Anthropology (catch all)

[GRIM]

Hi all,
This looks like an interesting thread, so I signed up to add to it. I did my undergraduate work in anthropology and completed a year of doctoral work before my health shut me down. Violence and warfare are primary interests of mine, particularly the synthesis of biological/evolutionary approaches with realistic (not dogmatic and PC) cultural anthropology. I wrote a short paper on this if anyone is interested. Violence and warfare are as "natural" as any other human behavior and the tools of the anthropologist can be very effective in studying them if the individual's approach is not tainted by their "politics." Unfortunately, those who study these subjects looking for answers and not just PC ones become pariahs in the Ivory Tower very quickly, although there are some exceptions.

Here are some papers by peace researcher Johann van der Dennen, as well as his entire book the Origin of War: http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/dennen3.htm

[marct]

Hi GRIM,

Hi all,
This looks like an interesting thread, so I signed up to add to it. I did my undergraduate work in anthropology and completed a year of doctoral work before my health shut me down. Violence and warfare are primary interests of mine, particularly the synthesis of biological/evolutionary approaches with realistic (not dogmatic and PC) cultural anthropology. I wrote a short paper on this if anyone is interested. Violence and warfare are as "natural" as any other human behavior and the tools of the anthropologist can be very effective in studying them if the individual's approach is not tainted by their "politics." Unfortunately, those who study these subjects looking for answers and not just PC ones become pariahs in the Ivory Tower very quickly, although there are some exceptions.

Here are some papers by peace researcher Johann van der Dennen, as well as his entire book the Origin of War: http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/dennen3.htm

Thanks for the link! I'd definately be interested in reading your paper as well. BTW, Jerome Barkow was my Ph.D. external and I've used a fair bit of evolutionary psychology / sociobiology in my own work. Glad to have you on board.

Marc

[Stan]

Grim,
Welcome !

Like Spencer, he emphasized that warfare succeeds not so much through the genocidal elimination of rivals as by promoting superior organization and obedience to leadership: the most obedient and the tamest tribes are the strongest. "The compact [probably meaning the same as Spencer's 'cohesive'] tribes win, and the compact tribes are the tamest. Civilisation begins, because the beginning of civilisation is a military advantage" (p. 47). There was no doubt in his mind that the "strongest killed out the weakest as they could". Progress, habitually thought of as a normal fact in human society, is actually a rare occurrence among peoples. Of the existence of progress in the military art there can be no doubt, however, nor of its corollary that the most advanced will destroy the weaker, that the more compact will eliminate the scattered, and that the more civilized are the more compact (Hofstadter, 1955).

I would be sincerely interested in your views regarding the most recent Rwandan genocides (April to July 94). I watched it and see it today in my dreams (nightmares).

My previous post:

The first massacres in Rwanda took place in 1959. Thereafter, almost in a regular manner, killings of the Batutsi became a habit. In the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s massacres of Batutsi were common. Between April and July 1994, over 1 million Rwandese people, mainly Batutsi and some Bahutu opposition were killed by the genocidal regime. So many people were involved in the killings. Those who planned and organised the genocide include the late President, Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, top government officials, including members of the so-called Provisional Government, the presidential Guard, the National Gendarmerie, the Rwanda Government Forces (FAR), the MRND-CDR militia (Interahamwe), local officials, and many Bahutu in the general population.

This sounds like a poorly translated para, or a bad smoker's habit.

Marc, please also step in as you are most welcome.

Regards, Stan

[GRIM]

Hi GRIM,




Thanks for the link! I'd definately be interested in reading your paper as well. BTW, Jerome Barkow was my Ph.D. external and I've used a fair bit of evolutionary psychology / sociobiology in my own work. Glad to have you on board.

Marc

Thanks marct. There is really a wealth of information by Van der Dennen that would make for some very interesting discussion for those who are interested here. His letter ( http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/letter.htm ) is a fine example of the pariah status immediately granted those in this area of academia with interests in violence. While I respect the researchers he mentions, read quite a bit of their work at one point, and even contacted De Waal for advice concerning graduate work, I still am critical of the points where the more PC "side" of things seem to be talking past the issues.

[marct]

Hi GRIM,

In the past, everybody who has propagated the notion that health is something more than just the absence of disease has turned out to be a quack. I am reasonably sure that those scholars who now claim that peace is something more than the absence of war, let me call them the ‘peace and harmony mafia’ for short, will similarly turn out to be the intellectual equivalent of quacks.

Gods! I love it! I am definitely going to have to read more of Van der Dennen's work!

Thanks marct. There is really a wealth of information by Van der Dennen that would make for some very interesting discussion for those who are interested here. His letter ( http://rint.rechten.rug.nl/rth/dennen/letter.htm ) is a fine example of the pariah status immediately granted those in this area of academia with interests in violence. While I respect the researchers he mentions, read quite a bit of their work at one point, and even contacted De Waal for advice concerning graduate work, I still am critical of the points where the more PC "side" of things seem to be talking past the issues.

The radical PC side has, to my mind, conflated morality with ethics (i.e. confused immediate wish state proscriptions with the "operational rules of reality"). On a purely personal level, I dislike violence. That doesn't mean that I don't know how to defend myself should the situation arise. Maybe it's just a reflex habit inculcated in me by the Baden-Powell mythos of the Boy Scouts, but I do like to "be prepared" .

I have long held a suspicion that the desire to find a "peaceful way of life" amongst many intellectuals is a result of a radical agnosticism that inverts Christian beliefs and emotionally "requires" them to "find" a "heaven on Earth": a requirement to find the "Peaceful Savage" to warp Rousseau's phrase.

Marc

[selil]

On a purely personal level, I dislike violence. That doesn't mean that I don't know how to defend myself should the situation arise.

What is that quote.... "The true warrior shuns violence but is very good at it..." something like that.

[120mm]

What is that quote.... "The true warrior shuns violence but is very good at it..." something like that.

I have heard that, but due to some "verstehen" issues with the statement I've amended it:

"The true warrior is so attracted to intense, life or death violence, he doesn't want to be bothered by the piddly kind that fascinates others."

But then, aren't we all trying to describe the same elephant?