Sociobiology and Conflict: Evolutionary perspectives on competition, cooperation, violence and warfare

336 Pages·1990·6.786 MB·English

by  Polemos Pantoon Pater (auth.), Johan M. G. van der Dennen, Vincent S. E. Falger (eds.)

SOCIOBIOLOGY AN D CON FLICT
SOCIOBIOLOGY AND CONFLICT
Evolutionary perspectives on competition,
cooperation, violence and warfare
Edited by
J. VAN DER DENNEN
Polemological Institute,
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
and
V. FALGER
Department of International Relations,
University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
S
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First edition 1990
© 1990 Chapman and Hall
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1990
Typeset in 10/12 pt Plantin Light by
Leaper and Gard Ltd, Bristol
Printed in Great Britain by
St Edmondsbury Press, Bury St Edmunds,
Suffolk
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7316-5 e-ISBN-I3: 978-94-009-1830-6
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-1830-6
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Contents
Contributors vii
Acknowledgements IX
1. Introduction 1
PART ONE
Conflict and Biology
2. Intergroup competition and conflict in animals and man
J.A.R.A.M. van Hoof! 23
3. Selfish cooperation in social roles
U. Motro and D. Cohen 55
4. The biological instability of social equilibria
P.P. van der Molen 63
PART TWO
Sociobiology and Enmity
5. The cerebral bridge from family to foe
L. Tiger 99
6. The evolutionary foundations of revolution
J. Lopreato and P. Green 107
7. Loyalty and aggression in human groups
Y. Peres and M. Hopp 123
8. Territoriality and threat perceptions in urban humans
M. Hopp and o.A.E. Rasa 131
PART THREE
'Primitive' Warfare
9. Origin and evolution of 'primitive' warfare
J.M. G. van der Dennen 149
10. The Inuit and the evolution oflimited group conflict
C. Irwin 189
11. Human nature and the function of war in social evolution
P. Meyer 227
12. War and peace in primitive human societies
U. Melotti 241
13. Primitive war and the Ethnological Inventory Project
].M. G. van der Dennen 247
PART FOUR
The Conflict about Sociobiology
14. The sociobiology of conflict and the conflict about sociobiology
U. Segerstnlle 273
Bibliography 285
Author index 325
Subject index 335
Contributors
Dan Cohen Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at
the Department of Botany, the Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, Israel
Johan M.G. van der Researcher at the Polemological Institute of the
Dennen State University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Vincent S.E. Falger Lecturer in International Relations at the Univer
sity of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Penny Anthon Green Teaches at the Department of Sociology at the
University of Texas at Austin
Michael Hopp Member of the Hebrew University School of
Nutrition and has a private applied social research
institute
Colin Irwin Held a Killam Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Dalhou
sie University at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada,
while preparing his contribution to this volume
Joseph Lopreato Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at
Austin and a former Chairperson of his Department
Umberto Melotti Professor of Political Sociology and Cultural
Anthropology at the universities of Rome and
Pavia, Italy
Peter Meyer Lecturer of Sociology at the Economics and
Social Sciences Department at the University of
Augsburg, FRG
Popko P. van der Molen Conducts research at the University of Groningen,
The Netherlands
Uzi Motro Senior Lecturer at the Department of Genetics and
the Department of Statistics of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Israel
Yochanan Peres Associate Professor of Sociology at Tel Aviv
University, Israel
Olwen Rasa Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour at the
University of Pretoria, South Africa
Ullica SegerstnUe Assistant Professor of Sociology at Illinois Institute
of Technology, Chicago
Lionel Tiger Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University in
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Acknowledgements
The Sociobiology ofC onflict was the topic of the ninth meeting of the European
Sociobiological Society, held on January 10 and 11, 1987. It was Michael
Hopp's initiative to organize this conference in Jerusalem, Israel, a symbolic
place in many respects. Thanks to the scientific and personal qualities of
Professor Amotz Zahavi, from Tel-Aviv University, many non-Israeli partici
pants were able to experience the naturalistic, geographical and political
history of the country in an impressive guided tour which influenced clearly
the presentations and discussion in the conference.
Without the hospitality and financial support of the Van Leer Jerusalem
Institute the meeting would not have been possible. The Institute's director,
Professor Yehuda Elkana, and Mrs Rivka Ra'am, member of the Executive
Board of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, in close cooperation with local
organizer Michael Hopp, contributed very much to the success of the meeting
itself. The Board of the European Sociobiological Society expresses its
gratitude for this vital support.
In the conference itself Vincent Falger, Lea Gavish, Johan Goudsblom,
Anne Rasa, Avi Shmida, Jan Wind and Amotz Zahavi presented papers next
to those elaborated and collected in this volume. ESS Board members Jan
Wind, Hans van der Dennen and Vincent Falger organized those aspects of
the conference not immediately connected with the meeting in Jerusalem.
Finally, the patience and trust of Tim Hardwick, former senior editor with
Chapman and Hall, and his successor Bob Carling, were indispensable for this
book to be published. It is fortunate that in human society cooperation is not
less essential than conflict. This volume combines both, not surprisingly.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
1.1 THE STUDY OF CONFLICT
Polemos Pantoon Pater
Heraclitus
Conflict on all levels of organic existence is pervasive, persistent, ubiquitous.
Conflict is the universal experience of all life forms. Organisms are bound in
multiple conflict-configurations and -coalitions, which have their own
dynamic and their own logic. This does not mean, however, that the more
paroxysmal forms of conflict behaviour, naked violence and destruction, are
also universal. Conflict and cooperation are always intertwined. Conflicts do,
however, have a propensity to gravitate towards violence.
There is, as Pettman (1975) pointed out, no accepted or agreed list of the
social units by which conflicts might be classified. To talk of conflict in intra
personal, inter-personal, familial, group, class, ethnic, religious, intra-state or
inter-state terms is to assume, perhaps erroneously, that 'each kind of social
unit, having its own range of size, structure, and institutions, will also have its
own modes of interaction and thus its own patterns of conflict with other
social units' (Fink, 1968) like and unlike itself. Such an assumption merits
scrutiny on its own, since, despite the plausibility of some sort of analytical
link between the parties to a conflict and the nature of the confrontation that
ensues, the link should be demonstrated and not allowed to stand by assertion
alone.
This volume is devoted to one type of analysis of conflict, the socio
biological one. In The Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism, a book closely related to
many of the ideas and some authors of this volume, sociobiology was defined as
'the branch of biology that concerns itself with the explanation of social
behaviour in all species, including our own. It is thus, essentially, evolutionary
biology, and relies on Darwinian, Mendelian and Hamiltonian ideas - concepts
such as natural selection, genetics, and, especially the individual's inclusive
fitness - for its underlying explanatory schema' (Reynolds, Falger and Vine,
1987). Inclusive fitness theory, first proposed by Hamilton in 1964 and
repeatedly referred to in this book, shows that genes will spread iftheir carriers
act to increase not only their own fitness or reproductive success but also that of
1
Introduction
other individuals carrying copies of the same genes. A person's inclusive
fitness is his or her personal fitness plus the increased fitness of relatives that
he or she has in some way caused by his or her actions.
It may sound very deterministic or even 'geneticistic' to try to explain
social phenomena on the basis of some supposed underlying biological
process, but that would be too restricted an interpretation of the effort to draw
attention to biology as one place to look. What is encouraging about a
recourse to biology is that there is a body of theory and a wealth of empirical
data relating to other species. This provides an excellent background against
which to compare and contrast human processes and situations, the main
focus of attention here. None of the authors in the present volume is
proposing to reduce the study of conflict to biology, to account for it simply as
any simple instinct. But all are alert to the existence of similar processes in
animals and are trying to use the theory of inclusive fitness to explain the
evolution of these processes.
However, a sociobiology of human behaviour would not be taken seriously
if it explains in terms of fitness something that can be better explained in
strictly cultural terms or in terms of the market. That is why sociobiology of
any human behaviour can and must seek links with social psychology, social
anthropology, sociology, economics, political science and even history.
Beyond that - and this is very important - it would be quite pretentious to
assert that sociobiology could solve all questions that have arisen since the
phenomena of conflict were studied in a systematic way. To know what these
questions are and why it makes sense to add a biological-evolutionary oriented
approach to the study of conflict and competition, it is worthwhile to draw
some broad historical lines. Therefore, this introduction aims literally at
introducing the reader to the traditional scientific discourse on conflict, which
usually means human conflict. Then a condensed overview on the (socio)biol
ogy of conflict and competition tries to make the non-specialist familiar with
the most relevant theoretical and conceptual problems in this field. Those
readers, however, who want to cut short and demand an immediate answer on
the question why a sociobiological perspective on conflict and competition is a
valuable contribution, should skip the next three main parts of this intro
duction and turn straight to its fifth part.
1.2 THE STUDY OF CONFLICT IN PERSPECTIVE
Conflict may be defined as: incompatibility of interests, goals, values, needs,
expectations, and/or social cosmologies (or ideologies). Ideological conflicts
especially have a tendency to become malicious (cf. Berger and Luckman,
1966). Webster's Dictionary defines conflict as 'Clash, competition or mutual
interference of opposing or incompatible forces or qualities (as ideas, interest,
wills)'. Coser (1956) defined social conflict as 'a struggle over values and claims
2