Best Publications on the Anthropology of Warfare

Pioneering the publication of scholarship on collective forms of violence. Library of Social Science’s Ideologies of War website has established a world-wide reputation. Recently, we received a letter from a Newsletter subscriber who is developing a course on the “Anthropology of War and Peace.”

Responding to his inquiry, the LSS staff sought to create its own bibliography—identifying the most significant writings on the topic. It quickly became clear that there are few publications articulating a general theory of warfare. The vast majority describe how and why events happen—the cause and conduct of specific conflicts.

Nevertheless, we were able to identify a handful of books and papers that we consider the best—or most fruitful. These publications provide deep insight into the dynamics of warfare. We shall present these important writings in a series of issues of the Library of Social Science Newsletter.

The First World War as Extravagant Potlatch

What was the First World War? After endless streams of books on the machinations of political leaders and strategies of generals, it comes down to one thing: young men were slaughtered and wounded in massive numbers. In Dismembering the Male, Joanna Bourke observes that there was “no limit to the danger to which the male body could be subjected. Gunfire cut bodies in half.” She states that the most important thing that one can say about the First World War is that the male body was “intended to be mutilated.”

Dismemberment often resulted in death. But next to the loss of life, the loss of a limb was the “greatest sacrifice a man could make for his country.” In Great Britain, soldiers’ mutilations were spoken of in public rhetoric as a badge of courage (or honor), “hallmark of glorious service, proof of patriotism.” The wounded or disabled soldier was “not less but more of a man.”

The “potlatch” was a ceremony practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast—that has been studied extensively by anthropologists. The word means “to give away” or “a gift.” The prestige of a chief was based on his capacity to destroy his own property. Status increased with the lavishness of potlatch. Marcel Mauss states that in certain kind of potlatch, one must “expend all that one has, keeping nothing back. It is a competition to see who is the richest—and also the most madly extravagant.”

Citing Gaston Bouthoul, Franco Fornari (1975) suggests that war represents a “voluntary destruction of previously accumulated reserves of human capital,” an act performed with the implicit intention to “sacrifice a certain number of lives.” The First World War may be understood as a monumental potlatch in which many of the world’s nations participated. Each country sought to demonstrate its greatness by virtue of the extravagance of its potlatch—its willingness to dismember and destroy young men.