An Anthropology of War

Views from the Frontline

Alisse Waterston

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781845456221
• eBook ISBN: 9780857455222
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, power, lethal force, and injustice continue to explode violently into war, and the prospects for lasting peace look even bleaker. The horrors of modern warfare - the death, dehumanization, and destruction of social and material infrastructures - have done little to bring an end to armed conflict.

In this volume, leading chroniclers of war provide thoughtful and powerful essays that reflect on their ethnographic work at the frontlines. The contributors recount not only what they have seen and heard in war zones but also what is being read, studied, analyzed and remembered in such diverse locations as Colombia and Guatemala, Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti. In detailed reports from the field, they reflect on the important issue of "accountability" and offer explanations to discern causes, patterns, and practices of war. Through this unique lens, the contributors provide the insight and analysis needed for a deeper understanding of one of the greatest issues of our times.

Contributors:
Avram Bornstein, Paul E. Farmer, R. Brian Ferguson, Lesley Gill, Beatriz Manz, Carolyn Nordstrom, Stephen Reyna, Jose N. Vasquez

Chapter 1

TEN POINTS ON WAR

R. Brian Ferguson

Over the past 40 years, the anthropology of war has grown from a few scattered works to an enormous field with many areas of investigation and contention. While it used to be possible to read practically everything that came out on the subject, this is no longer the case, and the field is in danger of falling apart into several self-contained realms. I began studying war as a graduate student in 1974, and this chapter is a synthesis of my own subsequent work, boiled down to 10 major, interrelated points.¹ I will not discuss case examples from around the world, elaborate arguments, or provide citations here. To do that over so many topics would require a very lengthy chapter. My goal in this essay is to synthesize one coherent perspective out of many previous publications, in which details and documentation are provided.² The first two points are primarily refutations of currently popular ideas about the antiquity of war, but most points involve some contradiction of implicit assumptions on the subject. Going beyond refutations to new perspectives, the 10 points taken together argue for a different conceptualization of what war is about, pointing to a new understanding that has direct implications for how we explain the occurrence of wars. To highlight that relevance, each of the points will be applied to the current war in Iraq and related conflicts.

Point #1: Our Species Is Not Biologically Destined for War

For a very long time, there have been theories that war is the outgrowth of some predetermined aspect of the human brain/mind, that we make war because we are born to seek it out. Pre-eminent psychologist William McDougal said that fights arose out of an instinct for pugnacity. Sigmund Freud attributed collective destruction to an outward redirection of the inner death wish. Playwright Robert Ardrey argued that our inborn propensity to kill was what separated us from other apes, while primatologist Richard Wrangham claims that it is not our difference from but rather our similarity to chimpanzees that makes men incline toward war (Ferguson 1984a, 2000). Proponents of innatist theories of war often complain that their science is being opposed out of political correctness. But when specific assertions are compared to available evidence, they do very poorly.

The Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela are the favorite example of those favoring inborn predispositions to violence. Made famous as fierce warriors by American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, they have been used to bolster a wide range of hypotheses attributing human warfare to some inherent aspect of human nature, designed by evolution to maximize reproductive success. But all these claims are made with scant regard for empirical evidence. To demonstrate this, a range of innatist claims were considered against the Yanomami, using exclusively reports by Chagnon himself.

Comparing published claims to Chagnon's data, we find that the Yanomami do not begin wars to capture women. Only some wars are preceded by a conflict over women, and those conflicts are just one of many issues, with other factors being much more predictive of actual fighting. (In my own explanation [Ferguson 1995a], Yanomami wars are seen as the outgrowth of antagonisms related to unequal and exploitative access to Western trade goods, combined with several other destabilizing factors.) An examination of Chagnon's data invalidates his claim that becoming a killer is associated with higher lifetime reproductive success. Wars do not represent a reproductive strategy of young males, as they are initiated and fought primarily by middle-aged married men. A claim that Yanomami men who take wives kill their offspring from other men is without foundation. A claim that Yanomami wars parallel the pattern found between Gombe chimpanzees is contradicted by the fact that, contrary to chimpanzees, most Yanomami are village endogamous (marrying within the village) and that Yanomami raids regularly pose great dangers to raiders (rather than occurring only when they can act with impunity). Contrary to an assertion that Yanomami wars exemplify a human pattern of territorial conquest, Chagnon himself emphasizes they are not fought with territorial gain as an objective or consequence. A ‘Darwinian algorithm’, said to make war evolutionarily logical, is contradicted at each of its four points by Yanomami data. Some Yanomami conflicts are between groups that are more genetically related within than to their enemies, but in many others, blood kin opportunistically side against other blood kin. ‘Cultural pseudospeciation’ plays no role in any reports of Yanomami wars (Ferguson 2001).

In the past decade, biological explanations have turned away from specific, predictive theories to broad life science findings on aggression. Different neural structures, neurotransmitters, hormones, and genes have been implicated in different measures of aggression. Some studies stress biological factors associated with maleness. But no work has demonstrated that non-pathological humans have an inborn propensity to violence, and comparisons of males and females are uniformly complicated, qualified, and debatable. The growing appreciation that genetic expression occurs within a system of biological systems, all with environmental inputs, greatly complicates key issues. We are far from being able to clarify how and the extent to which inborn biological variables affect human or male aggressive behavior. But even if we could, it is not clear that doing so would tell us much about the essentially social process that is war. Maleness is one part of biology, biology is one part of aggressiveness, aggressiveness is one part of combat, and combat is one part of war. The explanatory potential of biology thus seems fundamentally limited (Ferguson 2006a).

Reflection on the war in Iraq highlights this limitation. In all the complicated political processes leading up to and opposing the invasion, just how does a supposed biological propensity for war contribute to our understanding? What would such a propensity explain better than its long-standing anthropological alternative—that people have the capacity to learn, even to enjoy, war and build it into their social lives and institutions, without any inborn inclination in that direction? It must be kept in mind that any innate tendencies would have to apply equally to everyone involved in the process, both those in favor and those against.

Point #2: War Is Not an Inescapable Part of Social Existence

If humans had an inborn predisposition for violent conflict, then they should have been war makers since, or even before, they became human. Proponents of biological theories regularly invoke a few archaeological studies, claiming that war appears throughout the archaeological record. But those studies are marked by three methodological flaws. First, they list cases where evidence of war is found and extrapolate conclusions to situations where war is not in evidence. Second, they confound the later archaeological record, where war often is ubiquitous, with the earlier archaeological record, where war seems rare or non-existent. Third, they make assumptions from historical situations or recent ethnography, where war is indisputably very common, and unjustifiably project those suppositions onto peoples of the distant past.

Empirical findings from earlier archaeological sequences reveal something quite different. War regularly leaves traces in recoverable remains. Skeletal and settlement materials can clearly show war, as can specialized weapons such as maces, although people can kill with ordinary tools. Artistic renditions of battle also disclose evidence of war, even though most extinct peoples did not leave recoverable art. True, evidence for war, even if it was practiced, could be absent in any particular case, for any number of reasons. But globally, with few exceptions, a clear pattern emerges: signs of war are absent in the earliest remains and then appear later and rarely go away. The standard objection, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’, would be valid if the earlier skeletal and settlement remains were so limited that they would not reliably reveal war. That is not the case. In many regions around the world—the Middle East, parts of Europe, the Yellow River Valley—there is good data for centuries, even millennia, with no indications of war. Then evidence of war appears without any qualitative jump in the archaeological data recovered. The situation is not unlike other recognized beginnings—such as plant or animal domestication—that are pinned on the earliest recovered evidence. As a global pattern, the evidence suggests a transition from societies that did not make war to ones that did.

Why did war develop, at different times, in many parts of the world? There appear to be six preconditions, themselves interrelated in various ways, which in combination made the inception and/or intensification of war more likely: (1) sedentary existence, often following agriculture (although war existed in some places before plant domestication); (2) increasing population density; (3) social hierarchy; (4) trade, especially of prestige goods; (5) bounded social groups; and (6) serious ecological reversals. The reason why war went from rare to commonplace around the world involves four long-term processes: (1) as those preconditions became more common, war began in more places; (2) war spread, often quite gradually, into surrounding areas; (3) the rise of ancient states projected militarism deep into their peripheries and along trade routes; and (4) Western expansion since the late fifteenth century often generated or intensified war in contact zones (Ferguson 2003a, 2006b).

One might say that the entire issue of biology makes little difference in conceptualizing war. Whether by culture or by genes, war has been programmed into us. Once initiated and built into cultural systems, war has rarely gone away in the past, so there is no reason to expect its demise in the future. This is a limited, and limiting, perspective. We tend to think in terms of the foreseeable future, the next few decades. But in all probability, humankind's future stretches on for countless millennia. Since Boas, and later Malinowski and Carneiro, anthropologists have called attention to the long-term consolidation of political units, where peace reigns within. There is good reason to believe that this trend can continue. Sixty years ago, who could have foreseen the current integration of Europe? In 1988, who foresaw the impending demilitarization of the communist-capitalist divide? On the other hand, who in 1988 foresaw the proliferation of new flags in front of the UN (Ferguson 1988a, 2003b)?

The foreseeable future of war looks pretty robust. The current war between elements of radical Islam and Western nations is not likely to end soon. Nor are the brutal civil wars that still rage through much of the underdeveloped world, although they clearly have been declining in number and casualties. New divisions may arise. Future military confrontations between China or Russia and the US seem like reasonable possibilities. But it is misguided to think of these as permanent conditions. Without doubt, new, unforeseen global communities will emerge over time. People pushing for peace can shape what is to become. The future is beyond our mortal ken, but it is not impervious to hope. Anthropology can effect a positive contribution by making it clear that there is no scientific basis for believing that a future without war is impossible.

Point #3: Understanding War Involves a Nested Hierarchy of Constraints

My approach to war is based on a modified version of cultural materialism. This involves two distinct but complementary research strategies, both founded on the principle that social life is essentially practical (Ferguson 1995b).

The first strategy divides socio-cultural phenomena into infrastructure, structure, and superstructure. Infrastructure includes basic population profiles, technology, labor techniques, and interaction with the natural environment. Structure comprises all patterned behavioral interactions and institutions, including kinship, economics, and politics. Superstructure encompasses the belief systems of a society, its norms and values in general and specific areas such as religion, aesthetics, and ideology. These three dimensions of cultural life are internally complex, interacting systems of subsystems, layered in a nested hierarchy of progressively more limiting constraints. Infrastructure sets possibilities for structure, and structure constrains superstructure, but each level and subsystem also has substantial autonomy (Ferguson 1990a, 1999).

Regarding war, this scheme is intended to explain the general characteristics of war in a given society. To give just a few illustrations, infrastructure defines how war is fought and what it is fought over: the scale of war-making units and parties, the kind of weaponry used, the scheduling of war parties in relation to subsistence activities, and the availability and costs of essential resources. Structure specifies the social patterning of war: the familial ties for mobilizing men within and between war groups, the circulation and distribution of necessities and valuables, decision structures, and patterns of alliance and enmity. Superstructure provides the moral framework for waging war and motivating warriors: the value systems pertaining to violence, religious and/or magical ideas employed in conflicts, and political ideologies invoked to justify war or peace.

Looking at war in this way is useful for unifying diverse theoretical positions that focus on different aspects of war and that might otherwise seem contradictory. It is relatively easy, for instance, to see social structural features such as patrilocal post-marital residence interlocked with competition over local resources and an ideology of male military prowess. But many more aspects of war than that can be fit together using this paradigm (Ferguson 1999). Or it can be applied to one particular case. That has been done for the Yanomami of the Orinoco-Mavaca area of Venezuela. Going from infrastructure through structure to superstructure, and considering how all of them have been shaped by the changing circumstances of Western contact, explains why these particular Yanomami seemed so ‘fierce’—not only why they made a lot of war, but also why allies fought bloody, pounding matches and men commonly assaulted women (ibid.: 1992).

Structural and superstructural aspects of the Iraq war, including political arrangements and processes, constructions of social identities, and value systems, will be discussed in later points. Here the topic will be limited to infrastructure. The population scale of the US allows it to put over 150,000 troops in the field, with US casualties directly affecting only a tiny fraction of the populace. Iraqi fighters are drawn from local neighborhoods or tribal groups but also include outsiders from a global Islamic population. Technology shapes military interactions, with drones, laser-guided air strikes, and night vision on our side, and on theirs, plentiful munitions, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and the Internet. The distribution of oil certainly affected US interests in Iraq and continues to play a critical role in shaping Iraqi politics today. Change any one of those variables, and it would be a very different conflict.

Point #4: War Expresses Both Pan-human Practicalities and Culturally Specific Values

My second strategy regarding war is intended to explain not a general cultural pattern of war, but rather the occurrence of real wars. The basic premise is that variations in actual fighting—periods of war and periods of peace, who attacks and who is attacked—are understandable as the result of those who make decisions on war pursuing their own practical self-interests, within historically changing material circumstances. It is an etic behavioral approach, based on an analysis of what people do in war, rather than what they say about it.

I used this method in studies of all reported wars among Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and among the Yanomami. Analysis of archaeological records and early explorers' accounts of the Northwest Coast indicate a pre-contact pattern, in which people in areas of limited resources raided those with better supplies of fish and other food. These subsistence conflicts largely ended when diseases, introduced by outsiders, lowered populations and marginal areas were abandoned. In the post-contact period, war was structured by competition in the Western trade. In various ways, groups in different positions tried to control or improve their access to Western outposts or trade ports. In both pre- and post-contact periods, war was waged to capture slaves, although this greatly increased in post-contact circumstances (Ferguson 1984b).

The effects of Western contact preceded even the earliest reports about the Yanomami, so their pre-contact warfare, if any, is unknown. Early-contact warfare was related to defensive measures directed at indigenous slave raiders who traded to the Europeans. In Yanomami wars described by later explorers and ethnographers, which group attacks which, and when, is explained by antagonism based on unequal and exploitative relations regarding access to sources of Western trade goods, beginning with steel tools. This fundamental antagonism is then channeled by structural and superstructural patterns. In contrast, two other hypotheses about Yanomami warfare—that it is explained by scarcity of game or conflicts over women—are not at all predictive of the actual occurrence of war (Ferguson 1995a).

War makers do not talk, and may not think, about war in this materialistic way. In the long discussions that usually precede war, people advocating any course of action convert practical self-interests into the highest applicable moral values—ideas of personhood, accusations of witchcraft, notions of religious duty, invocations of bravery or cowardice, demands of revenge. Such deeply held common values are used to justify plans and persuade others. In an already strained situation, even a seemingly trivial slight, exemplifying a total relation, may provide the trigger for violence, superficially seeming to be its cause. This is manipulation, but not just manipulation. The values are true to local culture. Cognitive dissonance theory long ago taught us that contradictory evaluations within individuals are brought into alignment, and this is true in war. Wants and needs are converted into moral rights and duties. This is a fundamental and necessary process of war, as struggles over things must be transformed into imperatives to kill other human beings. In many cases, perhaps the great majority, advocates of war come to believe their rationale themselves. What is good for them becomes the ‘right’ thing to do. Each side sees the other as responsible for bringing on war (Ferguson 1995a, 2006a).

But systems of thought have their own logic and power, not reducible to practicalities. As the anthropology of violence has taught us, acts of war are expressive as well as instrumental. Slaughters, tortures, exemplary killings—all are performances, laden with deep meaning for the actors, victims, and audi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication Page
• Acknowledgments
• Prelude: An Accountability, Written in the Year 2109
• Introduction: On War and Accountability
• Chapter 1 - Ten Points on War
• Chapter 2 - Global Warring Today: “Maybe Somebody Needs to Explain”
• Chapter 3 - Global Fractures
• Chapter 4 - Seeing Green: Visual Technology, Virtual Reality, and the Experience of War
• Chapter 5 - Military Occupation as Carceral Society: Prisons, Checkpoints, and Walls in the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle
• Chapter 6 - War and Peace in Colombia
• Chapter 7 - The Continuum of Violence in Post-war Guatemala
• Chapter 8 - Mother Courage and the Future of War
• Index