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Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, Overview 75

Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, OverviewAndrew J Strathern and Pamela J Stewart, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Published by Elsevier Inc.

Overview

Classic Ethnographic Studies

Studies in Religion, Witchcraft, and Sorcery

Modes of Settling Conflicts, Including Ritual

The Place of Language Forms and Discourse in

Disputing

Violence, Peacemaking, and Ethology

The Anthropology of War, and Warfare in ‘Tribal’

Contexts

Violence, Ethnicity, and Nationalism

Violence, Individual Action, and the State

Terror and Terrorism: The Role of the Imagination

Further Reading

GlossaryCultural Materialism An anthropological theory in

which it is argued that material factors are the primary

causes of the development of cultural patterns.

Divination A ritual act by which the causes of an event or

the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.

Egalitarian Society A society based on the idea of

relative equality between groups and persons within it.

Ethology The study of fixed motor patterns in animals

and the way in which these contribute to social

relationships.

Genital Mutilation The act of surgically removing parts

of human genitalia, for example, in rituals marking a

transition from childhood to sexual maturity.

Ritualization The process whereby a dispute or con-

flict is handled peacefully by transforming an aggressive

signal into a peaceful one.

Segmentary System A social system in which the

groups are arranged in such a way that smaller, closely

related groups combine in opposition to similar more

distantly related ones.

Sociobiology A branch of biology in which it is argued

that the maximization of individual reproductive success

is an important determinant of behavior.

Violence An act or a threat of physical force

between persons, the legitimacy of which may be

contested; discursive elaborations of such acts or

threats.

Conflict involves disputing over issues and interests thatmay lead to violence or the use of force whose legitimacymay be contested. Anthropologists have made their great-est contribution in discussing these topics as they relate tosmall-scale, stateless societies in which a balance of poweris obtained between the different groups. This articlediscusses this contribution and also considers a range ofrelated themes on both states and stateless societies incontemporary circumstances, including the transnationalissues of terror and terrorism.

Overview

Conflict and violence are long-standing aspects ofhuman behavior and social relationships. As with manyother such phenomena, explanations for this fact haveappealed either to biological/genetic patterns or tocultural/historical ones, or to a combination of both.General explanations may certainly implicate biological

characteristics, but specific ones require that we take into

account at least cultural factors as they have developed

historically in particular formations. Such an approach

may also lead to further levels of sociological

generalization.Given the prevalence of conflict and violence in his-

torical experience, our scope in this survey needs to be

delimited. We have chosen a range of topics that have

been recognized widely as anthropological, along with

their extensions into contemporary arenas of conflict

linked to ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization and

‘terror’. Hallmarks of the anthropological approach, as

we see it, are (1) an emphasis on first-hand observation

and fieldwork, augmented by the use of other sources;

(2) a concern with the small-scale as well as larger scales

of events and processes; (3) an interest in the interpreta-

tion of meanings and the expression of intentionality,

agency, and the capacity for action, including sensitivity

to language use; and (4) an understanding generally of the

role of symbols and ritual in sociopolitical history.

76 Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, Overview

A concern with meanings obliges us also at the outsetto consider the meaning of the term ‘violence’ (conflict istaken to be less problematic here, referring to any situa-tion in which the participants see themselves as at oddsover an issue or set of issues and engage practically inattempts to settle the issue by negotiation, force, or othermeans). D. Riches has examined the definitional questionin a collection of studies on the topic and points out thatthe choice lies between adopting a new definition of ageneral kind or building on what he calls Anglo-Saxonmeanings. Opting for the latter, and stressing the inten-tional agency of social actors, he pinpoints a crucialfeature: violent behavior is behavior that is subject tocontested legitimacy, and this is inherent to it. Violenceis thus not simply physical force, although it stereotypi-cally involves the use of force. Rather, it is the use of forcein contexts where one or more parties may consider it tobe legitimate (and the definition of what is legitimate mayalso be subject to varying interpretations). Riches alsospeaks of the triangle of the performer, victim, and wit-ness, in which the witness is often the agent who evaluatesthe question of the legitimacy of a violent action. Hisviewpoint enables us to understand how a state agencymay undertake a violent action in order to curb violentoffenders, since violence, in a sense, is in the eye of thebeholder/actor. In particular, a performer of violence mayconsider it a justifiable or legitimate use of force while thevictim disagrees and witnesses are divided in opinion. Forour purposes here, without claiming this as a generallyvalid definition for all purposes, we shall adopt Riches’viewpoint, focusing attention on violence as an actioncharacterized by force (physical or otherwise) that is sub-ject to contested interpretations of legitimacy.

Finally, the placement of violence in a typology offorms of disputing and dispute settlement needs to bespecified. Such a typology may have to do with: (1) socialcontexts of disputing, in terms of scale and the degree ofcloseness or distance between the parties; an act that isheinous between siblings (e.g., incest, fratricide) may beacceptable or even expected between major enemies;(2) the matters at issue; serious matters may elicit violentresponses whereas trivial ones may, or should, not.

In terms of nonviolent disputing processes, PhilipGulliver made a clear distinction between settlement byadjudication, mediation, and negotiation. Adjudicationoccurs in a context where laws exist and decisions canbe imposed according to them; mediation where a thirdparty attempts to act as a go-between or broker betweendisputants and is given power to do so; negotiation typi-cally occurs between the disputants themselves and theirsupport groups, who may take on, in part, roles of med-iators or adjudicators. In the context of negotiation,Gulliver further noted an alternation between coordina-tion and antagonism, leading ideally to a coordinationthat in some way is ritually confirmed, beginning with

the search to define an arena of dispute, through anattempt to narrow the differences, and then on to thefinal bargaining. The model presumes settlement but, inreality, negotiations often break down. Since breakdownis marked by antagonism, it is here that violence maycome into play, either as a way of settling matters or asa way of postponing and complicating a settlement.Socially defined emotions also become involved, andenter into political definitions of what is done.

Classic Ethnographic Studies

B. Malinowski, in Crime and Custom in Savage Society, intro-duced questions of individual motivation and emotioninto the study of primitive law and overturned the notionof the savage who was supposed to follow blindly thedictates of custom and tradition within the group. Hisextensive case history account of a youth who committedsuicide as a result of shame sparked off a long tradition oflooking at the significance of self-regulated sanctions inbehavior. His major stress, however, was on the positiveincentives and ideals that keep people in conformity withexpectations and remove a need for violence or forimposed punishments in situations of conflict. Certainelements of adjudications were, of course, present in theTrobriands case history he was describing, since chiefscould impose certain decisions and were also feared forthe sorcery and magical powers they commanded (seesection titled ‘Studies in religion, witchcraft, and sor-cery’). This overall Malinowskian approach, via thestudy of emotions, has returned in contemporary anthro-pology after having been displaced for a while by thefunctionalism of Radcliffe-Brown and the structurallyoriented work of Evans-Pritchard and Fortes.

Evans-Pritchard, in The Nuer, discusses politics, law,social control, and violence in a tribal social system basedon a balancing of forces between territorial segments anda principle of the merging of segments in widening scalesof opposition or conflict. He developed his model toaccount for (1) order in a society without government(the ordered anarchy concept) and (2) the place of physi-cal force in such a society. The Nuer people were warlikeand had been expanding at the cost of neighboring peo-ples such as the Dinka, who were captured andassimilated into Nuer local groups. Evans-Pritchardpointed out that bloodwealth or compensation for killingswas likely to be paid only within the tribe, the largestpolitical group. He also noted the important role of theleopard-skin chief or man of the earth in giving ritualprotection to killers and mediating in discussions overbloodwealth. A combination of structural rules and ritualrole-playing kept violence to certain limits within thetribe. The threat of forceful action, however, was equallyimportant in ensuring the territorial spacing of people and


their access to resources. Such an ordered anarchy

requires a certain level of consciousness of violence to

maintain itself.Both Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard were, from dif-

ferent angles, tackling the question of whether all societies

have law, in some sense or the other. The same matter

was explicitly at issue between P. Bohannan and

M. Gluckman. Gluckman, in his study of the court system

of the Lozi or Barotse people in Rhodesia (Zambia),

argued that definite rules could be derived from the

study of court cases heard by magistrates and that the

principles of law involved could be compared with

English-law concepts such as that of the reasonable man.

Bohannan, on the other hand, stressed the local cultural

contexts in which the Tiv people of Central Nigeria

pursued disputes through moots, general meetings, rather

than in introduced courts. Bohannan’s account therefore

implied difficulties of comparison between societies,

based on the problem of cultural difference. The debate

between Bohannan and Gluckman has often been taken as

an example of the conflict between the particularizing and

generalizing moments in anthropology. More specifically

the difference of viewpoint they exhibited can be derived

from (1) the differences between Tiv and Lozi society

(relatively egalitarian vs. relatively hierarchical) and (2)

Bohannan’s stress on indigenous processes, Gluckman’s

on a court system influenced by British colonial ideas.Comaroff and Roberts, in their survey of legal anthro-

pology, settled the issue of rules versus processes by

pointing out that even the most complex rules are for-

mulated and brought to bear only in elaborate negotiated

processes, whose outcomes are therefore unpredictable

and multiplex. They demonstrated this argument with

reference to Tswana (South Africa) succession patterns

and marriage disputes. The debate between Gluckman

and Bohannan was thus in a sense finally laid to rest.None of these studies was particularly concerned with

violence, or the intersection between law and politics.

Bohannan’s study, however, was of interest here because

of his chapter on the moot at home, in which he discusses

the concept of tsav. Leadership, and in fact ability gen-

erally, was thought by Tiv to depend on a substance

called tsav. Men with tsav were said to repair the tar, or

local community, through sitting in moots by day and

settling disputes. But the same men also acted by night to

protect the tar mystically against attacks by outsiders and

were said periodically to require a human to be sacrificed

as a victim for their work of mystical protection. Tsav in

this context was a kind of witchcraft power. In other

words, political power, seen as a form of witchcraft,

depended also on notions of mystical violence. In times

of political upheaval, Bohannan notes, the men with tsav

were thought to kill for personal gain and the love of

consuming human flesh.

Studies in Religion, Witchcraft,and Sorcery

The use of sorcery and witchcraft as a means of control-

ling the acts of others is a common anthropological theme.

It is often considered an illegitimate form of social control

but examples also demonstrate its accepted and legitimate

uses.Types of sorcery that are used include food sorcery

(poison), leavings sorcery (taking something that has a

part of a persons ‘soul’ in it and imprisoning it or subject-

ing it to torture to make the person ill or die), and assault

sorcery (violently attacking someone from another com-

munity and causing their death). All these forms of

sorcery are greatly feared and attacks of these sorts are

repelled through proper actions and/or the assistance of

healers who possess magical spells or means of divining

who the sorcerer or witch is and thereby confronting the

individual.In Melanesia among the Melpa, Pangia, and Duna

peoples, sorcery and witchcraft are greatly feared and

not generally considered to be a legitimate form of social

interaction. Those who are witches are viewed as greedy

persons who are attempting to take the health or life of

another to satisfy their own desires. The fear of witches

(kum koimb, in Melpa) who eat human flesh – stealing

children and waylaying adults – has increased in conjunc-

tion with changing sociopolitical and religious

circumstances. This description is paralleled in the

African ethnographic records in which sorcery and witch-

craft are socially condemned practices. In Africa,

sorcerers use medicine to harm those toward whom they

have an ill will, while witches are able to do extraordinary

things beyond the capabilities of ordinary human beings

in order to harm other people. In both the African and

Melanesian contexts sorcery and witchcraft accusations

have often been read as indices of conflict and tension.

Sorcery accusations directed at enemy groups may

increase in-group solidarity and increase the likelihood

that a war will be initiated against the accused group. In

addition, among the Kuma of the Western Highlands of

Papua New Guinea, war sorcerers were highly respected

and legitimately used their powers to enlist the spirits of

the dead and the ancestors to aid in battle against the

enemy. Among the Wola of the Southern Highlands of

Papua New Guinea, sorcery is also used to attack the

enemy in war in addition to appealing to the clan spirits

and ancestors of the enemy side to ask that a longstanding

dispute be resolved through a divination process in which

the physical substance from the decomposing body of a

sorcery victim is allowed to pass onto a pig that is to be

eaten to determine who is guilty of the sorcery killing.

The victim’s essence is thought to act as a poison that will

kill those who are lying and their relatives. Just before


eating the potentially lethal piece of pork, the accusedswears an oath declaring the truth of his assertions ofinnocence. After the eating of pork the feuding ceases,and further revenge deaths will be caused, it is thought, bythe ancestors if they judge that they are warranted.

Ideas regarding sorcery and witchcraft are appropriateto consider here, since they both reflect and constitutemodes of hostility between categories of people, andare experienced as forms of violent action. This is particu-larly true of notions of assault sorcery that effectively depictimages of assassination and murder by a mixture of physicaland mystical means as seen in the writings of Stewart andStrathern (1999a). As the example of the Wola indicates, thesame forms of cultural logic that inculcate fears of sorcerycan be brought into play in the service of divination andoath-taking (on the latter, see also section titled ‘Modes ofsettling conflicts, including ritual’).

A major feature of the processes through which fears ofwitchcraft can lead to accusations and violence againstsuspects is the prevalence of gossip and rumor. Thistheme is explored in depth in Stewart and Strathern(2004) with references from a global context (see sectiontitled ‘Terror and terrorism: the role of the imagination’).

Modes of Settling Conflicts, IncludingRitual

Within the category of settlement by negotiation we candistinguish between settlements that lead to an ending ofthe specific dispute, or at least a phase of it (partialsettlement), and settlements that lead to a reconciliationor establishment of new positive relations between theparties. A number of writers have cautioned against theassumption that settlement means good feelings.Moore (1995) cites Gluckman’s description of ‘‘the caseof the headman’s fishdams’’ and how it was cleverlysettled at the time but how Gluckman later found thatone of the parties involved had subsequently killed theother. Similarly, Elizabeth Colson in the same volumesums up materials on the Gwembe Valley Tonga ofZambia by arguing that moots and courts can settle indi-vidual claims but ‘‘have much less success in convincingcontenders that they are in the wrong, and they do littleor nothing to heal ruptured relationships or abate angerand contempt.’’ A dispute occasion may be a part of alonger-term and more deep-seated conflict involving per-sons other than the immediate parties. It has been arguedfor Melanesia that ongoing dispute is a part of a normalmode of social interaction and as with debt the aim is notto end but to continue it. While this may be overstated asa generalization there is certainly some truth in it.Nevertheless, in the Mount Hagen area, at any rate,there is an idea that a proper settlement should lead toan admission or confession of wrongdoing followed by a

compensation payment to enable the offended party torecover good feelings. For Hagen, and for many parts ofthe Pacific and Indonesia, there is a special equation ofwealth with human life itself, so that killings can also becompensated for by bloodwealth payments that may, inturn, lead to ongoing exchanges of wealth goods (pigs,shells, money) between the parties and their group-mates.If negotiations about the size of such a compensationpayment break down, however, direct reprisals by wayof retaliatory killings, destruction of property, or theconfiscation of wealth goods may cut in. In contemporarydisputes, settlements leading to productive exchangeshave become harder to arrange and the possibility ofviolence has come much closer again, because of theincrease in scale of social relations, a process that beganwith pacification in the 1930s and was evident already bythe early 1970s. If disputes are ‘‘both theater and realcontests’’ in Colson’s formulation, we might expect themto become a locus of the major tensions caused by thecomplicated overlapping and layering of institutions andprocesses in a postcolonial context, such as we find amongboth the Gwembe Tonga and in Hagen.

Colson also has some sharp words to say about thepotential of ritual for bringing about the healing of socialrelations. Compensation in Hagen would fall into thedefinition here, but it is important to note that wherethe ritual consists of the handing over of large amountsof wealth this carries its own potential for efficacy. It wasVictor Turner, in his work on the Ndembu people ofZambia, who most powerfully expressed the role of ritualin these terms, but we should note the specific contextinto which much of his material was set, that is, rituals ofhealing for sickness in the bodies of particular persons.Turner was arguing that such healing rituals were con-structed in terms of a specific cultural idea, that deep-seated disharmony of feelings can cause sickness, andtherefore sickness can be healed only by the (re)establish-ment of harmony. The idea of dispute as sickness is foundin Papua New Guinea also. In Hagen, for example, thereis a strong idea that frustration (popokl) can cause sicknessand such sickness will again be healed only by overtlyventing (confessing) the cause of one’s anger, leading atleast to an attempt to put matters right. Ndembu andHagen logic are at one within this fundamental, or cos-mological, level, then. Turner’s approach therefore doesnot imply that harmony is always achieved, only that it isseen as a prerequisite for healing certain sickness condi-tions. Sickness prompts people to bring up matters ofdispute that have not been settled and to make a freshattempt at dealing with them. Disputes where sickness isnot (yet) implicated may nevertheless refer to the poten-tiality of both sickness and violence as their outcome iftalk cannot solve them.

Gulliver, in his book on disputes among the Arusha ofTanganyika (Tanzania), spends the bulk of his time


explaining the modes of discussion that lead to settlements,mostly through the influence of age-mates. At the end of thebook, however, he turns to the topic of additional means ofcoercion. The coercion he has been discussing is, as he says,‘‘of a non-violent kind,’’ and it may have to be followed upwith further modes of persuasion after an agreement isreached in order to make sure that a promised payment,for example, is made. Occasionally, physical seizure isresorted to, but ritual curses and oaths may be employedalso. Both curse and oath appeal to an authority of powerbeyond the immediate context and they bridge the gap ofdoubt or mistrust that can arise between disputants. Arushasay that oaths are resorted to only when a dispute cannototherwise be settled agreeably. The ritual mechanisms ‘‘alloperate by producing illness or death in an offender,’’ and adiviner is employed postmortem to verify that the ritual hasworked in this way. Effects can be warded off, however, byconfession. The Arusha know several categories of oathsappropriate to different circumstances, for example, olmoma,to bring peace to two related men, involving the consump-tion of sacrificial meat as an embodied act: the meat isaccepted by one party and offered by the other. This is astriking instance of the importance of the consumption ofsubstances as a marker of truth on the body. These Arushamechanisms are closely paralleled again by ideas from thePacific. In Mt Hagen consumption or burning of the sacredmi plant that is a group’s emblem brings with it the putativesanction of death if one lies. Such mechanisms, goingbeyond words and into the bodies of the disputants, butinvoking the deepest levels of cosmological notions, areperhaps important as backstops to Arusha discourse.

The Place of Language Formsand Discourse in Disputing

The idea of disputing brings to mind words primarily: imagesof words spoken in contest, and therefore of the stylistic andrhetorical resources people bring to bear on an issue. It alsomakes one aware of how people view words and truth-telling. In Hagen, for example, it is assumed that peoplereadily lie, but the group divination substance, the mi (ornowadays the Bible) can equally readily find them out.A refusal to swear on the mi is tantamount, therefore, toadmitting guilt. The aim of an investigation is to ‘‘dig outthe roots of the talk,’’ which are buried, entangled, and hardto bring to light but are at the bottom of the problem.

Brenneis, in a survey article on this theme, makes anumber of significant points. He refers to Mather andYngvesson’s model of dispute transformation dealingwith how and when/why issues are broadened or nar-rowed, and points out that analysis of the verbal ways inwhich transitions are made from one phase to anotherwould be more productive. Brenneis also notes MauriceBloch’s argument linking formalization of style to

authority in the rhetoric of the Merina, a hierarchicalsociety in Madagascar, noting that the argument worksless well in egalitarian communities. In Bloch’s originaledited volume, A. J. Strathern remarked on a variant ofthe Merina pattern found among the Melpa of Mt Hagen,in which stylized oratory called ‘arrow talk’ (el ik) standsfor a ritualized statement of the outcome of an event as ifit were authoritative, marking a stage of consensual agree-ment between competitive groups.

Brenneis goes on to note that forms of expression mayplay different roles at different phases of a dispute. Insults,for example, may function as preludes to physical vio-lence or as an understood way of expressing anddischarging hostility, depending on the stage of a disputeor the relationship between the parties. Silence as anavoidance of talk may also be highly significant and, ineffect, communicate meanings. In the Papua New GuineaHighlands the winners of contemporary parliamentaryelections are often advised not to say anything abouttheir win, not out of any false modesty but simply toavoid antagonizing the supporters of the jealous losersand provoking violence. The winner of the regional elec-tion in the Western Highlands in July 1997, a Catholicpriest, mediated this problem by announcing that hewould celebrate his victory by drawing all the otherelected members of his Province together and ‘‘giving allthe praise and thanks to God.’’

Brenneis outlines two different approaches to the rela-tionship between language and social process in disputes.In one (called ethnomethodology) social organization isseen as produced through language interaction. The otheris the ethnography of speaking, which takes speakers’intentions, strategies, and extralinguistic power differen-tials more into account. While the second approachprovides a valuable expansion of the first, Brenneis alsonotes that language does not just reflect relations, it alsooften brings them into being and gives them form. In thisregard, it is worthwhile to add that he does not greatlytake into account here the question of emotions in dis-puting nor does he discuss the markers of transition fromverbal to nonverbal expression that occur when talkingstops and physical violence begins. A. J. Strathern hasdiscussed how in Hagen verbal behaviors may copy pat-terns of dominance and appeasement that can beexpressed nonverbally. A. J. Strathern and P. J. Stewart’sstudy (2000) details that when such verbal rituals breakdown, violence may result, and peacemaking is therebymade harder.

Violence, Peacemaking, and Ethology

The mention of dominance and appeasement reminds usof the question of peacemaking generally, and the distinc-tion between peace founded on mutual agreement and


peace imposed by winners on losers. It reminds us also ofthe general debate on aggression, territoriality, and ritua-lization stemming from the work of Konrad Lorenz and I.Eibl-Eibesfeldt. We are not concerned here with theaspects of debates stemming from Lorenz’s work thatdeals with the possible innate or genetic basis for aggres-sive behavior in humans and other animals. We are ratherinterested in the question of ritualization. In certain ani-mals gestures of appeasement in conflict situations aremade by motor actions that correspond to fixed disposi-tions. In human social interactions standardized rituals aredeveloped that function in a similar way, within a sharedcultural milieu, to move from confrontation to concilia-tion. The mechanisms involved may be verbal, but oftenare nonverbal. Human ethology can thus provide inter-esting pointers for the analysis of rituals of bothaggression and peacemaking, whether or not we considerthese to have an innate basis.

Sociobiological theory provides a more focused, andmore disputed, approach to conflict, arguing that themaximization of reproductive success is at stake, asargued by Napoleon Chagnon for the Yanomamo people.Chagnon presents the male war-leaders among thesepeople as motivated in their violence not by proteinscarcity but by polygyny, suggesting a correlationbetween killings and wives. Other scholars have taken adifferent view (see further).

Eibl-Eibesfeldt has collected together several exam-ples of appeasement behavior that are interesting: forexample, the waving of plant fronds and flowers to indi-cate a wish for peace, and the inclusion of women andchildren in parades as an indication of a desire for aresumption of friendly relations. In Hagen, this is directlyexpressed in a verbal mode also, when men say they arecoming ‘‘like women’’ to a meeting, not to fight but tosettle. Merlan and Rumsey (1991) have depicted the rolesof women too in these processes. Robert Dentan hasargued that ‘peace’ rather than ‘war’ may be the ‘normalcondition’ of societies, even though conflicts are commonin practice.

The Anthropology of War, and Warfarein ‘Tribal’ Contexts

R. Brian Ferguson has described war as ‘‘organized, pur-poseful group action, directed against another group. . .involving the actual or potential application of lethalforce.’’ The anthropology of war is complex and caninvolve conflict over a myriad of diverse factors (e.g.,political stakes, an expression of witchcraft beliefs,revenge, wealth, etc.). Ferguson has pointed out theimportance of conflict over material resources such asland, food, and trade goods, suggesting that an analyticalresearch strategy on the anthropology of war must not

overlook cultural materialism. Robarchek (in Hass 1990)notes that commonly the explanations of conflict in pre-industrial societies are materialistic. He suggests that afocus on the capacity of humans to decide to becomeinvolved in conflict at the individual level by examiningmotivations (defined as all the forces, factors, options, andconstraints, both intrinsic and extrinsic that influence thechoices people make) for participation is crucial and thatin all conflicts and disputes multiple levels of causalityand contexts of tension coexist. He goes on to state that‘‘warfare or nonviolence, like other behaviors, occur whenthey are perceived and selected from among a field ofpossible alternatives as viable means of achieving specific,largely culturally defined, goals.’’ Robarchek does notdeny the importance of biology or the environment inshaping the forces that lead to warfare but points out thatcultural constraints and individual and collective beha-vior determine if war will ensue.

As noted already, many different views have beentaken of the causes of warfare and also of its prevalencein various kinds of social contexts. Materialist theoriesgenerally argue that warfare has to do with competitionover resources and therefore with population growth andterritorial expansion. These theories hold in many con-texts, but not all. Some kinds of warfare take the form oftournaments more than actual war, becoming an arena forthe pursuit of prestige, such as the Great Wars among theEnga of Papua New Guinea. Some are connected withreligious imperatives, such as headhunting, although fromwithin the people’s own life-worlds this may have to dowith the aim of increasing fertility and population. TheMarind-Anim of New Guinea undertook raids not onlyfor heads but to obtain children in order to increase theirpopulation.

Aside from the general debates, interesting discussionshave been entered into with regard to the place of warfarein interactions between state and nonstate societies.Ferguson and Whitehead have argued strongly that war-fare in nonstate (‘tribal’) societies has been greatlyinfluenced by interactions with state societies, and thatconsolidated tribal formations themselves are sometimesthe historical product of such interactions, especially incontexts of encounters with expanding states. The sameargument applies to colonial contexts, as for exampleamong the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.Ferguson and Whitehead’s argument is applied broadlyto cases from Roman North Africa, early Sri Lanka,the Aztecs and the Spanish, the West African slavecoast, the Iroquois, Eastern Peru, and Papua NewGuinea, as well as to their own work in South America.Whitehead argues it both ways: tribes make states andstates make tribes. (The term ‘tribe’ is used here in aneutral and technical sense.)

Ferguson uses a sophisticated version of cultural mate-rialism to argue that Yanomami aggressiveness was


greatly influenced by the historical impingement ofEuropeans bringing disease, different settlement patterns,and new wants, and thereby increasing the shortage ofgame and levels of tensions in social groups. TheYanomami emerge as much the victims of colonizationas the warlike tribesmen projected in the work ofChagnon. Ferguson concludes: ‘‘The ‘fierce people’ repre-sent Yanomami culture in an extreme conflict mode, amode that is clearly attributable to the exogenous factorsof Western contact.’’ This conclusion does not absolutelyrefute Chagnon’s view, but it does contextualize it con-siderably and provides another way of viewing thesituation. That warfare has been a pervasive feature ofhuman life is not in doubt, but the specifics of its historicaldevelopment need also to be examined carefully, as wehave repeatedly noted.

A different argument concerns the place of revengepractices and feuding in cultural practice. Revenge andintergroup hostilities are closely connected in Melanesianhistories of war. Otterbein has argued that these practicestend to be most marked where hostilities are based onfraternal interest groups. Feud, he argues, with its limitedreciprocities of retaliatory killings, is a way of avoidinglarger-scale warfare between such groups. One can com-ment here that if it is so, it nevertheless can escalate intowar, and the more effective way to halt escalation is to paycompensation, as has happened in the historical develop-ment of New Guinea Highland societies. Feud withoutcompensation could interestingly be compared with feudwith compensation in this regard, a comparative studythat waits to be done in detail. Stewart and Strathern(2002) discuss revenge in more detail.

The social and historical construction of tribes feeds intopical terms into consideration of the construction ofethnicity and the relationship between nationalism, eth-nicity, and violence in the contemporary world.

Violence, Ethnicity, and Nationalism

The end of the twentieth century has seen a series ofhistorical changes in the world that have forced a newalignment between the interests of historians, politicalscientists, and anthropologists. Nation-states have brokenup, violent and lethal conflicts based on ethnic ideologieshave arisen, and new claims to national status have beenmade with bewildering rapidity and complexity aroundthe world. In general, these events can be attributed to therecent collapse of the Soviet Union and to the longer-term results of colonial and postcolonial history in Africa.Anthropologists have been forced to expand their scope ofreference, while political scientists have had to contracttheirs and attempt seriously to understand the intertwin-ing of kinship and politics. Descriptive/analytical

categories such as ‘warlords’, applied to political leadersin Somalia, have emerged in this new context.

Here we use a selection of anthropological ideas tocomment briefly on this situation. The first is that of the‘segmentary system’ and the scale of politics. The ‘seg-mentary principle’ means that different ranges of personsmay come into conflict depending on the social distanceinvolved. This idea gives us a calculus for the rapidexpansions and contradictions of arenas of conflict thatcan be seen in contexts of ethnicity. It does not, however,account for the fluidity and partiality of such arenas thatare sometimes found. The same idea, however, alsoimplies that a tribe may become an ethnic group tomor-row and a nation the next day, depending on the historicaltrajectory of conflict it may become involved with. Thenation may thus draw on a naturalized symbolic reper-toire of notions based on blood and kinship, thus creatingitself as markedly different from others, a process Eibl-Eibesfeldt calls ‘‘pseudo-speciation.’’

The phenomenon of physical violence tends to outrunthe explanatory theories we apply to it. Allan Feldmanhas combined versions of anthropological and psycholo-gical theory to considerable effect in exploring ideasabout violence in Northern Ireland; E. Valentine Daniel,among others, has given a moving account of how theexperience of lethal violence is mediated in Sri Lanka.Both these authors manage to convey a sense of theconstruction of meaning even in an arena of mass killingthat may lead us to reflect further on events in other partsof the world, such as Cambodia and Rwanda. Most scho-lars agree that we cannot simply ascribe violence to anaggressive human nature, yet neither can we argue thatviolence is simply a manifestation of culture. Rather, weneed detailed studies of its social construction and the useof grounded generalizations such as the fact that in across-ethnic dispute, both sides may feel that they arethe victimized minorities, depending in what majority ischosen for comparison. Processes of learned misunder-standing and extreme othering are also involved here. Acombination of approaches from social psychology andanthropology could help greatly in rendering comprehen-sible the human capacity to kill. Where anthropology alsoneeds to come into its own is in the study of the means,largely ritual and by no means always effective, whereby ameasure of peace and healing can be constructed out of thedestructiveness of warfare. New Guinea Highlanders, withtheir conversion of warfare via killings into compensationpayments, and these into productive exchanges betweengroups, have in this regard been at the forefront ofhuman political development. Their subsequent interac-tions with state systems and the new development of formsof violence and criminality within them, along with theirown attempts to develop new compensatory rituals, havefurther shown how such a development can itself be over-taken by history.


Violence, Individual Action, and the State

In a number of ways, the actions of authorities in societyand of dominant or deviant persons in the community,may be seen as violent, and may produce violentresponses, including that of self-punishment by suicide.In this section we look at a range of actions that belongunder this heading, from capital punishment to domesticviolence.

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment may be considered the supreme act ofgovernmental violence in state contexts, and jurists pointout that to distinguish it from mere execution or lynching,elements such as judicial interpretations and the stay ofexecution have to be brought into play. Recently, AustinSarat has pointed out that the practice of allowing the kinof victims to make statements at the sentencing of personsconvicted of violence has reintroduced elements ofrevenge found in retaliatory killings in nonstate societies.

Homicide and Suicide

Homicide may, in certain instances, take on some of thecharacteristics of capital punishment in societies withoutstate institutions of control, as when suspected sorcerersor witches are killed for their alleged offenses.Community opinion, however, may be divided oversuch killings and they may represent the interests of aparticular faction rather than a whole community. BruceKnauft, in his study of homicide among a Papua NewGuinean people, the Gebusi, found a surprisingly highrate of homicide among them to be related to male com-petition over marriageable women. There was a tendencyfor sorcery accusations and killings of sorcerers to befocused on those who had failed to reciprocate in mar-riage exchanges. Outbreaks of homicidal actionspunctuated long periods in which harmony was stressedand the expression of anger or aggression discouraged.The Gebusi are unusual in terms of their very highputative homicide rate but not in terms of a culturalemphasis on male violence, which is found elsewhere inthe world, for example, in other New Guinea societiesand Amazonia, and is connected with warfare.

Suicide may also sometimes be forced on persons in amanner reminiscent of capital punishment, as among theDuna people of the Papua New Guinea highlands in theprecolonial past when female witches were, according toaccounts, forced to hang themselves if found guilty.Stewart and Strathern (2003) have presented a contem-porary update on such suicides among the Duna. Theelement of shame is powerfully involved here, as inother cases where persons found guilty of transgressing

norms voluntarily choose suicide. The motivation ofshame may be compounded further by a desire to protestagainst a situation and to bring shame on those consideredto have caused it. Classically, a woman forced into amarriage or treated badly within it may, in male-dominated societies, protest in this way, either by drown-ing or hanging herself (examples can be found from NewGuinea also). The sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1897classified suicide into three distinct types: egoistic, altruis-tic, and anomic. In the first, the individual is seen asinsufficiently integrated in the group, in the second theindividual is overidentified and may commit suicide outof shame or as an act of sacrifice, while in the third thecause of suicide is a social crisis in which individualsare unable to realize their aims. The first and third typesare commonly found in contexts of rapid familial andsocial change such as have been commented on sincethe early 1970s for many parts of Micronesia in thePacific. Rates of suicide in Micronesia are by far thehighest for young males, indicating their problems ofadjustment to society, their inability to find monetaryemployment, their use of alcohol and drugs, and thebreakdown of kin structures such as lineage ownershipof land that provided orderly patterns of resource controlin the past. Conflicts of interest are always involved in allthree types of suicide: quarrels over marriage and sexualactivity, over the disposition or availability of resources,and the resulting feelings of shame and frustration, mayall be involved. Suicide as protest is quite marked inPacific contexts where the idea is that the suicide’s ghostmay continue to bring trouble to the living. It may also beon the increase in contexts where other social sanctionson behavior have broken down or altered.

Assault and Robbery

Similar patterns of disintegration of social ties of controlequally lead to an increase in violence on the part ofyoung males who form into gangs and prey on socialgroups in urban contexts away from their home places.In Papua New Guinea such gangs concentrate their activ-ities by robberies in the major towns and the highwaysthat connect them, holding up travelers, killing them ifnecessary, and sometimes compounding their actions byrape and torture. Narratives of their activities circulate ascautionary tales and tales of horror among the rest of thecommunity. We may call this, following Durkheim,a category of egoistic violence, prompted also by contextswhere youths cannot easily meet their economic aspira-tions. Some of these gang members or ‘rascals’ in PapuaNew Guinea have voluntarily given up their ways whenthey received grants to start small businesses or beenconverted to Christianity. Stewart and Strathern (1999b)have presented narratives of ‘rascals’ and violence inrelation to roads in Papua New Guinea.


Torture

Torture itself has most often been used as a means ofdomination to extract confessions of information aboutactivities from enemies, from persons suspected of witch-craft (internal enemies), or from dissidents. Stateauthority may legitimize such forms of violence, as itdoes capital punishment and imprisonment. Tortureneed not be compounded by killing the victim, althoughit may do so, making a demonstration of the humiliationof the body as in the case of the ‘Shankill butchers’ inNorthern Ireland, who were said to torture or kill bothCatholics and, by mistake, Protestants in gruesome ways.Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland could expect that theythemselves would be arrested by the authorities andinterrogated violently with a view to breaking downtheir resistance and then extracting information. AsFeldman points out, torture is concentrated on the cap-tive’s body and creates its sense of power out of thatconcentration, as well as by the terror or threatened orsimulated execution. Pointing the gun or the knife here isthe same gesture as that exercised by the robber or gangmember, but with the force of the state behind it. Furtheraction, such as rape, is often enforced by means of a threator other violence. One of the ways in which dominationover others is exercised is through forms of torture andforced work, such as in the coercive contexts of slaveryand forced child labor. Issues of how torture is to bedefined and how coercive force may legitimately orotherwise be used in interrogation have arisen in thecontext of debates about the ‘war on terror’ in the earlytwenty-first century.

Rape

Rape is a form of violence directed mainly at females,although males may also be violently and forcefully sodo-mized, especially in prison conditions. During wartime,rape is often used as a form of terror and revenge-takingagainst enemy groups. A recent example is the Bosnianwar where women were frequently raped in attempts tosubjugate enemy groups. In contemporary Papua NewGuinea violence sometimes erupts in the Highlands dur-ing and after local and national elections. At these timeswomen who belong to groups targeted for violence aresometimes raped while males are beaten or threatenedand property is destroyed. The form of rape on theseoccasions may involve a group of males attacking onefemale in what is known as gang rape. The same actionmay be undertaken as a form of humiliating ‘discipline’exercised against a wife who has been defined as errant.Control of this sort is sometimes cited in other contexts asa reason for what has been described as female genitalmutilation.

Female Genital Mutilation

Female genital mutilation can be discussed here underviolence although this category, like suicide, falls into thegrey zone of actions that are undertaken freely in someinstances. Some outside (i.e., Western) observers have placedthis practice under the rubric of child abuse since the femaleare generally very young when the operations are per-formed on them. The phrase ‘genital mutilation’ may beseen as placing a culturally accepted practice into an unac-ceptable category by relabeling it. Female circumcision hasalso been called a ‘maladaptive cultural pattern’ by thosewho would like to see the practice halted. One considerationhere is that these practices are also followed when familiesmove to the United States or elsewhere in the world wherefemale circumcision is not an accepted practice. Thus, issuesof religious and ideological freedom arise.

There is some evidence that lowered fertility mayoccur in some individuals as a result of scar tissue,which may inhibit sexual activity, and from chronic infec-tions that result in higher rates of miscarriages. JaniceBoddy has pointed out that these same problems haveentered into the social construction of female cults ofpossession in the Sudan, in which women take control oftheir bodies and express themselves in ways that modifymale control over them and also express their own view ofthemselves in the wider patterns of life. In this context,they do not oppose, but support, the practices of femalecircumcision and infibulation.

Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a common problem in many parts ofthe world and much of it is directed at women andchildren. According to a United Nations study on thissubject, it appears that to one degree or another violenceagainst women in the home is a problem that can be foundacross all cultures and in all countries. The issues thatbring on domestic violence often center on establishingauthority and control in the household over the sexualactivity of the partner as well as availability and use ofresources such as animals (pigs and cows) and gardenspaces, or property (e.g., house and vehicle). At othertimes domestic violence arises because of over-consumption of alcohol and/or drugs, or as a means ofreleasing anger/frustration that has arisen from someevent outside of the domestic sphere but triggers violencein the home solely as a ‘coping’ mechanism in which angeris released against an innocent third party who is in somesense an easier target.

Frequently reported forms of domestic violenceinclude: (1) punishment/discipline, when a person is bea-ten because they are to be ‘taught a particular lesson’, thatis, forced into one or another action or behavior pattern;


(2) preventive, when a household member is beaten inorder to remind them who is in control of the relationshipand the material goods that are associated with it; and(3) defensive, when one household member hits back afterbeing hit or threatened.

Of course, domestic violence often involves forms ofverbal abuse in addition to physical violence which can beequally devastating and destructive to the individualsinvolved. Both forms of domestic violence are disturbingto children and may produce lifelong psychological pro-blems in addition to physical scars.

Terror and Terrorism: The Role of theImagination

In recent years the themes of ‘global terror’ and ‘theproblems of terrorism’ have come to play an increasinglyimportant part in the worldwide political processes, and anumber of anthropologists have responded to this situa-tion by addressing it through their writings. The place ofreligion in the enactment of terror and violence has alsobecome contested and has been addressed by politicalscientists, sociologists, and psychologists, as well as byanthropologists Juergensmeyer presented a benchmarkstudy on this subject in 2000. More generally, the role ofthe imagination, whether pertaining to the arena of reli-gion or otherwise, is a crucial factor to consider when oneis trying to understand the phenomenon of terror asportrayed in the studies by Strathern, Stewart, andWhitehead in 2006.

Terror, then, and its manifold representations havetaken hold of the global imagination in the decadessince the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergenceof radical political movements opposed to the ‘West’ notsimply in terms of political ideologies but also under thebanner of religious differences. The events of 9/11/2001and the conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan haveundoubtedly been central in this reconstruction of theglobal imagination as well as the recognition of a newera of practices in relation to violence, at least from theperspective of the USA, and mutatis mutandis in theexpanding sphere of the European Union. Terror inthe abstract and practical terrors in concrete reality havebecome very much a part of everyday media representa-tions, making issues to do with terror palpably present inmany people’s lives. Present terrors surround us, both inour imaginations and the processes and practices of vio-lence which feed into the imagination. Imagination andpractice are closely linked. It is equally important to notethat violent practices constantly lead themselves to theintensification of imaginative concerns, and that repre-sentations of these practices as events in the newsconstantly stimulate further imaginations and furtherpractices, fusing together actions and images of actions

in repetitive cycles. Images themselves, conducted in acreative or fictional mode (such as newspaper cartoons),may have as their intended, half-intended, or whollyunintended consequence the provocation of violent epi-sodes of actions. Images and messages also stimulate andfacilitate the mobilization of masses of people in crowds,protesting against government actions and eliciting for-ceful, if not violent, actions from police or militaryauthorities. Small-scale and large-scale processes of con-flict, and the terror that accompanies phases of violence,share many fundamental features. Scale itself, however,makes a difference. The global village and the Papua NewGuinea village are in many ways alike (and, certainly,villages in Papua New Guinea are greatly affected by theworld at large). Differences between these contexts lie interms of the types of conflict they experience and theirrelative intractability. The world, for example, does nothave many very effective rituals of reconciliation such asthe New Guinea pig festivals and marriage exchanges.

Studies in Papua New Guinea have recently mergedwith the general sphere of anthropological discussions ofviolence. As discussed in some earlier publications (e.g.,Strathern, Stewart, and Whitehead in 2006; and Stewartand Strathern in 2002), a transactional theory of interac-tions was pioneered by David Riches (1986). Violent actscan be seen as belonging to ‘the triangle of violence’between performers, victims, and witnesses as depictedby Stewart and Strathern in 2002. In the context of inter-group fighting, both sides are both performers and victimsand include also witnesses. And casualties in fighting seenas ‘warfare’ may be considered by their kinsfolk as ‘heroes’who have sacrificed their lives to the cause of their grouprather than as ‘victims’. Similarly, the killers of others maybe lauded as heroes. Lethal acts in warfare are givenfundamentally different meanings from those in othercontexts. The assignment of labels and meanings is alwayscontext-dependent, depending on the side of the conflictparties align themselves with.

Riches’ transactional model is useful, especially whencombined with two other observations he made. He pointsout that acts of physical violence have their own peculiareffectiveness; and their legitimacy also is often contestedand ambiguous. These contests regarding the legitimacyof violence take place to a good extent in the milieu of itswitnesses. Acts of violence may therefore be regarded notonly in terms of their immediate instrumental effects aspractices from the viewpoint of their performers, but alsoin terms of their intended or unintended auras of mean-ings – meanings that they gather within the space of thetriangle of violence as we have defined it. Violence isabout meanings and thus enters into the world of dis-course, representations, and imagination. ‘Terror’ refersto these worlds, worlds both beyond and yet constrainedby physical acts. In many ways, terror also belongs dis-tinctively to boundaries and borders, such as have existed


in the historical past between Scotland and England(Strathern and Stewart 2001), or in the more recent pastbetween Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland(Strathern and Stewart 2006).

Furthermore, in terms of how meanings are createdand communicated, rumor and gossip, whether spoken orin printed form, are often tremendously important, espe-cially in the context of violence, threats of violence, andfears of violence. We have previously, in 2004, argued forthis viewpoint, particularly in relation to accusations ofwitchcraft and sorcery, but also more generally in terms ofissues and feelings that are conducive to conflictual acts.Rumor and gossip, like violence itself, are transactionalacts, passed from person to person, often demandingreciprocity, and subject to disparate evaluations by ‘wit-nesses’ who then enter into the communicational networkin which rumor flourishes. Rumor and gossip trade onfear, uncertainty, and ambiguity, and they deal with theboundaries of legitimate action and speculations aboutthose boundaries. They operate at different levels ofsocietal complexity, from the interpersonal to the inter-national. Intelligence agencies of governments essentiallytrade on hearsay as much as on direct observations and somay be regarded as purveyors (as well as evaluators) orrumors. Deliberate misinformation is often mixed withsheer inaccuracies as well as kernels of truth in thesecontexts of international life. And such acts of rumor-making and reception are not neutral; they are oftenpolitical tools, and in any case they have consequences,leading to the mobilization of people in favor of certaincauses.

The study of events and physical acts inevitably, then,leads us back into the worlds of fluctuating, negotiated,constructed meanings, and thus, in turn, into representa-tions of the events which form people’s memories and linkto their desires and frustrations.

See also: Clan and Tribal Conflict; Cultural Anthropology

Studies of Conflict; Ethnic Conflicts and Cooperation;

Language of War and Peace, The; Peaceful Societies;

Ritual and Symbolic Behavior; Warriors, Anthropology of

Further Reading

Aijmer, G. and Abbink, J. (eds.) (2000). Meanings of violence: A cross-cultural perspective. Oxford: Berg.

Bloch, M. (ed.) (1975). Political language and oratory in traditionalsocieties. New York: Academic Press.

Bohannan, P. (1957). Justice and judgment among the Tiv. London:Oxford University Press, for the International African Institute.

Brenneis, D. (1988). Language and disputing. Annual Review ofAnthropology 17, 224–237.

Caplan, P. (ed.) (1995). Understanding disputes: The politics ofargument. Oxford: Berg.

Chagnon, N. (1990). Reproductive and somatic conflicts of interest inthe genesis of violence and warfare among tribesmen. In Haas, J.(ed.) The anthropology of war, pp. 77–104. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Colson, E. (1995). The contentiousness of disputes. In Caplan, P. (ed.)Understanding disputes: The politics of argument, pp. 65–82.Oxford: Berg.

Comaroff, J. and Roberts, S. (1981). Rules and processes. The culturallogic of dispute in an African context. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

Daniel, E. V. (1996). Charred lullabies: Chapters in an anthropograph ofviolence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1979). The biology of peace and war: Men, animalsand aggression. New York: Viking Press.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1940). The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Feldman, A. (1991). Formations of violence: The narrative of the body

and political terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

Ferguson, R. B. (1990). Explaining war. In Haas, J. (ed.) Theanthropology of war, pp. 26–55. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Ferguson, R. B. (ed.) (2003). The state under siege. London: Routledge.Ferguson, R. B. and Whitehead, N. (eds.) (1992). War in the tribal zone.

Expanding states and indigenous warfare. Santa Fe: School ofAmerican Research.

Ferme, M. C. (2001). The underneath of things: Violence, history, andthe everyday in Sierra Leone. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress.

Gluckman, M. (1955). The judicial process among the Barotse.Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Gulliver, P. (1963). Social control in an African society. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Gulliver, P. (1979). Disputes and negotiation: A cross-culturalperspective. New York: Academic Press.

Haas, J. (ed.) (1990). The anthropology of war. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Hutchinson, S. E. (1996). Nuer dilemmas. Coping with money, war, andthe state. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Juergensmeyer, M. (2000). Terror in the mind of god: The global rise ofreligious violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Knauft, B. M. (1985). Good company and violence. Berkeley: Universityof California Press.

Leopold, M. (2005). Inside west Nile. Violence, history and representationon an African frontier. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Malinowski, B. (1926). Crime and custom in savage society. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Merlan, F. and Rumsey, A. (1991). Ku Waru. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Moore, S. F. (1995). Imperfect communications. In Caplan, P. (ed.)Understanding disputes: The politics of argument, pp. 11–38.Oxford: Berg.

Otterbein, K. (1994). Feuding and warfare. Selected works of KeithOtterbein. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.

Riches, D. (ed.) (1988). The anthropology of violence. Oxford: BasilBlackwell.

Stewart, P. J. and Strathern, A. J. (1997). Sorcery and sickness. Spatialand temporal movements in Papua New Guinea and Australia.Discussion papers series no. 1. Townsville: James Cook University,Centre for Pacific Studies.

Stewart, P. J. and Strathern, A. (1999). ‘Feasting on my enemy’: Imagesof violence and change in the New Guinea Highlands. Ethnohistory46(4), 645–669.

Stewart, P. J. and Strathern, A. (1999). Death on the move: Landscapeand violence on the Highlands Highway, Papua New Guinea.Anthropology and Humanism 24(1), 24–31.

Stewart, P. J. and Strathern, A. (2002). Violence: Theory andethnography. London: Continuum Publications.

Stewart, P. J. and Strathern, A. (2003). The ultimate protest statement:Suicide as a means of defining self-worth among the Duna of PapuaNew Guinea. Journal of Ritual Studies 17(1), 79–88.

Stewart, P. J. and Strathern, A. (2004). Witchcraft, sorcery, rumors andgossip. New departures in anthropology, no. 1. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

86 Arms Control

Strathern, A. J. (1971). The rope of Moka. Big-men and ceremonialexchange in Mount Hagen. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Strathern, A. (1992). Let the bow go down. In Ferguson, R. B. andWhitehead, N. (eds.) War in the tribal zone, pp. 229–250. Santa Fe:School of American Research.

Strathern, A. (1993). Voices of conflict. Ethnology monographs no. 14,Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh.

Strathern, A. (1993). Violence and political change in Papua NewGuinea. Pacific Studies 16(4), 41–60.

Strathern, A. J. and Stewart, P. J. (1997). The problems of peacemakersin Papua New Guinea: Modalities of negotiation and settlement.Cornell International Law Journal 30(3), 681–699.

Strathern, A. and Stewart, P. J. (2000). Arrow talk. Transaction,transition and contradiction in New Guinea Highlands history. Kent,OH: The Kent State University Press.

Strathern, A. J. and Stewart, P. J. (2001). Minorities and memories:Survivals and extinctions in scotland and Western Europe. Durham,NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Strathern, A. and Stewart, P. J. (2003). Conflicts versus contracts:Political flows and blockages in Papua New Guinea.In Ferguson, R. B. (ed.) The state under siege, pp. 300–317.New York: Routledge.

Strathern, A. J. and Stewart, P. J. (2006). Narratives of violence andperils of peace-making in north–south cross-border contexts,Ireland. In Strathern, A. J., Stewart, P. J., and Whitehead, N. L. (eds.)Terror and violence. Imagination and the unimaginable, pp. 142–170.London: Pluto Press.

Strathern, A., Stewart, P. J., and Whitehead, N. L. (eds.) (2006). Terrorand violence: Imagination and the unimaginable. London: PlutoPress.

Turner, V. (1957). Schism and continuity in an African society. New York:Humanities Press.

Whitehead, N. L. (2002). Dark shamans. Kanaima and the poetics ofviolent death. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Whitehead, N. L. and Wright, R. (eds.) (2004). In darkness and secrecy.The anthropology of assault sorcery and witchcraft in Amazonia.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Architecture, Sustainable Peace Building See Sustainable Peace Building Architecture

Arms ControlDinshaw Mistry, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

ª 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Arms Control: Definitions, Theory, and Aims

Arms Control before World War II

Post-World War II Arms Control

The Baruch Plan and Nuclear Arms Control

Nuclear Test Ban Treaties

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

US–Russian Nuclear Arms Control and Missile Defense

Chemical and Biological Weapons Arms Control

Supply-Side Regimes

Regional Nuclear-Free Zones

Conventional Arms

The Inhumane Weapons Convention and the Landmine

Convention

Confidence-Building and Conventional Arms Control in

Europe

Regional Arms Control Outside Europe

Unilateral Arms Control

Limitations of Arms Control

Conclusions: Assessing Arms Control

Further Reading

GlossaryArms Control A form of collaboration on military issues

between generally antagonistic states or potential rivals,

involving limits on the development, production,

deployment, or use of arms.

BWC: Biological Weapons Convention An

international treaty signed in 1972 requiring states to

renounce the development and possession of biological

weapons; the treaty contains no verification mechanism.

CBMs: Confidence Building Measures Initiatives

such as the advance notification and monitoring of

military exercises, intended to promote transparency

and trust between states; also known as operational

arms control.

CFE: Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty A

treaty signed in 1990 by former Warsaw Pact and NATO

states, limiting their conventional armed force sizes.

CSCE: Conference on Security and Cooperation in

Europe A forum for dialog on European security issues,

renamed OSCE (Organization for Security and

Cooperation in Europe) in 1995.

CWC: Chemical Weapons Convention An

international treaty signed in 1993 requiring states to

renounce the development and possession of chemical

weapons; contains an extensive international verification

system.

Nonproliferation Preventing the spread of nuclear,

chemical, and biological weapons. Sometimes

encyclopedia of violence, peace, & conflict || anthropology of violence and conflict, overview

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