Review of J. Haas, ed., THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF WAR (original) (raw)

The nine articles in "The Anthropology of War" provide useful data and references on war in various prestate societies, argue sundry polemical points about how and why war and peace should be studied and explained, and raise certain methodological and explanatory issues which deserve discussion here even though no consensus on them, nor even any substantial clarification of them, appears to have been achieved at the week-long 1986 seminar from which the articles have been drawn. The stated goal of the seminar was arriving at "a better understanding of the causes of both war and peace in prestate societies and the impact of war on the evolution of those societies" (xi), and the articles contribute in varying degrees to meeting this goal, sometimes in ways different from those intended or claimed by the authors themselves.