life, I felt dissatisfied. If this was to be a book about the Urban Tribe, it should not have become a book about marriage. If this was a book about marriage, why muddy it with the concept of Urban Tribes? In the beginning, he takes great care to describe how the "never-marrieds" of his generation are much more than single people, and how they are forging a new type of life for the coming century. However, his ending reveals that he too believes that marriage is the eventual goal for all people. I don't have a problem with marriage, but I think he lost his way on his own argument. In summary, this book contains a great introduction to the Urban Tribes concept, followed by a very funny personal narrative about dating, and ends with an analysis of marriage in our times. I cannot say it was a good book, but if I had read each of its parts individually, I would have said I enjoyed them all.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and contemporary
Review: Ethan Watters has written a book about an interesting topic that has just recently begun to draw national attention: those of the current generation who are in their late twenties to late thirties and have not yet married and started families. According to the author, many of these "yet to be married" have formed cohesive social groups which he calls "urban tribes." These tribes, formed on the basis of friendship and sometimes intimate relationships, seem to have taken the place of the traditional family. The first part of this book is generally introspective and autobiographical with Watters drawing on his own experiences in attempting to understand his own status as a "yet to be married" member of an urban tribe. The latter part of the book is more outer-directed and analytical, and Watters discusses some social theories and sociological data which may help to shed light on the development of this new type of community. There are a few initial problems with which the author wrestles early in the book. One is the difficulty with defining exactly what an urban tribe is and what differences and similarities may exist that characterize various tribes in varying settings. A second is the question of why so little attention has been paid to this phenomenon and why it has had so little public recognition. Finally, a question that I think is at the core of the book: Why have so many of these "yet to be married" opted to settle into urban tribes instead of forming a conventional family as previous generations have done? These are interesting questions and Watters approaches them in a number of ways at various stages of his very personal quest. Along the way the reader will be introduced to the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert, the American Association of Single People, the activity of "social networking," the problem of defining the word "single," an academic discipline called evolutionary psychology, information about mating behavior, and the concept of "social capital." The reader will also hear about the author's attempt to glean some insight from experts at a national convention of the American Psychological Association and the author's participation in a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Philadelphia to which, Watters pointedly notes, no Hispanics had been invited. One of my favorite segments, however, was the author's discussion of "gossip and grooming," a notion based on the work of biological anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who suggests an intriguing association between the use of language and the size of groups we humans choose to socialize in. Monkeys and other nonhuman primates spend a great deal of time in the practice of grooming one another. The time and effort involved in this grooming seems to have some effect on the size of the social group with which the individual animal associates. After all, there is only so much time a monkey has for this type of activity. Dunbar theorized that human beings had replaced grooming with talking, specifically gossiping, and that the size of a human social group might be limited by the number of people one could effectively gossip with. There's more to this matter, of course, and I have oversimplified my description of it, but the entire discussion of gossip and grooming is rather fascinating, as are the conclusions that Watters draws at the end regarding its usefulness in understanding the size of human groups. I suspect that this work will appeal more to those in their twenties and thirties than it will to people of my generation, the one which came of age in the 1950s and 60s. My peers and I were still attached to the notion of the traditional marriage and family fast-track which had been the heritage passed down to us by a previous period. Things have apparently changed since then and Watters, who is in his late thirties, sets out on a personal investigation to find out why his generation has deviated from what once was considered the "norm" -- finish your education, find a job, get married, and start your family, without much lag-time in between these stages. This is not to say that those of the generation prior to the one described by Watters have nothing to learn here. Undoubtedly they do. The fact that many of the senior members of contemporary society are critical of the current trend of young men and women waiting until much later to get married and have children shows, at least, that they are becoming cognizant of the phenomenon. To his credit, Watters does confront this criticism head on and he attempts to deflate it, explaining that things may not be as bad as some critics have suggested. This is not a book written from a sociologist's perspective. Watters is a journalist by profession and his writing is very personal throughout the book; he is actually involved much of the time in investigating his own life and the choices he's made. While clearly understanding the serious social impact of the topic he discusses, Watters still manages to write with a bit of wit and humor and a flair for mixing objective analysis with subjective synthesis, not an easy thing to do when dealing with any subject, especially with one as complex and illusive as social interactions. "Urban Tribes" is a good first-attempt at analyzing and understanding an interesting contemporary issue.
Rating: 
Summary: It's about time
Review: Finally someone sees something positive in our friendships. Watters has validated an important time in my life when I was focused on my friendships and not yet settling down in marriage. I have had several valuable years living in big cities with many wonderful friends who have been my family. This is an important book for our generation, especially young women, because it supports our time of growth and self-discovery after college. We are the first generation that has the opportunity to develop ourselves in careers, in friendships and in romantic relationships before we choose if we are going to get married and start having families of our own. I am giving this book as a present to my dear friends and my parents so they know how much this time in my life has meant to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to get through the first/second chapter
Review: I decided to review this book even though I haven't finished it. I don't need to finish this book to know that it's very shallow and does not offer complete insight in the so-called URBAN TRIBE. After the first chapter I regretted that I bought it. As I began reading the book, I got the strange feeling that somewhere I had already read this book or something similar to this book...little did I know. I'll come back to that later. Even though I knew nothing (or cared nothing) about the Burning Man event, I plowed through, hoping I would find something of interest. As a 34-year old black female, I had no interest in the Burning Man. I had actually hoped that the book would be more about ALL of us who have never been married, black, white, Hispanic or other. Turns out, the only folks who will be able to identify with this book are those of a particular subset of white culture. I thought this would be a book that EVERYONE could see themselves in. It's not. Please, if you're interested in understanding what the "Friends" and "Seinfield" folks do AFTER the shows are over, check this book out of your library. Don't spend money on it. As I was saying earlier, this book sounded familiar because one of the author's best friends is PO BRONSON, author of What Should I Do With My Life, or something like that. Yeah, I bought that book also, thinking I could identify and maybe I could find someone like me. I couldn't. It turns out that Mr. Watters and Mr. Bronson and 15 of their closest friends share a loft/workspace of some sort in San Francisco. They're all writers, artists and other creative types. It's obvious that they all rub off on each other because Mr. Watters' book sounds so much like Mr. Bronson's book. Different subject, but same group of people. Even the typeface looks the same. The review on the back of Mr. Watters' book includes a review from Mr. Bronson and I'm sure the rest of the reviews are from the other writers who live/work in that loft. Take a close look at the folks below who reviewed this book...they live in San Francisco (or somewhere on the West coast) and they each gave the book five stars. Why? Any of us could have written this book, it took no effort whatsoever to write about his friends and how they spend their spare time. As for Mr. Bronson's book...don't get me started on that one. I actually almost made it to the end...but with four chapters to go I couldn't take it any more. I'll save that for another review. At any rate, I'm not sure who this Urban Tribe book would be useful to except friends of Mr. Watters and Mr. Bronson and people just like them. There are hordes of people like them, therefore I'm sure this book will make lots of money, which is what it's all about anyway. And in the end the regular "never-marrieds" will still have lots of unanswered questions.
Rating:
Summary: kind of insulting
Review: I felt duped. This book is not about "urban tribes" so much as the author, a newly married father writing about his playboy days and the friends he used for emotional support. As a character, he seems superficially charming and not enough flawed. His attempts at self-deprecation amuse but are too shallow to fully engage. As a memoir, the book lacks honesty and universality. As social science, it lacks science. Too bad - the subject deserves some depth.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read BV (Book Value)
Review: Must Read BV (Book Value): 'Friends' in-depth in 256 pages (instead of 30 minutes every Thursday) Ok, so I have to admit it up front. I and my tribe are mentioned in the book a couple of times. In addition, I have given Ethan a lot of feedback for this book. I was first told about the book when a fellow tribe member brought the article that inspired the book to our tribe's attention on one of our email discussion lists. Mind you, we didn't call ourselves a "tribe" at the time, we were just a group of close knit friends who acted at times like a family. As such, I'm a bit biased. However, being a bit of an urban tribe subject matter expert, I think I bring a good deal to the table in reviewing this book. In the book, Watters goes to great pains to explore, compare, and contrast several different colors and shapes of urban tribes. He talks about the unifying factors as well as the factors that are as different as night and day. He then goes further, by researching major trends and theories in society that have created the conditions by which urban tribes have sprung up. Examples such as the marriage gap (the number of years between adult status at 18 and when the average person gets married), the purchasing power of those in the marriage gap, and general network theory attempt to justify the why's and how's of urban tribe existence. Along the way, the author keeps us chuckling in acknowledgement by sprinkling in humorous interactions he's had with his tribe and potential mates. One topic that I found missing from the book was the potential effect on the marriage delay and urban tribes caused by internet dating. It is also unclear what tribal life and the marriage delay will be in the next generation, say 30 years from now. I'm hoping Ethan will study this and write us another book then so we can understand our children better! This book is a MUST READ for anyone between the ages of 18-35 IMHO. You will learn more about the way you behave, as well as the way you could behave. Your parents will get something out of this book as well: You might just understand better the path your adult child is taking, and will probably agree with it once you understand it.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, to be young, gifted and blond
Review: Pop pop pop psychology and sociology.
Rating:
Summary: Do groups like Friends and Seinfeld actually exist?
Review: 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.
The above review first appeared on the reviewer's own site
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