Anarchy and Culture: Insights from the Anthropology of War

Abstract

Some prominent scholars and public activists contend that a fundamental change in the nature of world politics can be brought about through efforts to change prevailing culture, norms, and ideas. In this view, behavior in anarchy is what the prevailing culture makes of it, since social reality is, in Alexander Wendt's words, “ideas almost all the way down.” Anthropologists studying the causes of war in pre-industrial anarchies have tested this hypothesis extensively. Their research shows that war behavior cannot be reduced to either material factors or culture alone. Rather, material, institutional, and cultural elements must all be taken into account simultaneously in assessing an anarchical society's propensity for war and in designing strategies to promote change. Models of nested causality or of interaction effects between variables can sometimes capture these causal interrelationships, but they cannot capture nonlinear system effects that often play a prominent role. Patterns found in anthropological research can serve as a heuristic for understanding the democratic peace and processes of contemporary international cultural change.

The integration of realist and cultural analyses of internal wars: Interlocking logics and the American case

“…42 A decade earlier, secessionist Robert Barnwell Rhett had proclaimed that 'New Mexico and Utah, contiguous to us, will be easily ours; and how long will California keep out of a Southern Confederacy?" 43 This anticipated territorial aggrandizement against the rest of the United States conforms to realist expectations about states seeking to increase, if not maximize, their power under anarchic conditions. By integrating this realist calculation with the secessionist persuasion and the logic of slavery extension, the apparent anomaly in the cultural explanation can be emended.…”

“…43 In this procedural strategy, some factors are analyzed first and then other remaining factors are examined. For example, some liberal and ideational analysts advocate a 'two-step' or 'two-stage' method for 'synthesizing realism with other theories'.…”

Anarchism and the Archaeology of Anarchic Societies

“…By using the term, they mean that warfare indicates that there is no authority overriding the situation-the contest for authority or autonomy is being negotiated by force through conflict. Helbling (2006) and Snyder (2002) have called for the use of this concept from political science for the anthropology of warfare. However, this use of "anarchy" derives from its connotation of chaos under a lack of rulership and is not associated with the theory of anarchism, which is about a form of social organization.…”

Lacunae in the Study of Culture in International Security

“…Snyder has moved toward a more anthropological set of approaches to culture and broadened away from explaining narrow strategic choices to issues of more general war-proneness. 64 Johnston finds more value in studying the contribution of supranational forms of culture to security studies. 65 Gray remains supportive of the original concept, although at times he too counsels deep caution about both social science's applicability to the topic and its utility to policymakers.…”