Establishing an inverted U-shaped pattern of violence and war from prehistory to modernity

Towards an Interdisciplinary Synthesis

Bibliographic Data

ID2059985
AuthorsTibor Rutar (0000-0002-5022-0373, University of Maribor, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume53
Issue3
Pages673-699
Publication date2024-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-2421 • E-ISSN: 1573-7853
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11186-024-09558-3
OpenAlexW4396706412
LanguageEN
References cited66

How have broad patterns of violence and war changed from the dawn of humanity up to present time? In answering this question, researchers have typically framed their arguments and evidence in terms of the polarized debate between Hobbes (or hawks) and Rousseau (or doves). This article moves beyond the stalemated debate and integrates the most robust existing theoretical developments and empirical findings that have emerged from various disciplines over the past 20 years - primarily sociology, political science, anthropology, and archaeology - to answer the question. Drawing on carefully curated violent lethality data for pre historically appropriate hunter-gatherers, as well as historical pre-state and state societies, it shows that simple narratives of violence and war decreasing through history from ostensibly high levels in the human state of nature, on the one hand, and the obverse insistence that the once mostly peaceful communities became highly belligerent with the transition to modernity, on the other, are both wrong. Instead, multiple lines of existing evidence and theoretical perspectives suggest a complex, non-linear, Kuznets-style relationship between violence and the passage of history

Archaeology · Modernity · Political science · Prehistory · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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