The New Tribalism

Author: Kate Fox

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11th February 2026

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Description

You are now entering the Palaeodigital...

Umbilically attached to our smartphones and tablets, 'oversharing' and posting selfies on social media, constantly checking our 'feeds' for 'likes' and 'retweets'... Most pundits see all this as new and unprecedented, even unnatural.

But anthropologist Kate Fox sees an emerging revival of very ancient patterns. In her new book, she argues that we are using Digital Age technology to recreate Stone Age social dynamics. Smartphones, social media, cyber-dating, gaming, etc. are all part of our latest unconscious attempt to reproduce the social essence of the environment in which we evolved, the Palaeolithic.

We are not suddenly becoming addicted to gadgets and screens. The internet is not turning us into shallow, selfish narcissists. What we are doing is a form of 'counteractive niche construction' - using technology to try to recreate our evolutionary comfort zone, the kind of social world our brains are wired for. This is nothing new; we've been trying for 10,000 years, since the Neolithic, with partial and varied success. This time, we have better tools. Could this be the dawn of the Palaeodigital?

About the Author

Kate Fox, a social anthropologist, is Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford and a Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Research. She is also a bestselling author of popular social science.Her work involves monitoring and assessing global sociocultural trends, and has included research, publications, lectures, consultancy work and broadcasts on many aspects of human behaviour, including: drinking, risk-taking, beauty and body image, flirting and courtship, crying, patriotism, pub behaviour and pub culture, horseracing, social class, mobile phones, the internet, online social media, menopausal women, cars and driving, gossip, taboos, violence and disorder, attitudes to work, coming of age in the 21st century, motherhood, shopping, individualism, the effects of health scares, the psychology of smell and the meaning of chips.Her most recent book is the major popular bestseller Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. This book has sold over half a million copies, and is translated into many languages including Chinese, Russian, Polish, Korean and Thai.Kate's other books include The Racing Tribe: Watching the Horsewatchers and Drinking and Public Disorder (co-author with Dr Peter Marsh).Kate is regularly invited to speak at the major literary festivals, as well as guest lectures and seminars at universities, institutes, embassies, trade and professional conferences, etc. in the UK and overseas. She gave the Christmas Lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, and won a debate against Boris Johnson for Intelligence Squared, among other high-profile engagements. She is frequently quoted in the Press and interviewed on radio and television. Kate has also been a regular columnist for Psychologies magazine.Kate is married to the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, CBE.