Some scholars have suggested that the problem with Somalia lies not in the lack of a state, but in our insistence on seeing Somalia through the lens of the nation-state (Turnbull, MERIP 256). In Yemen some have argued similarly that tribes and state, at least as they are commonly understood, should be dropped from our discussion of Yemen. These scholars argue that the concepts of tribe and state hinder any clear understanding of events in Yemen, or worse, that they conjure what does not exist and actually confound matters. As a way of contributing to this debate about the utility of the concept of tribe and state in Yemen, this presentation will survey some of the recent literature, particularly from Yemeni scholars, on tribe and the state in Yemen. The paper will address in particular ideas about the changes that are occurring in the social organization of tribes and rural regions of Yemen, the complicated and oft misunderstood interrelationships between state power and tribal power, and the assumptions about the nature of a modern state that underlie a lot of the writing on Yemeni politics. A central question will be the oft repeated assertion in Yemen of the weakness of national allegiances relative to tribal or regional loyalties and what this means in terms of Yemen politics. The paper will also try to extract and separate political stances from academic ideas about tribe and state. Notions of tribe and state play important political roles in Yemen and in policy circles of foreign capitals. A lot of the writing on tribe and state in Yemen is imbued with normative assumptions that reflect political priorities rather than a close understanding of the dynamics of Yemen politics and society. This presentation will attempt to highlight these normative agendas in the literature.