Benedict (1939)

Benedict points to the fundamental double-standard regarding homicide --- both murder and war are homicide, but murder is penalized even by death, while homicide in war is glorified. War is homicide that is rewarded with unquestioned acclaim and gratitude from one's fellows, whereas murder is homicide with penalties including in some cases capital punishment (pp. 370-371).
War is not a universal (p. 374), some societies like the Serrano Indians of southern California have no concept of war (p. 371). However, war can also be found among some primitives with horrible acts (p. 382). But there are different kinds of war (p. 370), and some wars much more destructive and even suicidal (pp. 373, 378).

Mead (1940, 1964).

War is organized [armed] conflict between two groups as groups (p. 127). War is not a biological necessity, it is a cultural invention. It is not a universal, not all societies have the idea of war (p. 127-128). War is inevitable only to the extent that a society has and accepts the idea as one way to manage certain situations (p. 129). Simple and complex societies, mild and aggressive societies, will all go to war if they have the idea (p. 130). Mead appears to distinguish between war, duels, and vendettas (blood revenge) (p. 130). War is part of our thought whether in our history, diplomacy, or children's toys (p. 132). However, war is an idea and not inevitable (p. 132). Humans need to realize that war is a bad idea, a poor invention, and that, since it is not a biological necessity and therefore inevitability, it can be replaced by a better idea, a better invention (p. 133)[i.e., peace and nonviolent conflict resolution].

Montagu (1942)

Biological anthropologist Montagu critiques the ideas of one of his influential teachers, Sir Arthur Keith, the "biological-nature-of-war school" --- that war is natural, universal, and inevitable, a part of the struggle of survival of the fittest [social Darwinism] by questioning what is nature and natural (only a social construct), the indiscriminate application of terms like war to nature as in animal aggression which only conflates matters, and argues that war is an invention from the Neolithic, not evidenced in prior prehistory from the archaeological and not common among historically known primitive societies. If war so common, few societies would have survived through centuries and even millennia of prehistory and history. War as a process of natural selection counter-intuitive --- to kill off the youngest and strongest men, while preserving the lesser ones, would not promote fitness [cf. Chagnon]. Such thinking is a hindrance to peace.

Malinowski (1941)

Malinowski rejects the idea that humankind ever lived in any golden age of perpetual peace (p. 521).
(Also see p. 531) on myth of perfect harmony of clansmen).

Also he rejects the idea that war is an essential biological or psychological heritage of humankind (p. 521, 532, 540, 542).

Need to distinguish lethal fighting from war (pp. 523, 534).

"From all of this will emerge the concept of "war as an armed contest between two independent political units, by means of organized military force, in the pursuit of tribal or national policy." "With this as a minimum definition of war, we shall be able to see how futile and confusing it is to regard primitive brawls, scrimmages, and feuds as genuine antecedents of our present world-catastrophe [WWII]." (p. 523). (Also see p. 532 on regulated or tournament fights).

There may be some aggressive impulse, but it its culturally controlled (p. 525, 527, 531, 533).

War for political control arises with the tribe-nation and contributes to the evolution of the tribe-state (pp. 536-537). This can be regarded as antecedent of contemporary wars (p. 538)..

Distinguishes six types or levels of aggression from intracultural intragroup and intergroup to intercultural as instrument of national policy, the latter is full-fledged war (p. 541).

"No state organized on a peace basis, that is, for the fullest and most effective exercise of civilization, can compete with a state organized for efficiency in war." (p. 548)

Malinowski asserts that war must be abolished. The only legitimate war is to end war (p. 549).

Wolf (1987)

Need to distinguish interpersonal violence from violence mobilized to fuel conflicts between entire groups (p. 129)

Among some groups organized conflicts between groups is absent or rare (p. 132)

However, cautions about the influence of European colonization on indigenous aggression and war (p. 133-135) [anticipating or antecedent to later argument by Ferguson, et al.]

When societies organized by central political authority instead of kinship, then marked escalation in organized violence (p. 140)

Otterbein (1994)

In a literature review of the anthropology of war Otterbein (1973) identified 16 theoretical approaches to war (see Otterbein 1994:173, Fig. 1). However, since then a single, shared model or paradigm has emerged, although with seemingly endless variants, materialism in terms of competition for resources, although they are variously defined (p. 172).

Carneiro (1994)

"War is a central fact of human history." (p. 3) But from the Neolithic onward (p. 16).

War is more than just aggression. Aggression is physical violence of an individual or group against an individual group. Follows Malinowski's definition. Thus war not a universal. Feuding is fighting in pursuit of individual or family ends rather than community or societal ones (p. 6).

"War is organized violent societal behavior aimed at an outside group in pursuit of a group objective." (p. 10).

Carneiro sees national sovereignty as the principal obstacle to world peace (p. 23) [like Malinowski, so the implication is transcend state level sociopolitical organization].

Ferguson (1984, 88, 92a)

Introduces idea that European contact may have intensified and transformed tribal warfare if not even triggered it. Thus, the ethnographic record of "primitive" warfare needs to be reassessed through ethnohistory and other sources to affirm the extent to which it may have been influenced by contact.

Balandier (1996)

"In the beginning was violence, and all history can be seen as an unending effort to control it. Violence is always present in society and takes the form of war in relations between societies when competition can no longer be contained by trade and market." (p. 499)

"The manipulation of violence is one of the functions of power, which has its origin in violence and is maintained by managing it." (p. 501)

"the variety of traditional societies explains the difficulty encountered in developing an anthropological theory of war." (p. 504)

If violence is to be considered war it must involve a confrontation between two declared adversaries (p. 505)

State changes the nature of violence, and involves full-time warriors as professionals, a military (p. 507)

War is a natural part of the life of society, not a pathological condition (p. 508)

Chagnon (1996)

See his abstract for main points.

Main new one, other than Yanomami discussion, is "politically correctness" as way to dismiss Ferguson's thesis and other critics including postmodernists (see p. 207)

REFERENCES

Balandier, G., 1986. "An Anthropology of Violence and War," International Social Science Review 38(4):499-512.

Benedict, Ruth, 1959. "The Natural History of War," in An Anthropologist at Work, Margaret Mead, ed., pp. 369-382.

Boas, Franz, 1912 "An Anthropologists View of War," International Conciliation 52.

Carneiro, Robert, 1994. "War and Peace: Alternative Realities in Human Prehistory," in Studying War: Anthropological Perspectives, S.P. Reyna and R.E. Downs, eds., pp. 3-27.

Chagnon, Napoleon A., 1996. "Chronic Problems in Understanding Tribal Violence and Warfare," in Genetics of Criminal and Anti-Social Behaviour, G.R. Bock and J.A. Goode, eds., pp. 202-236.

Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1941. "An Anthropological Analysis of War" Am. J. Soc. 46:521-550

Mead, Margaret, 1964. "Warfare: Its Only an Invention, Not a Biological Necessity," in her Anthropology: A Human Science, pp. 126-133. (Original Asia 1940, 40(8):402-405).

Montagu, Ashley, 1942. "The Nature of War and the Myth of Nature," Scientific Monthly 54:342-353.

Otterbein, Keith, 73. "The Anthropology of War," in Handbook of Social and Cultural, John H. Honigman, ed., pp. pp. 923-958.

Otterbein, Keith, 1994. "Convergence in the Anthropological Study of War," in his Feuding and Warfare, pp. 133-146.

Wolf, Eric, 1987. "Cycles of Violence: The Anthropology of War," in Waymarks, Kenneth Moore, ed., pp. 127-150.