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Book

Title Sociobiology and conflict : evolutionary perspectives on competition, cooperation, violence, and warfare / edited by J. van der Dennen and V. Falger
Published London ; New York : Chapman and Hall, 1990
©1990

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 MELB  303.6 Den/Sbc  AVAILABLE
Description 338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents Intergroup competition and conflict in animals and man / J.A.R.A.M. van Hooff -- Selfish cooperation in social roles / U. Motro and D. Cohen -- The biological instability of social equilibria / P.P. van der Molen -- The cerebral bridge from family to foe / L. Tiger -- The evolutionary foundations of revolution / J. Lopreato and P. Green -- Loyalty and aggression in human groups / Y. Peres and M. Hopp -- Territoriality and threat perceptions in urban humans / M. Hopp and O.A.E. Rasa -- Origin and evolution of 'primitive' warfare / J.M.G. van der Dennen -- The Inuit and the evolution of limited group conflict / C. Irwin -- Human nature and the function of war in social evolution / P. Meyer -- War and peace in primitive human societies / U. Melotti -- Primitive war and the Ethnological Inventory Project / J.M.G. van der Dennen -- The sociobiology of conflict and the conflict about sociobiology / U. Segerstråle
Summary Conflict on all levels of organic existence is pervasive, persistent, ubiquitous. Conflict is the universal experience of all life forms. Organisms are bound in multiple conflict-configurations and -coalitions, which have their own dynamic and their own logic. This does not mean, however, that the more paroxysmal forms of conflict behaviour, naked violence and destruction, are also universal. Conflict and cooperation are always intertwined. Conflicts do, however, have a propensity to gravitate towards violence. There is, as Pettman (1975) pointed out, no accepted or agreed list of the social units by which conflicts might be classified. To talk of conflict in intra­ personal, inter-personal, familial, group, class, ethnic, religious, intra-state or inter-state terms is to assume, perhaps erroneously, that 'each kind of social unit, having its own range of size, structure, and institutions, will also have its own modes of interaction and thus its own patterns of conflict with other social units' (Fink, 1968) like and unlike itself. Such an assumption merits scrutiny on its own, since, despite the plausibility of some sort of analytical link between the parties to a conflict and the nature of the confrontation that ensues, the link should be demonstrated and not allowed to stand by assertion alone. This volume is devoted to one type of analysis of conflict, the socio­ biological one. -- Publisher's website
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Subject Interpersonal conflict
War and society
Sociobiology
Cooperative behavior
Violence
Author Dennen, J. van der, editor
Falger, V. S. E., 1946-, editor
ISBN 9789401073165 paperback
9401073163