Firstly, I am not using the word 'tribalism' in a pejorative sense. I mean it literally, where society is organized by a network of tribes, clans, families, etc.
I am assuming (correct me if I am wrong), that prior to the nationalism and nations of Europe, European peoples were organized into similar social structures; one of essentially tribes, and clans within tribes, etc, but these tribes and clans eventually broke down to the point where only "nuclear families" and the individuals within them came to matter within an overall 'nation'. (and today we basically have individual 'citizens' comprising of the nation)
What I am wondering, is why this failed to occur in the Middle East and its peoples. I know they do have countries and nationalities, but these countries are more of a surface political arrangement (compared to European nations), and just underneath it one still has tribal alliance, clans, families etc.
It is difficult to imagine one willing to die for his "nation" of the Syrians, or the Saudis, or the Jordanians and so on (while this willingness to die for the nation -even if most are complete strangers is self-evident among European nations -or at least has been historically). One will always stick with tribe, clan, family and ofc religious sect. In this sense countries/nations come and go, but tribe, clan and family remain. (while if a European nation was torn apart, unless it split into distinct new nations it would be hard to see what would be left of it)
Iran however is basically a Middle Eastern equivalent of a European 'nation' in the sense of social structure. -so there is one example of successful nationalism or "nationalization" in the Middle East.
So to sum up, what prevented the tribal social structures of the Middle East from breaking down and morphing into a more national structure? And what allowed this to happen in Europe?
Cheers.
While tribes did indeed exist in Europe, they were around hundreds of years before the early modern period when the seeds of nationalism were planted.
As for your second question, there is an edited volume about this topic!
Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East edited by Faleh, Abdul-Jabar and Hosham Dawod. The following answer is a simplified version of pieces of information found in the article found within named, "Sheikhs and Ideologues: Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Tribes under Patrimonial Totalitarianism in Iraq, 1968-1998."
I think one of the issues is that changing tribes into nations is a very difficult prospect. This article basically states that tribes were incorporated into the nation-state to create what the author terms a "multi-tribal state." The B'ath party can even be seen as the creation of a new tribe and is organized around figures similar to the Sheikhs. Indeed, the Sheikhs that were crucial to the unity of tribes in rural regions became enmeshed into the spatial layout of Iraqi cities.
I'm a medievalist and I'm unused to modern Middle Eastern history. If you message me I can send you a bibliography of the relationship between tribes and nationalism in the Middle East.
The short answer is that tribes were (rather unsuccessfully) incorporated into the state.
Well the of a nation-state only came into existence in Europe after the Treaty of Westphalia so it isn't all that old in Europe either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty