PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by:

On: 15 June 2011
Access details: Access Details: Free Access
Publisher Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-
41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Reviews in Anthropology
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713649311
Aggregation and aggression: The state of war in anthropological thought
Thomas S. Abler
a
a
Ethnohistorian in the Department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo,
Online publication date: 05 July 2010
To cite this Article Abler, Thomas S.(1991) 'Aggregation and aggression: The state of war in anthropological thought',
Reviews in Anthropology, 17: 1, 285 294
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00988157.1991.9977929
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00988157.1991.9977929
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Reviews in Anthropology, Vol. 17, pp. 285-294 1991 Gordon and Breach Science Publishers S.A.
Reprints available directly from the publisher Printed in the United States of America
Photocopying permitted by license only
Aggregation and Aggression: The State
of War in Anthropological Thought
Thomas S. Abler
Foster, Mary Lecron, and Robert A. Rubinstein, eds. Peace and War:
Cross-Cultural Perspectives. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction
Books, 1986. vii + 369 pp. including chapter references and index.
$29.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power: Volume I: A History of Power
from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986. v + 549 pp. including chapter bibliographies and index.
$59.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.
Shamgar-Handelman, Lea. Israeli War Widows: Beyond the Glory of Hero-
ism. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1986. vii + 219
pp. including index, appendices, chapter notes, and references. $29.95
cloth.
James Silverberg (p. 281 in the Foster and Rubinstein volume hereafter cited as
P&W) notes that "within and between human aggregates" there remains open the
possibility of coalition, coexistence, or combat. In the same work, Rumanian
political scientist and former diplomat Silviu Brucan argues that "the origin of war
must be sought in both basic types of human aggregationethnicity and class"
(P&W p. 249). Thus one can look for the causes of combat, the third of Silverberg's
triad, not in an innate tendency of humans to be aggressive but rather in our
tendency to aggregate into social units. Throughout the evolution of human society
there has been a steady tendency to aggregate into larger and larger groups. This
ultimately led to the creation of the state with its ability to maintain internal order
and peace. Also throughout the evolution of human society relations with neigh-
bors on occasion took the form of aggression. The aggregation of populations into
larger social units, such as the state and its various forms, has simply increased the
destructive power that the social unit can inflict upon a neighbor. While the three
books here under review are disparate, all deal with a central theme of warfare in
human society. It is also clear from reading these volumes that the understanding of
war by social scientists remains an area with room for growth.
THOMAS S. ABLER IS an ethnohistorian in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo. His paper,
"Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact not Fiction" appeared in E thnohistory. He organized a session on "Late Prehistoric
and Historic Warfare in Northeastern North America" for the 20th Annual Chacmool Conference (Conference
theme"Cultures in Conflict"), Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, November, 1987.
285
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
286 T. S. Abler
The Foster and Rubinstein volume consists of 27 papers plus introduction and
conclusion. Twenty-six scholars contributed, 21 of them being anthropologists, two
being political scientists, one an industrial engineer, one a psychiatrist, and another
a practicing psychiatrist affiliated with an anthropology department. Most hold
academic appointments within U.S. academic institutions, but other countries
represented include Romania, Belgium, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United Kingdom. The book grew out of a four-
day symposium at the 11th International Congress of the Anthropological and
Ethnological Sciences held in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1983.
Peace and War resembles three earlier volumes on war by anthropologists which
assemble papers and discussion delivered to academic conferences (Fried et al.
1968; Nettleship et al. 1975; Given and Nettleship 1976) which have been described
as "bewildering because of the unarticulated diversity of ideas presented" (Fer-
guson 1984a:2). Topics covered range from the motivation of warriors in specific
societies to the relations among the super powers. I suspect most other readers will
agree with me that the editors might have taken a firmer hand; some of the papers
included might have been more appropriately published elsewhere so that the
volume might have more unity. One can contrast this with the recently published
examination of war from a cultural materialist perspective (Ferguson 1984b) which,
because of a common theoretical perspective (and also a focus almost entirely upon
peoples traditionally examined by anthropologists), is much more a book rather
than a collection of essays as is the case in the volume under review. It would be
impossible to provide a critique of each paper in this volume. In this review I will
mention aspects of papers that particularly struck me, especially if those points
relate particularly to what I perceive as common elements with the other two works
here under review or if they relate to what I perceive as strengths and weaknesses of
the anthropology of war.
It is worthy of note that several authors in this volume point to the fact that peace
and war are not clear alternatives. Silverberg (P&W p. 281) points out "politics... is
simply war carried out by nonviolent means (to reverse von Clausewitz)." Frederick
Gamst in a well-written summary of war in the horn of Africa generalizes to note
that war and peace are in reality "polarities on a continuum." He argues that "an
irregular cycle exists in war and peace with transition phases, for example, peaceful
wartime (Sitzkreig) and hostile peace (Cold War)" {P&W p. 147). Similarly, Sam
Arkesian in an analysis of perceptions of U.S. military capability notes that there is
a "conflict spectrum" (P&W p. 211). Ronald Cohen in an analysis of the frequency of
war in industrial and non-industrial state systems mentions difficulties in using
battlefield deaths as an indicator that a war has taken place (P&W p. 260he cites
the University of Michigan Correlates of War Project which did not count conflict as
war unless 1000 died in battle). Gamst echoes this, asserting that "actual determina-
tion of the occurence of war must be done by arbitrary definition" (P&W p. 147).
It is asserted here that anthropologists have not given war the attention that is its
due, sentiments repeated by Foster and Rubinstein (P&W p. xii) and Rik Pinxten
(P&W p. 269). Paul Doughty finds in writings on war a "literature not impressive
when compared to other anthropological literature" (P&W p. 105). However, one
might question how familiar these authors are with the literature that does exist.
Foster and Rubinstein fail to cite the work of Turney-High (1971), Otterbein (1968,
1970,1973), Otterbein and Otterbein (1965), Vayda (1976), or Wolf (1973). Incomplete
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
Aggregation and Aggression 287
as it is, Divale's (1973) bibliography also deserves mention. Doughty does cite
Turney-High and Wolf's recent (1982) book on E uropean expansion but ignores the
other works just mentioned. Pinxten does cite two of Otterbein's works (1967; 1977
[=1973 mentioned above]), but not the obvious one (1970). Moreover, Feest would
probably agree that his delightful study of artistic aspects of weaponry (1980,
which he with some wit entitled The Art of War) does not constitute "one of the most
thorough studies in the anthropology of war" as Pinxten describes it (P&W p. 269).
Despite the assertions by Foster and Rubinstein, by Doughty, and by Pinxten, I
would argue there is a solid basis of scholarship in the anthropology of war, small
but very solid. A failure to build on that foundation considerably weakens aspects
of several of the papers found in Peace and War.
In his paper, Walter Goldschmidt makes the rather puzzling (to me, anyway)
comment that anthropologists "have for good intellectual and moral reasons looked
away from this aspect [warfare] of tribal life" (P&W p. 9). Foster seems to consider
the idea "repugnant" that "warfare has often been a successful coping device"
(P&W p. 354). It is perhaps a problem not only that many anthropologists ignore
war as a topic to investigate in their field research but also that they ignore the
literature on war that does exist within the discipline.
Some of the papers concentrate on the motivations of the individual who goes to
war. Goldschmidt concentrates upon this issue. M. Margaret Clark in a provocative
paper focuses upon risk-seeking behavior. Carol Greenhouse makes the observa-
tion that we "tend not to question the 'primitive' soldier's enthusiasm for the fight"
(P&W p. 52). It is a Belgian psychiatrist who gets cart and horse in the right order,
however. Barnard Huyghe brilliantly reanalyzes Herdt's (1981) data on the Sambia
of New Guinea. Huyghe points out that the "argument that war creates a need for
certain types of men and women has it backwards, for groups of men are culturally
conditioned to choose to become and to breed warriors, and once war begins, a
vicious circle with continued fighting and intensification of aggression is estab-
lished" (P&W p. 45).
I do strongly feel that a mistake in several of these papers is the assumption that if
we know why individuals go to war we will know why states (and non-state
societies) fight each other. It is in fact an important question as to how a society can
socialize a population so that individuals willingly put themselves at great risk
(although Clark's paper mentioned above suggests that such behavior is perhaps
not as aberrant as I, a "devout coward," would intuitively believe it to be). The
contentious issue of the cause of war has been subject to great and heated debate
(see Newcombl950,1969; Hallpike 1973; Koch, 1974; Divale and Harris 1976; Vayda
1961,1976, 1979; and the papers in Ferguson 1984b, especially Ferguson's [1984a]
superb review of the literature of war in the introduction to that volume). I find
myself in agreement with Jill Furst that "there is a need to separate quite firmly the
practical reasons for a war from its rhetoric" (P&W p. 103). I also am in agreement
with her that "identification with the land, and ownership of it [I would say
resources rather than land], often lie at the root of conflict" (P&W p. 147). Gamst
concurs. "Warfare. . . is a social institution ordinarily resulting from economic and
political causes, often for the control of resources" (P&W p. 147). Unfortunately the
other authors of papers in this volume for the most part ignore this central issue in
matters of peace and war.
It is certainly true, as Peter Worsley points out, that "warfare is . . . not a
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
288 T. S. Abler
phenomenon which emerges with the state, and older anthropological and popular
notions that societies like the Eskimo were free from murder and other kinds of
physical violence can safely be dismissed as pastoral myth" (P&W p. 299). However,
it clearly is also true that, as Ronald Cohen has argued earlier, "states make war and
wars make states" (Cohen 1984). Several papers consider war relative to the evolu-
tion of culture, the development of states, and the state system as it exists in the
world today. Worsley's paper is in fact one of these in which he compares contem-
porary conflict between states to the acephalous political fields which political
anthropologists have been analyzing for decades. Worsley also refreshingly rejects
"the traditional binary opposition between American 'cultural' anthropology and
British 'structural' or social anthropology" (P&W p. 293). He makes a very cogent
point about the common culture of warring groups when he points to the values and
norms that are shared upon the battlefield (the "rules" of war). Gamst points out
that "the state exists by and for its monopoly on violence and force" and that
"periodic open warfare is a hallmark of civilization." Indeed, he suggests that "a
state is a war waiting to happen" (P&W p. 148). Similarly, Cohen argues that "the
early state was a war machine" (P&W p. 264) but he also sees the frequency of wars
as a product of the number of neighbors a state has, that is the number of states in
the state system.
I will return to Peace and War below, but it is now appropriate to take up the second
of the books under review, because it picks up the theme of the relationship between
the state, conflict, and power. Michael Mann's lengthy volume is but the first of a
proposed three-volume work to "provide a history and theory of power relations in
human societies" (p. 1). This might to some be an awesome task, but Mann clearly
feels himself up to it. The project grew out of a paper he wrote "which purported
not only to refute Karl Marx and reorganize Max Weber but also to offer the outlines
of a better general theory of social stratification and social change" (p. vii). Mann
certainly is not inhibited by self-doubt. Some might find such honest arrogance
disturbing; I found it refreshing. The enthusiasm he has for his own ideas is
catching.
Mann considers himself a comparative sociologist but recognizes that in his
three volumes he will be writing a history of all human societies as well as writing a
history of power in society. There is much in this volume which anthropologists will
find of interest, and Mann draws heavily upon anthropologists for some of his
chapters. Indeed, he pays tribute to "the creative fusion of American social science
in archaeology and anthropology" (p. 121). In this review I will mention a few points
which Mann has, in my opinion, misinterpreted contemporary anthropological
thought, and doubtless other readers will find others. I do think, however, most
readers will be impressed by Mann's breadth and depth of scholarship as demon-
strated in this book.
Mann suggests that readers might wish to skip his initial theoretical chapter and
instead to begin with his substantive chapters and to return to the theory only if
one can not follow his argument. To do this would be a mistake for there is some
food for thought for political anthropologists in the initial chapter.
Mann recognizes "four sources of social power." These four are ideological,
economic, military, and political. He characterizes these as both "overlapping
networks of social interaction" and "institutional means of attaining human goals"
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
Aggregation and Aggression 289
(p. 2). This approach proves to be a powerful tool for analyzing change and
development in the distribution of power in social fields. His framework of analysis
brings great clarity to his analysis of specific historical processes.
There are flaws in Mann's presentation which anthropologists will find aggravat-
ing. First, as he puts forth in his second chapter, he has difficulty conceiving of
power without the state. One might wonder if political anthropology, as born in
Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940), had never given its first natal cry, let alone grown
to maturity. Second, he dismisses evolution at the point that states come into being,
since here there are so few cases that one has simply history rather than general
evolution. However, when he goes on to consider the emergence of civilization, he
argues that the six or so cases we have are in fact "patterned" (p. 73). Such patterning
would not, to my mind, support Mann's assertion that social and cultural evolution
"ended" with the advent of agricultural production. Third, he takes a very old
fashioned, Eurocentric (indeed Anglocentric) view of history. He is admittedly
disarmingly cavalier and open in this. I really question that the "cutting edge" of
power, to use his phrase, made a steady progression in time migrating to its
inevitable (and rightful?) home in London. I fail to find his dismissal of China as a
world power prior to the expansion of Europe as convincing of anything other than
ethnocentrism. I must say, however, that he is aware of the tenuous nature of his
position and that he presents arguments to defend himself. I feel his arguments are
worth reading, even if the reader might in the end be unconvinced. One could also
point to some minor points, such as his claim that "most gatherer-hunters do not
possess fixed territories" (p. 42).
Other aspects of his argument I find attractive. I would disagree with both
assertions in the title of his second chapter"the end of general social evolution:
how prehistoric peoples evaded power"but elements of the presentation provide
a realistic view on non-state socio-political organization. I have always been trou-
bled with the chiefdom (Service 1962,1971,1975). I think Mann is right in consider-
ing this usually as only a temporary phase in a cycle that returns to become a
fundamentally egalitarian social system. People put up with chiefs if they have to,
but when normalcy returns, the egalitarian ethos returns. Leach's (1954) observa-
tions among the Kachin of Highland Burma are representative of a general process.
To quote Mann: "Most of prehistory of society saw no sustained movement toward
stratification of the state. Movement toward rank and political authority seems
endemic but reversible" (p. 67, emphasis added). He goes on to note that people
"have rarely given away powers to elites that they could not recover; and when they
have, they have had opportunity, or been pressured, to move away physically from
that sphere of power" (p. 67). He also feels that it is rare that the elites themselves are
"unitary." The overlapping and competing authorities among the eliteselders,
lineage heads, big men, and chiefsdilute powers of individual members of the
elite and leave openings to be exploited by the egalitarian mass.
Many anthropologists (including many archaeologists who have a great affection
for the chiefdom) would dispute this. I think that Mann has it right. The concept of
chiefdom has always appeared to me to be one of the more abused terms in the
anthropological literature. I think Mann has put chiefdoms in their proper place; it
should not be a mystery if a chiefdom disappears or collapsesit is in the nature of
the beast to do so.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
290 T. S. Abler
Those familiar with the literature on the emergence of civilization and the state in
Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica will find much that is familiar in Mann's chapter on
that topic. Mann himself does not "pretend to originality" (p. 76) for much of his
argument. However, certain aspects of Mann's terminology and metaphor will
constitute a contribution to that literature and will deserve citation in subsequent
publication on the topic. He argues: "Through it all was a drift toward greater fixity
of settlement and organization, the core of the evolutionary story. Fixed settlement
traps people into living with each other, cooperating, and devising more complex
forms of social organization. The metaphor of a caged society is appropriate" (p. 42,
emphasis in the original). The metaphor of the "caged society" is one I expect will
endure, or at least be subjected to test, in future literature on the emergence of
the state and civilization.
It is important to note that while Mann considers the military as only one of the
sources of social power, it is an extremely significant one, at least in his analysis of
the development of society from the origins of the state to the development of
E uropean agrarian states. Mann sees the importance of the military-industrial
complex to the state beginnings is their combined origin with "high-investment
defence . . . both in fortifications and in the dense, slow-moving phalanxes of
infantry and animal carts that constituted the early armies" (p. 100). Although he
does not use the phrase, he suggests the military as the world's oldest profession (p.
194). The domination of the state by the military continues, for even in the mid-
eighteenth century "the functions of the state appear overwhelmingly military and
overwhelmingly geopolitical rather than economic and domestic" (p. 511). After
1400, states in E urope grew dramatically, but almost all of this growth lay in military
(including naval) expenditure. Also, between 1560 and 1660 Europe experienced a
"Military Revolution" (pp. 453-458; see Roberts 1967) which had a direct impact
upon the state.
Mann is relatively sophisticated in his discussion of the development of military
power. He does confuse weapons systems with branches of the militaryinfantry,
cavalry, and artillerysuggesting that the first two belong to the last when using
bows and arrows. This is wrong. He fails to mention the distinction between missile
and shock weapons (a common distinction in the literature on war, see Turney-High
1971) which would have saved him from the error cited. The disciplinary require-
ments of shock weapons and the relationship to power and organization are in fact
implicit in the argument he presents. More important, however, is his emphasis
upon logistics, a topic the anthropologists of war would do well to examine. It is
seldom considered how a military force feeds itself when penetrating enemy
territory. (An exception is Harris's [1985:216-218] explanation of battlefield canni-
balism!)
Warfare and war-making institutions have been of great significance in the
development of early states and in the formation of Post-Renaissance states in
E urope, as Mann has clearly demonstrated. They continue to be of significance in
the modern state system. A feeling is often expressed that anthropologists should
be subjecting this to their own examination, but it is a task that anthropologists
often fail to do well. This is possibly because, as Foster points out, we are not
trained to do macrolevel research (P&W p. 354) or because we are not trained as
policy scientists (Bela Maday in P&W). Several papers in the Foster and Rubinstein
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
Aggregation and Aggression 291
volume make an attempt at looking at peace and war in the modern state system,
with Worsley's being the most successful general effort and with William Beeman's
analysis of the negotiations surrounding the Iranian-American hostage crisis of
1979-1981 (P&W p. 333-342) giving hope that anthropology can make a contribu-
tion to issues of conflict in the world. He outlines the basic beliefs of U.S. State
Department officials as to how the world functions and shows how these beliefs
prevented movement toward resolving the crisis. This particular piece would be
excellent reading for introductory anthropology students in American colleges and
universities, assuming that the U.S. government and media persist in their present
stance vis-a-vis the current regime in Iran.
Beeman's study is perhaps the sort that David Mandlebaum had in mind in his
call for anthropologists to study military institutions of modern states (P&W p.
316). Another paper in this volume, Alexander Randall's analysis of the culture of
United States military enclaves, is not as insightful. (Randall, to be fair, did not visit
U. S. military bases with the goal of studying their culture; he was there as a teacher.)
Nonetheless, his claim that "the official doctrine of the military is egalitarian" is
astounding! Both he and Goldschmidt do make the telling point of what small
portion of the contemporary military institution is in fact composed of combat
troops. Most contemporary soldiers are bureaucrats not warriors, a significant fact
in their motivations as they play their roles.
In the third book under review here, Lea Shamgar-Handelman examines aspects
of the life of widows following a war. Professor Shamgar-Handelman holds a post
in a sociology department, but this book is the culmination of work initiated by a
social worker at the behest of the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
In this study the widows are those of personnel who were killed in the Six-Day
War of 1967. The primary period of investigation covered the years from 1970 to 1972
(when a report was submitted to the Ministry of Defence) with research continuing
to 1975. The primary data are derived from interviews with 71 widows, a group with
whom Shamgar-Handelman obviously has great sympathy and whose rapport she
seems to have enjoyed.
This sample is large, relative to the population under investigation. For reasons
not made clear neither childless widows nor widows who were kibbutz members
were included in the population to be sampled. This left 234 women, so nearly a
third were interviewed. Care was taken to obtain a random sample of 25 per cent
from across Israel and in addition all the widows in one urban center were inter-
viewed. Here the interest was to see the degree to which widows interacted and
supported each other.
The complete sample is described in an appendix. Assuming what is written
there can be taken at face value, I feel there might be ethical questions in the data
revealed there. Each widow is identified by initials, which one would expect to be
false. However, each is described in great detail, with notation of such matters as
age, birthplace of the widow and her late husband, family composition, occupation
of the widow and her late husband, etc. If these data have been disguised, there is
little point in including them; if they are true, they could, one would expect, lead to
easy identification of the women involved. Particular problems arise when these
data are linked to materials in the text, such as details of family structure (including
strains with in-laws), financial troubles, and other matters. A social worker is
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
292 T. S. Abler
quoted (pp. 37-38) as defining No. 62 of the sample as having limited intelligence.
(Shamgar-Handelman does state her disagreement with this evaluation, but then
one wonders about the reaction of the social worker in reading this passage.)
The text documents the relation of the widows to the state, both as the state
defined their situation and its obligation to the widow and as the manner in which
as individuals the widows dealt with individual bureaucrats of the state. Shamgar-
Handelman goes on to document how widowhood led to changes in household
structure and to relationships with family and friends. Household structure was
quite variable because of changing circumstances (age, economic position) of
relatives who might form a joint household with a widow. I do find it strange that
Appendix II lists household apparently consisting of a widow and her children as a
"nuclear family household." I also find it strange that the issue of widow remarriage
is not taken up in the book. Also, no tables of statistical information are presented,
although data were gathered which could have been easily quantified and pre-
sented in that form. Instead the "documentation" is almost exclusively from direct
quotations of the widows themselves and descriptions of the case histories of some
of them.
These stories do have an impact that quantified data in a table would not have. As
wars go, the Six-Day War was not large. Shamgar-Handelman has provided us with
a clear image of the impact of even such a small war on the families of those killed
in battle.
Reading this book led me to reflect again on the nature of the anthropological
literature on war. It has been estimated that around 25 percent of the male popula-
tion of the Yanomamo (Chagnon 1968:140), the Dani (Heider 1979:106), and the Mae
Enga (Meggitt 1977:110) die in war. Ewers (1980:212) suggests one percent of the
Blackfoot men were killed in battle each year in bison hunting days.
1
Were these all
bachelors or did these men leave wives and children? If the latter how do these
societies deal with widowhood from a husband's death in battle? Meggitt provides
some data while Ewers sees war as a causal factor in polygyny.
It is more than a wife who suffers when a male dies at war. In English we have a
social category of widow (and indeed, we have the phrase "war widow"), but we
have no separate term for the parents or siblings of a young man slain in battle.
Graphic images of initial grief (Gardner 1963; Gardner and Heider 1969) are found
in our anthropological libraries, but I think the field is open for investigation of the
human cost of war upon those who survive it. There are some data available,
however. Meggitt separates bachelor deaths from those of married Mae Enga and
discusses widow remarriage, to point to one example. To point to others, Lowie
(1935) discussed the relationship of the Crow warrior to his kinsman, especially his
parents, and outlined the obligations if he died at war. Richter (1983) documents the
role of grief and mourning in Iroquois war.
As I indicated earlier in this essay, I strongly believe the anthropological literature
on warfare, when one concentrates on works of substance rather than polemic, is
higher than is usually conceded. We know a great deal about war in certain human
societies; we know enough about war to make reasonable generalizations about its
occurence cross-culturally and about its place in the evolution of society. There is,
however, much that has not been learned, and I feel it of great importance that
anthropological researchers bring the skills and theories that are their strength to
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
Aggregation and Aggression 293
the social science investigation of violent human conflicts. But we also need to know
what we do know about war. There is need for a synthesis of the anthropology of
war, placing in its social and cultural context. Anthropological knowledge of war is
a widely dispersed literature. It would be useful for someone to systematically
bring it together in a single study.
NOTE
1. The clustering of these figures about 25 percent is of interest, as Meggitt (1977:201) has noted. Actual
figures are (sources as cited in the text):
Yanomamo 23.9% (includes Warfare and Club Fights)
Dani 28.5%
Mae Enga 34.8% (correct to "the order of 25 percent")
Blackfoot 25% (Livingston's [1968:9] derivation from the data of Ewers)
REFERENCES
Chagnon, Napoleon
1968 Yanomamo Social Organization and Warfare. In War: The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and
Aggression. Morton Fried, Marvin Harris, and Robert Murphy, eds. pp. 109-159. Garden City,
New York: Natural History Press.
Cohen, Ronald
1984 Warfare and State Formation: Wars Make States and States Make Wars. InWarfare, Culture, and
Environment. R. Brian Ferguson, ed. pp. 392-358. Orlando: Academic Press.
Divale, William Tulio
1973 Warfare in Primitive Society: A Bilbiography. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.
Divale, William Tulio, and Marvin Harris
1976 Population, Warfare, and the Male Supremacist Complex. American Anthropologist 78:521-
538.
Ewers, John C.
1980 The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Feest, Christian
1980 The Art of War. London: Thames and Hudson.
Ferguson, R. Brian
1984a Introduction: Studying War. In Warfare, Culture, and Environment. R. Brian Ferguson, ed. pp.
1-81. Orlando: Academic Press.
Ferguson, R. Brian, ed.
1984b Warfare, Culture, and Environment. Orlando: Academic Press.
Fortes, Meyer, and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, eds.
1940 African Political Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fried, Morton, Marvin Harris, and Robert Murphy, eds.
1968 War: The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression. Garden City, New York: Natural
History Press.
Gardner, Robert G.
1963 Dead Birds. A film produced by the Film Study Center, Peabody Museum, Harvard University.
Gardner, Robert G., and Karl G. Heider
1969 Gardens of War: Live and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age.
Givens, R. Dale, and Martin A. Nettleship, eds.
1976 Discussions on War and Human Aggression. The Hague: Mouton.
Hallpike, C. R.
1973 Functionalist Interpretations of Primitive Warfare. Man N.S. 8:461-470.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1
294 T. S. Abler
Harris, Marvin
1985 Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Heider, Karl
1979 Grand Valley Dani: Peaceful Warriors. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Herdt, Gilbert
1981 Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity. New York:McGraw-Hill.
Koch, Klaus-Friedrich
1974 The Anthropology of Warfare. Addison-Wesley Module in Anthropology No. 52. Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.
Leach, E dmund R.
1954 Political Systems of Highland Burman. Boston: Beacon.
Livingstone, Frank B.
1968 The Effects of Warfare on the Biology of the Human Species. In War: The Anthropology of
Armed Conflict and Aggression. Morton Fried, Marvin Harris, and Robert Murphy, eds. pp.
3-15. Garden City, New York: Natural History Press.
Lowie, Robert H.
1935 The Crow Indians. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
Meggitt, Mervyn
1977 Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare among the Mae Enga Tribesmen of the New Guinea
Highlands. Palo Alto: Mayfield.
Nettleship, Martin A., R. Dale Givens, and Anderson Nettleship, eds.
1975 War, Its Causes and Correlates. The Hague: Mouton.
Newcomb, W. W.
1950 A Re-examination of the Causes of Plains Warfare. American Anthropologist 52:317-330.
1960 Toward an Understanding of War. In Essays in the Science of Culture. G. Dole and R. Carniero,
eds. pp. 317-336. New York: Thomas Crowell.
Otterbein, Keith F.
1967 The Evolution of Zulu Warfare. In Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict.
Paul Bohannan, ed. pp. 351-357. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press.
1968 Internal War: A Cross-Cultural Study. American Anthropologist 70:277-289.
1970 The Evolution of War: A Cross-Cultural Study. New Haven: HRAF Press.
1973 The Anthropology of War. In Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology. J. Honigmann,
ed. pp. 923-958. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Otterbein, Keith F., and Charlotte S. Otterbein
1965 An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth: A Cross-Cultural Study of Feuding. American
Anthropologist 67:1470-1482.
Richter, Daniel
1983 War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience. William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series 40:528-559.
Roberts, Michael
1967 Essays in Swedish History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Service, Elman R.
1962 Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective. New York: Random House.
Service, Elman R.
1971 Profiles in Ethnology. Revised Edition. New York: Harper and Row.
1975 Origins of the State and Civilization. New York: Norton.
Turney-High, Harry Holbert
1971 Primitive War: Its Practice and Concepts. Second Edition. Columbia, South Carolina: Univer-
sity of South Carolina Press.
Vayda, Andrew P.
1961 Expansion and Warfare among Swidden Agriculturalists. American Anthropologist 63:346-
358.
1976 War in Ecological Perspective: Persistence, Change, and Adaptive Process in Three Oceanian
Societies. New York: Plenum.
1979 War and Coping. Reviews in Anthropology 6:191-198.
Wolf, Eric R.
1973 Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. London: Faber and Faber.
1982 E urope and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

A
t
:

1
1
:
2
7

1
5

J
u
n
e

2
0
1
1