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Warless Societies and the Origin of War
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.66
EAN: 9780472067381
ISBN: 0472067389
Label: University of Michigan Press
Manufacturer: University of Michigan Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: November 07, 2000
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Studio: University of Michigan Press
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Editorial Review:
Warless Societies and the Origin of War employs a comparative ethnographic analysis of warless and warlike hunting and gathering societies to isolate distinctive features of peaceful preagricultural people and to develop a theoretical model of the origin of war and the early coevolution of war and society. Examining key Upper Paleolithic cave paintings and burials that document lethal violence, Raymond Kelly's illumination of the transition from warlessness to warfare in several specific locales in Europe and the Middle East confounds understandings of the origin of war prevalent today.
Kelly addresses fundamental questions concerning the trinity of interrelationship between human nature, war, and the constitution of society: Is war a primordial and pervasive feature of human existence or a set of practices that arose at a certain time in our recent prehistoric past? Are there peaceful societies in which war is absent and, if so, what are they like and how do they differ from warlike societies? Do the critical differentiating features pertain to child-rearing practices, to modes of conflict resolution, to social and economic inequality, to resource competition, or to the constitution of social groups?
As the conclusions of such an inquiry are central to our conceptions of human nature, the book will interest a wide range of readers, from those curious about the origins of collective violence to those studying the roles social institutions play in society.
Raymond C. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Toss Keeley in the garbage
I read through the book no problem. Anyone looking for some sort of party while reading a book, go stick to the pedestrian barnes and nobles hits that promote suspect archaeological evidence as 'warfare' and socio-biological theories for war as 'universal fact' (except all the exceptions to the rule past and present they seem to neglect). Kelly isnt here to appease that crowd. He's making a very elaborate argument about segmented and unsegmented hunter-gatherers and their patterns for (or lack of) ... Read More
Rating:  - A valuable study
First let me say that the four stars are for the content rather than the readability of this book, which is aimed at other professional anthropologists. It is a very valuable study, very much in line with the recent works of Lawrence Kelley ("War Before Civilization")and Keith F. Otterbein ("How War Began")and other scholars.
The good news is that contrary to the "killer ape theory" of forty years ago, modern anthropological analyses prove that the human race has no genetically transmitted ... Read More
Rating: - Excellent theory of the origin of war
This is an outstanding reference for those seeking to understand how war came about and especially whether all societies were and are prone to war. Kelley presents a rigorously logical exposition of the notion that war is relatively recent and a result of social organization. All societies kill, but only those that are segmented and labeled appear to engage in large scale planned violence. Sometimes his conclusions are counterintuitive - as when he argues that, rather than scarcity, it is abundance that ... Read More
Rating:  - Dry but interesing content
I agree with the previous review in its critic: the book is arid. I could not finish it: I started with the first forty pages and I jumped till the end. Books are to be read: if they are deadly boring, nobody will read them, therefore they will be used for nothing.
However, I had the feeling that the author, in order to defend his ideas, has taken great pains to define precisely the term "war" and to construe a statistical base of warfare in primitive societies. So I am no expert to judge whether ... Read More
Rating:  - Unreadable prose
This book is impossibly jargon-filled. The author writes as if addressing a tenure committee. Consider this sentence from the introduction: "Defining war and delineating the boundaries between war and other partially similar phenomena raise important issues with regard to both classifying hunter-gatherer societies in terms of the presence and frequency of warfare and ascertaining the point in a sequence of conflictual events at which war has begun." After reading this sentence how many readers will ... Read More
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