Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

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literate_caveman's review against another edition

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2.5

As an anthropologist/archaeologist, I felt compelled to write a review of this book. While I think the author makes a fair point that certain types of violence have been broadly judged as distasteful in recent times, I don't think he provides solid evidence for many of his arguments. The author frequently misuses statistics and doesn't use archaeological data correctly. This is evident in the second chapter where he compares rates of violence across a series of conflicts, both in prehistory and in the historical period. Not only are these conflicts cherry picked (there are several examples of archaeological conflict sites that one could include), but they are not presented in chronological order so that the trajectory towards lower casualties seems more obvious. Many of the sites used in this chapter are thousands of years apart, both in terms of time and distance, so presenting them in this way doesn't make much sense. We also have to consider that there are several prehistoric groups in different geographic areas that left little evidence of inter-group conflict, and none of them make it into the author's assessment. As it is, the author uses a very small sample of archaeological conflict sites to reach the conclusion that the past was generally more violent. For example, the Crow Creek site is used as an example for how proportionately large the casualties of battle were in prehistory (this site likely dates to around AD 1100 to 1300 and isn't even that old by comparison to the other sites, but I digress). Crow Creek is a mass grave site where hundreds of people were violently killed. While this site certainly was the product of great violence, the several mass graves produced during the 20th and 21st centuries are not at all considered alongside these other sites. I understand that the author wanted to look at percentages to see the likelihood that one would be killed in a conflict, but you simply cannot compare the percentages of a small group of hunter-gatherers with a massive army. If one person, in a group of 10, is killed in a conflict, then the casualty rate is already 10%. In short, the data used in this chapter, as well as throughout much of the book, isn't thought out very well.

Honestly, I think my biggest complaint with this book is the way the author lumps groups of people into "prestate" and "state" level societies (terms that anthropologists have problematically used and should turn away from). The types of data I described above are used to support the conclusion that "prestate" hunter-gatherer peoples tend to be more violent while "states" provide more controls on their population that reduce violence. To me, this argument rings of centuries-old rhetoric used by colonizers to subdue Indigenous populations around the world. There have been violent groups at different places and at different times, and there have been peaceful people at different places and at different times. Cultures and history are far more complicated than what is presented in this book. The thing is, I sort of agree with the idea that the world is striving to be a more peaceful place. We have international governing bodies that (selectively) punish those who engage in violence, and that's definitely a good sign. However, if you are looking for a book that will provide an accurate, nuanced view of the role of violence in past societies, I wouldn't recommend this book.
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