It seems to me that the topic of warfare in non-state societies – with or without states in their spheres of interaction – has made some recent advances. The arti- cles of this section testify to this conclusion. To achieve clearer answers about the relationship of non-state societies to violence and warfare archaeological prehistoric sources have to be consulted and compared to anthropological evi- dence. We could probably learn a lot more by engaging into systematic and con- text-based comparisons of cases distributed research-strategically across time and space. Attention should be paid to the intricate interplay between action and structure since it is in this configuration that regularity and variability in history are formed.
B I B L I O G R A P H Y
• Bestard, J. and Bidon-Chanal, C. 1979. ‘Power and war in primitive societies: The work of Pierre Clastres.’ Critique of Anthropology, 4, pp. 221-27.
• Clastres, P. 1977. Society against the State. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Clastres, P. 1994. Archeology of Violence. New York: Semiotext(e).
• Ferguson, R.B. 1990. ‘Blood of the Leviathan. Western contact and warfare in Amazonia’.
American Ethnologist, 17(2), pp. 237-57.
• Ferguson, R.B. and Whitehead, N.L. (eds.) 1992. War in the Tribal Zone. Expanding states
and Indigenous Warfare. Santa Fee: School of American Research.
• Guha, R. 1997. Dominance without Hegemony. History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
• Hobbes, T. 1958(1651). Leviathan. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
• Keeley, L.H. 1996. War Before Civilization. The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lacroix, M. 1990. ‘Volle Becher sind ihnen lieber als leere Worte. Die Kriegerbünde im Gran Chaco’. In: G. Völger and K. von Welck (eds.): Männerbande-Männerbünde. (Ethnologica, Neue Folge, 15). Cologne: Joest-Museum der Stadt Köln, pp. 80-271.
• Mann, M. 1986. The Social Sources of Power. Vol. I. A history of power from the beginning
to A.D. 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Maschner, H.D.G. and Reedy-Maschner, K.L. 1998. ‘Raid, retreat, defend (repeat): The archaeology and ethnohistory of warfare on the North Pacific Rim.’ Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology, 17, pp. 19-51.
• Otterbein, K.F. 1999. ‘A history of research on warfare in anthropology.’ American
Anthropologist, 101(4), pp. 794-805.
• Robb, J. 1997. ‘Violence and gender in Early Italy’. In: D.L. Martin and D.W. Frayer (eds.):
Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past. Langhorne: Gordon and Breach Publishers,
pp. 111-44.
• Vandkilde, H. 2003. ‘Commemorative tales: archaeological responses to modern myth, politics, and war’. World Archaeology, 35(1), pp. 126-44. (Theme: The Social
Commemoration of Warfare, edited by Roberta Gilchrist).
• Wiessner, P. 2002. ‘The vines of complexity: Egalitarian structures and the institutionali- zation of inequality among the Enga.’ Current Anthropology, 43(2), pp. 233-69.
Since the late 1960s – that is, after the decline of structural functionalism and under the impact of the various wars of independence and postcolonial wars in the Third World – anthropology has again become more interested in conflicts and wars (Bohannan 1967; Fried, Harris and Murphy 1968). Various the- ories of war in societies without a central power have been fiercely debated in the last few decades.1In the
following article I will examine some aspects of war and peace and discuss those theories of war, which are in the centre of current discussions. I will not deal with civil wars and ethno-political wars, which have also occupied anthropological thinking in recent decades, nor will I discuss the contribution of war to the formation of states. Instead I shall concentrate on war and peace among tribal populations, which are not (no longer, or not yet) completely subordi- nated to a state power (Ensminger 1992: 143).2 These
so-called tribal wars – as can be observed still today in Amazonia, in the Highlands of New Guinea, in East Africa and elsewhere – are of course not ‘modern wars’ (i.e. in the sense of wars for secession from a state or for the control of the state apparatus). But they are, nevertheless, wars occurring in the present world of states and in the context of an economic world system – contexts, which have manifold impacts on these wars and modify their character.3
Besides discussing some concepts (such as war, conflict, feud and violence) as well as five important theories on war, I will deal with four issues which may be considered important for future research on war in anthropology. First, we should take into account theories of international relations, which may considerably inspire the anthropology of war. These theories are relevant for anthropology because states are political units waging war, as local groups in societies without a state are, and the logic and dynamics of war between states are, despite all the differences between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’ war (Keeley 1996), comparable to those in war between local groups. Second, the phenomenon of alliance has been neglected by anthropology so far, but this must be taken into consideration because whoever has to wage war also needs allies. Alliance formation influences the regional relation of force between warring local groups, and both victory and defeat may depend on the support of allies. Third, any theory of war also has to explain why in some (but few) tribal societies conflicts between local groups are never carried out by warlike means. Hence, we have to tackle the problem of explaining tribal societies without war. Fourth, the anthropology of war also has to consider the question of pacification. Pacification of warlike tribal groups is not only an interesting