Peace and War

Cross-cultural Perspectives

Mary LeCron Foster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138529656
• eBook ISBN: 9781000678543
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Relazioni internazionali

Is war necessary? In Peace and War prominent anthropologists and other social scientists explore the cultural and social factors leading to war. They analyze the covert causes of war from a cross-cultural perspective: ideologies that dispose people to war; underlying patterns of social relationships that help institutionalize war; and the cultural systems of military establishments. Overt causes of war—environmental factors like the control of scarce resources, advantageous territories, and technologies, or promoting the welfare of people "like" oneself—are also considered.

The authors examine anthropologists' role in policy formation—how their theories on the nature of culture and society help those who deal with global problems on a day-to-day basis. They argue that both covert and overt mechanisms are pushing the world closer to a devastating war and offer strategies to weaken the effects of these mechanisms. This anthropological and historical analysis of the causes of war is a valuable resource for those studying war and those trying to understand the place of social science in framing pacific options.

PART I
THE INDIVIDUAL, COMMUNITY, AND CONFLICT

1
Personal Motivation and Institutionalized Conflict

Walter Goldschmidt

If anthropology is to contribute to the understanding of warfare, it must adopt a more dynamic approach. In particular, it must take cognizance of personal motivation and examine the interplay between individual interests and the social order (see also Huyghe, this volume). We have by now become well enough aware that individuals are shaped by their culture and live their lives in the context of a social system, but in learning this lesson, we have failed to examine the way tradition and structure are themselves shaped by human interests. To the social anthropologist, the individual is lost in structure, emerging, where he must, merely as a social role; to the cultural anthropologist the individual is baked in a “cake of custom,” following the dictates of established and sacred tradition; to the psychological anthropologist he or she is stamped in the mold of traditional upbringing. Such treatment of the individual runs counter to our common sense notions about human behavior, to our perception of ourselves as actors in the human scene and, I think, to ethnographic realities as well.

In this essay I propose the concept of the human career as the focal element in the dynamic relationship between individual and community. By career I mean the trajectory of the individual life as it operates in pursuit of satisfaction. In order to understand what this means, it will be necessary to give the briefest possible summary of a theoretical treatise I am currently working on, a manuscript that I have been calling Dynamic Anthropology or, alternately, Purpose and Progress in Social Life (Gold-schmidt, 1982). In it I argue that human motivation for self-gratification is the prime mover in the formulation of social structure. This self-gratification is not hedonism, however, for it is concerned not only with physical needs and desires or with what are often identified as social needs, but more importantly with the gratification of what I call the symbolic self.

The character of the human career, as with virtually all things human beings do, is set by the cultural definition of the situation, and basic career activities relate to the needs for social maintenance. We must, however, emphasize the symbolic aspect of career activities. The transition into humanity was accomplished by the formulation of a symbolic world, a superimposed system of understandings, of meanings and of sentiments that were shared by a population by virtue of systematic communication. Ever since, humans have lived in a symbolic as well as a real world. Language structures the cognitive elements of the symbolic world; ritual the emotional ones. There are three things that must be said about this symbolic world: first, it is a structured system that defines the whole relevant universe, second, each individual is a part of that systematic universe (and to him or herself, the most important part), and third, this symbolic world does not replace the world of physical reality, which remains with all its force and effect on human life, even though that physical world is interpreted and understood in terms of the symbolic world.

It is also necessary to appreciate the role of values, for everything in this world of understanding is given emotional valence. The world is not merely a cognitive system, it is also a system of sentiments. It is for the communication and coordination of sentiment that ritual and the arts were created, just as language communicates cognitive structure. (There has been debate over whether Neanderthal people had the power of speech, but there is no doubt that they had ritual.) When we stop to realize that the understandings and sentiments that constitute the symbolic world are acquired by each individual in the process of maturation, with all the attendant pains and pleasures, satisfactions and disappointments that such learning engenders, we should have no difficulty understanding the universality of values.

The most important thing each person learns in this process is what he himself or she herself is. This symbolic self, like everything else in the symbolic world derives from consensus. But far more than with other things, it is excruciatingly important. It is, of course, also emotionally laden. The process of self definition is never completed; it is in a lifelong process of reinterpretation.

I use the word “career” because I think its connotation most accurately reflects my meaning. In particular, I consider as central to the pursuit of career the kinds of work in which individuals engage. In tribal societies these tend to be standardized for each sex, though often with variants or secondary elements. But career is not the work itself, but rather performance, and it is not limited to the work activity, but involves all the other activities that go into the formation of what we may call reputation, including such matters as sexual prowess, fecundity, style, and the like. There is another attribute implicit in the concept: namely, that career performance varies; it is an element in social differentiation, and it is this potential for variance that makes it so important to the individual.

Social Gratification and Careers

It need not be said to a community of anthropologists that symbolic worlds differ from one place to another, and that it follows from this that what gives self-gratification and a positive valence to the self will also vary. A society that is successfully coping with its environment transforms the work necessary to daily life into ego-gratifying behavior. In shorthand terms, career performance is ecologically relevant. Let me make this point by brief reference to some of the anthropological classics.

• The immolation of the self into the clan and community of the Pueblo Indians, best caught in the Hopi phrase, “The Hopi way,” and its relevance to enforced close collaboration that this environment demands (Thompson and Joseph, 1944).
• Trobriand garden magic (and hence personal power) evidenced by the public display of yam piles as an inspiration to horticultural production (Malinowski, 1935).
• Hunting ability, with its combination of physical skill, energy, and knowledge, among the Mbuti (Turnbull, 1965), the Andamanese (Radcliffe-Brown, 1933), and indeed I suspect everywhere hunting peoples are found.
• The close collaboration established among herdsmen in East Africa through their initiation into age sets so that they can collectively protect the herds against raids and successfully rob the kraals of others (e.g. Peristiany, 1939).

Here I must pause, for I have failed to make another point. The prosecution of career involves, in varying degrees and in diverse ways, collaboration with others. In one sense, ego gratification may be viewed as a lonely pursuit, for few others besides the self care about that self, but in another and more important way it involves structured relations with others—units of essential social collaboration. Indeed, it is this need for collaboration that, in my view, produces social structure.

• The inculcation of the young male Sioux into aggressive exploits and personal independence (Erikson, 1963), which are later reinforced by the initiatory experience in the vision quest, with its acquisition of power through personal deprivation and physical hardship, which together shape the buffalo hunter cum warrior necessary to the fluid territoriality of the American Plains.

The Military Career in Tribal Societies

Finally, we come to the consideration of militarism in relation to career. From the standpoint of the individual, career relates to the activities that give personal satisfaction, but from the standpoint of society, career performance is the engagement in tasks necessary for the maintenance of the community. One such task may be the service of protection against the outside or the exploitation of neighboring peoples through military aggression (or, perhaps more usually, both). In small-scale societies, the military role is often a universal aspect of male careers; in complex societies it may be regarded as a special cadre. Between these extremes are situations as described for the Iroquois, where warfare was a kind of freebooting activity engaged in by self-selected men interested in its rewards, yet nevertheless also in the service of the League’s interest (Morgan, 1954:68).

The career aspects of military activity are exemplified by the following classic cases. Robert Lowie (1935:215) sums it up for the Crow in a paragraph:

Social standing and chieftainship, we have seen, were dependent on military prowess; and that was the only road to distinction. Value was set on other qualities, such as liberality, aptness at story-telling, success as a doctor. But the property a man distributed was largely the booty he had gained in raids, and any accomplishments, prized as they might be, were merely decorative frills, not substitutes for the substance of a reputation, a man’s record as a warrior. I know of at least one Crow of the old school whose intelligence would have made him a shining light wherever store was set by sheer capacity of the legal type, but who enjoyed no prestige whatsoever among his people [because] he had gained no honors in war and had tried to doctor this deficiency when publicly reciting his achievements. War was not the concern of a class nor even of the male sex, but all of the whole population, from cradle to grave.

And Grinnell (1923:7) for the Cheyenne does the same:

From their earliest days boys were taught to long for the approbation of their elders, and this approbation was most readily to be earned by success in war. The applause of their public was the highest reward they knew.

Among East African pastoralists, the military career is closely associated with the economics of cattle production. For example P. T. W. Baxter (1977:77–78), writing of the Boran, says:

To be a stock herder and to be a warrior then are not separable occupations, because being the former involves being the latter. A herder must not only guide the stock in his charge to good and safe pastures but he must also protect them from predators and raiders …

A herder’s life is on the job training to be a warrior; in its daily course it provides many of the features that modern armies go to great expense to simulate for infantry or cavalry training. For a man whose life follows an ordinary course, to be a warrior is simply a routine feature of late youth and early manhood, it is not a specialized occupation simply because it is one which every male follows for the specially marked period of his life when he is an active herder. During warriorhood, features of the male role, such as valour and aggressive virility, are accentuated and others, such as oratorical skills, wisdom, and gentleness are subdued because they are appropriate to elderhood. The rigorous life that herders are forced to lead, particularly in the distant camps with the dry stock, is the ideal training ground for war in that it develops stamina, self-reliance, self-knowledge, and bush skills such as an eye for ground and for cover. The shared tasks, hardships and dangers of camp life generate intense spirits of mutual obligation, loyalty and trust. Herders in the camps share windbreaks, sleeping-hides and rations. They herd together and mess together; the milk and blood is shared equally among camp members on the basis of equal work deserving equal shares.

The rewards of warriorhood in terms of social gratification are equally explicit. Baxter (1977:82–83), again:

During warriorhood a man should acquire at least one trophy and, in the past, a man who did not do so was not welcomed as a son-in-law. A man who did kill was given gifts of stock, sarma, lavished with sexual favors by the wives of elders (whose attitude to him was therefore ambiguous), and allowed to wear ear rings, special necklaces and heavy iron armlets arbora and, crucially, a successful warrior was allowed to grow a male hair tuft, guutu diira, from the top of his head. This tuft was quite explicitly associated symbolically with an erect penis.… Successful warriors were acclaimed wherever they went and their exploits everywhere praised. A young man who had earned the right to “make his head” by erecting a guutu was everyone’s darling.… Men who had killed were honored at the ceremonies which marked the entry of their generation-set into political adulthood, at their retirement into ritual elderhood, and at their mortuary ceremonies. At each, their exploits were loudly proclaimed and honored. Military glory was never extinguished.

Gregory Bateson (1958:138–41) has similar comments regarding the Iatmul, though it is by no means clear that head-hunting has the same economic rationale.

In the business of head-hunting, the masculine ethos no doubt reached its most complex expression; and though at the present time the ethos of head-hunting cannot be satisfactorily observed, there is enough left of the old system to give the investigator some impression of what that system implied.

Two main motives informed this system, the personal pride of the individual and his pride and satisfaction in the prosperity and strength of his community. These two motives were closely tangled together. On the purely personal side, the successful homicide was entitled to special ornaments and paints and to the wearing of a flying fox skin as a pubic apron; while the apron of stripped Dracaena leaves was the reproach of the man who had never killed. The homicide was the hero of the most elaborate naven and the proud giver of feasts.… Lastly, he was admired by the women; and even today the women occasionally make scornful remarks about the calico loincloths worn by the young men who should strictly still be wearing Dracaena aprons like those which were given them when they were little boys being initiated.

Running through this plexus of cultural details we can clearly see the general position of head-hunting as the main source of the pride of the village, while associated with the pride is prosperity, fertility and the male sexual act; while on the opposite side of the picture but still a part of the same ethos, we can see the association of shame, mourning, and ngglambe.

Closely linked with these emphases upon pride and shame is the development of the spectacular side of head-hunting. Every victory was celebrated by great dances and ceremonial which involved the whole village. The killer was the hero of these and he was at the same time the host at the feasts which accompany them. Even the vanquished assented to the beauty of the dances….

Militarism and Motivation

But you will say, we have known all this. Yet militarism is not a universal cultural element. You will not find it among the Mbuti or the San. You will not find it in the peasant villages of Taitou nor indeed, in peasant villages generally, for central governments that are strong enough to do so, stamp out any incipient military career unless they can be coopted to the purposes of nationalism.

We are not concerned, however, with why some tribal peoples engage in militaristic pursuits and others do not. That important issue is far too complex and the factors too variant to be dealt with here. What we are interested in, however, is the relationship between the institution of war and the motivations of the citizenry. The essential point is that this constitutes a feedback loop, the old term for which is vicious cycle. If a society is to have the advantages of having military personnel, the motivations for warriorhood must be established. It is a matter of great s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I The Individual, Community, and Conflict
• Part II The Dynamics of Conflict
• Part III Social Scientists React
• Part IV Conflict and the Nation-State
• Part V Anthropology and Policy
• Conclusion: Toward an Anthropology of Peace and War
• About the Contributors
• Index