Keith F. Otterbein

Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]

A high gain digital phase comparator which in digital phase lock loop systems can give a thousand-fold reduction in ripple and close-in noise sideband amplitudes. The comparator is of the sample-and-hold type but the normal ramp reference waveform is replaced by a trapezoidal waveform with a very steep rising or falling slope generated by a trapezoidal waveform generator. This slope is sampled by a sampling circuit coupled to said generator and its steepness gives the increased gain of the phase comparator leading to the reduced noise and ripple. Additional logic and switching circuits are added to make the comparator operate only during a rising edge of the trapezoidal waveform.

Reconsidering Violence in Simple Human Societies: Homicide among the Gebusi of New Guinea [and Comments and Reply]

Homicide rates among the Gebusi of lowland New Guinea are among the highest yet reported. This paper characterizes and empirically tests Gebusi homicide data against the predictions of three theories commonly used to explain aspects of human violence: sociobiological theory, fraternal interest-group theory, and learning/socialization theory. The data strongly contravene the predictions of each of these theories. The seemingly exceptional nature of Gebusi homicide is in certain respects urprisingly similar to the dynamics of violence in highly decentralized and egalitarian societies such as the !Kung, the Central Eskimo, the Hadza, the Semai, and the Waorani. On the basis of a review of the evidence from these societies, violence in highly egalitarian human groups is characterized and a set of linked hypotheses forwarded to explain it.

Rethinking Polygyny: Co-Wives, Codes, and Cultural Systems [and Comments and Reply]

A new set of codes is offered to begin to unpack the dimensions of polygyny. Included are measures of frequency and statistical distributions of multiple wives, cultural rules, residential arrangements and kin relations among co-wives, male stratification, and marriage of captured women. Problems of coding and measurement are extensively illustrated. A series of hypotheses is supported regarding two types of polygyny: wealth-increasing and sororal. In the first, womens labor generates wealth and (if warfare allows) female captives are taken as secondary wives. Here polygyny stratifies males by wealth and most men are able to become polygynists with age. Residential autonomy of wives is an elaboration of this pattem. The second is marked by coresidence of husband and wives and dependence of the family mostly on resources generated by the husband. Here polygyny is usually dependent on the exceptional productivity of particular men such as hunters or shamans. The regional-historical adaptations of these types differ markedly. Neither fits the model of resource-defense polygyny found in other species. Explanations of polygyny, particularly of the first ype, require close attention to resource and demographic flows within regional ecologies. The second type requires further functional and historical analysis. Both require more consideration of the way polygyny operates from the female point of view, a task only partially begun here.

Sampling in Cross-Cultural Research:

Sampling is employed in many fields of investigation to make inferences about characteristics or parameters of some larger set of cases. The intention is to represent that larger set with a minimum of effort and expense and a maximum of accuracy. We may want to know, for example, whether two or more variables are strongly correlated in that larger set. Researchers who are interested in cultural variation throughout the world (hereafter referred to as &dquo;cross-cultural&dquo; researchers) want to be able to generalize their sample results to the world. Hence they would ideally like to sample from all the cultures &dquo;that have ever existed, exist now, or ever will exist&dquo; (Otterbein’s [1976: 108] &dquo;omneity&dquo;; statisticians generally use the word &dquo;population&dquo; to denote any large aggregate of existing cases [see, e.g., Cochran 1977: 5]). Unfortunately, the population of all past, present, and future cultures is (and will remain) incompletely accessible to us, since some past and present cultures are not described in sufficient detail, or are not described at all, in the ethnographic record, and since future cultures do not yet exist. However, we can still entertain the possibility of sampling from and generalizing to the population that consists of all of the cultures that have been fairly well described in the ethnographic record. (A list of the units in a population is called a &dquo;sampling frame,&dquo; which ideally covers the whole population and includes sampling units that do not overlap [Cochran 1977: 6].) In this paper, we discuss the various sampling strategies that have been employed, and might be employed, by cross-cultural researchers who want to generalize their results to some larger worldwide set of cases. Our discussion covers the following major topics: (1) sampling frames, samples, and sampling units; (2) random versus nonrandom sampling; (3) Galton’s problem, or the issue of historical relatedness and how it may affect results and conclusions; and (4) practical considerations and recommendations. For other information about sampling, the reader is referred to the many books published since the 1950s on sampling theory and method (e.g., Cochran 1977; Kish 1965, 1987; for sampling in cross-cultural research, see Otterbein 1976, 1989, 1990).

The origins of war

Abstract In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley argues that prehistoric as well as primitive mankind was more warlike than has been recognized by most scholars. Such scholars subscribe, according to Keeley, to “the myth of the peaceful savage,” the subtitle of his book. But Keeley, who leads a long list of Hawks, has replaced this myth with another, the “myth of the warlike savage.” Anthropologists who argue that serious warfare arose only after the rise of the state and civilization understate the extent of serious warfare in prehistory. The evidence for warfare among primates, prehistoric mankind, early agriculturalists, and primitive peoples suggests that the truth lies somewhere between the myth of the peaceful savage and the myth of the warlike savage.

The ultimate coercive sanction : a cross-cultural study of capital punishment

Introducing a new hobby for other people may inspire them to join with you. Reading, as one of mutual hobby, is considered as the very easy hobby to do. But, many people are not interested in this hobby. Why? Boring is the reason of why. However, this feel actually can deal with the book and time of you reading. Yeah, one that we will refer to break the boredom in reading is choosing the ultimate coercive sanction a cross cultural study of capital punishment as the reading material.

A cross-cultural study of rape

Rape is often considered a crime and, as such. is subject to punishment. This paper reports a test of a “deterence theory” of rape with a cross-cultural study which uses a sample of societies drawn from the Human Relations Area Files. Fraternal interest group theory is also tested. This theory argues that the presence of fraternal interest groups, power groups of related males, predicts the occurrence of rape in a society. Although the results support both theories, a composite theory, using both deterrence and fraternal interest group theories, was found to provide a better explanation for the occurrence of rape than either theory alone.

Basic Steps in Conducting a Cross-Cultural Study

a particular subject using field method techniques (e.g. a case study), ethnohistorical methods, or comparative approaches (e.g. controlled comparisons). In order to generalize his results beyond the several societies in which he has been investigating his subject, he undertakes a cross-cultural study. (2) A review of the theoretical literature in anthropology and other social sciences may bring to his attention a series of propositions and

Warfare: A Hitherto Unrecognized Critical Variable

Until the last fifteen years only a small number of anthropologists recognized the important relationship which warfare has to many of the major variables employed in anthropological research since the nineteenth century. Three reasons have been suggested to explain the neglect of warfare (Otterbein, 1973: 926): (1) many peoples were no longer engaged in warfare when first visited by ethnographers; (2) many anthropologists expressed moral opposition to war; (3) anthropologists in the nineteenth century failed to study military and political history. The consequence is that the important anthropologists have devoted not more than a small fraction of their professional lives to the study of warfare; and, in turn, their students-with a few exceptions-have not studied warfare. I By 1960 a small number of anthropologists recognized the importance of warfare to anthropological research.2 Recent studies have stemmed from the foundation they established in the 1950s. These recent studies have shown warfare to be related to a number of important variables: level of sociopolitical complexity, history (migration and territorial expansion), demography (societal size, population density, female infanticide, and sex ratios), social structure (residence, descent, form of marriage, and exogamy).

On hunting and virilocality. Author's reply

Marlowe’s (CA 45:277–84) analysis of marital residence among hunting and gathering bands fails to examine the conditions under which virilocal residence occurs. A major component of his analysis is that foragers (the term he prefers) in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample are usually multilocal (43%), infrequently virilocal (34%); uxorilocal residence is even less common (23%). His usage of “virilocal” encompasses “patrilocal” and his usage of “uxorilocal” encompasses “matrilocal”. He offers five reasons that multilocal residence prevails. He offers no explanation for the fact that one-third of the foragers in his sample are virilocal. I suggest that the figure is higher. Julian Steward (1955) argued bands were patrilineal (by which he meant patrilocal), and then his student Elman Service (1962) argued they were patrilocal. The explanation offered was that a group of related males is the most effective hunting unit. Extrapolating back in time led to the argument that in areas where hunting, particularly the hunting of large land and marine animals, occurred, early humans were organized into patrilocal hunting bands. Service used the terms “virilocal” and “uxorilocal” (1962:30). Recently Virginia Kerns has argued that bands were not patrilineal or patrilocal—that Steward spent his career looking in vain for such bands