Order and anarchy : civil society, social disorder and war

205 Pages·2006·3.51 MB·English

by  Robert Layton

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ORDER AND ANARCHY
Throughthestudyofcivilsociety,theevolutionofsocialrelations
andthebreakdownofsocialorder,Orderandanarchyre-examines
theroleofviolenceinhumansocialevolution.Drawingonanthro-
pology,politicalscienceandevolutionarytheory,itoffersanovel
approachtounderstandingstabilityandinstabilityinhumansoci-
ety.RobertLaytonprovidesaradicalcritiqueofcurrentconcepts
ofcivilsociety,arguingthatrationalactionischaracteristicofall
human societies and not unique to post-Enlightenment Europe.
CasestudiesrangefromephemeralAfricangoldrushcommunities
and the night club scene in Britain to stable hunter-gatherer and
peasantcultures.Thedynamicsofrecentcivilwarsintheformer
Yugoslavia,Chad,SomaliaandIndonesiaarecomparedtowarin
small-scaletribalsocieties.Theauthorarguesthatrecentclaimsfor
the evolutionary value of violence have misunderstood the com-
plexityofhumanstrategiesandthesocialenvironmentsinwhich
theyareplayedout.
RobertLaytonisProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityof
Durham.RecipientoftheRoyalAnthropologicalInstitute’sRivers
Medal for his research, Professor Layton has written widely on
anthropologicalthemes,includingTheanthropologyofart(1991),
Australianrockart(1992)andAnintroductiontotheoryinanthropology
(1997).

ORDER AND ANARCHY
Civilsociety,socialdisorderandwar
ROBERTLAYTON
  
Cambridge,NewYork,Melbourne,Madrid,CapeTown,Singapore,SãoPaulo
Cambridge University Press
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PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyCambridgeUniversityPress,NewYork
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©RobertLayton2006
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withoutthewrittenpermissionofCambridgeUniversityPress.
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Contents
Acknowledgements page vi
1 Civil society and social cohesion 1
2 Self-interestandsocialevolution 46
3 Thebreakdownofsocialorder 92
4 Warfare,biologyandculture 138
References 174
Index 193
v
Acknowledgements
Warmthankstoallofthefollowingfortheirhelpfulcomments:
Frances d’Souza; Chris Hann and Julia Eckert on chapter 1,
Rob Aspden on chapter 2 and Elizabeth Chilton on chapter
4. The constructive editorial advice of the three anonymous
readers has also helped immensely in making this a more
readable book. Much of the library research was carried out
whileIwasaVisitingFellowattheMaxPlanckInstitutefor
SocialAnthropologyinHalle,Germany,andI’malsograteful
toChrisHann’scolleaguesfortheirhelpandadvice.
vi
chapter 1
Civil society and social cohesion
introduction
Backgroundtothebook
Orderandanarchygrewoutofseveralofmyresearchinterests.
Oneoriginatedinmydoctoralresearchonsocialchangeina
clusterofFrenchvillagesclosetotheSwissborder(seeLayton
2000).Iconductedseveralperiodsoffieldworkbetween1969
and1995,andreliedonlocalarchivestoreconstructcontinuity
andchangeoveraperiodextendingbacktotheancienre´gime
thatpredatedtheFrenchRevolutionof1789.Theoverwhelm-
ing impression I gained was that village life had remained
remarkably orderly through a period that encompassed the
1789Revolution,theagriculturalrevolutionoftheeighteenth
and nineteenth centuries (associated with the turmoil of the
enclosures in England), military occupations in the Franco-
Prussian and Second World Wars, and the post-war mech-
anisation of agriculture. Knowing something about English
village life, I was also impressed by the comparative vital-
ity of local democracy and the freedom ‘my’ villages had to
manage common pasture and forest. While I was analysing
thismaterial,however,statesocialisminEasternEuropewas
collapsing;sometimesinamoreorlessorderlyfashion,else-
wheredisintegratingintocivilwar.Politicalthinkersinboth
1
2 Orderandanarchy
Eastern and Western Europe saw the creation of ‘civil soci-
ety’intheEasternblocasthekeytofuturepoliticalstability,
andbelievedthiswouldbefacilitatedbythedevelopmentof
a market economy. Through my involvement in the World
ArchaeologicalCongress,Ialsolearnedaboutthecivildisor-
der in northern India that surrounded the 1992 destruction
of the mosque at Ayodhya, which Hindu fundamental-
ists claimed stood on the site of a Hindu temple marking
the birthplace of the culture hero Rama. The World Ar-
chaeologicalCongressmetinIndiaonthesecondanniversary
of the mosque’s destruction, and plans to debate the role of
nationalistarchaeologistsinpromotingthemosque’sdestruc-
tion were met by angry demonstrations. WAC deferred the
debateandsubsequentlymetinCroatia,whereitwasablealso
to examine the destruction of churches, mosques and other
cultural property in the recent war between Serbia, Croatia
andBosnia(Layton,StoneandThomas2001).Theseexperi-
encesdemandedabetterunderstandingoftheprocessesthat
sometimes allow society to change peacefully but at other
timescreateviolentconflict.Throughoutthe1990sfirst-hand
anthropologicalaccountsofviolenceandcivilwarwereaccu-
mulating,providingwaysofinvestigatingthetopicincloser
detail.
Theargument
Order and anarchy is a study of civil society, of the construc-
tionandbreakdownofsocialorderandoftheroleofviolence
inhumansocialevolution.‘Anarchy’hastwomeanings.Itis
generallyunderstoodtorefertothebreakdownofauthorityin
society,leadingtosocialdisorder.ForKropotkinandhisfel-
lowanarchistsinlaternineteenth-centuryRussia,however,it
referredtothefreedomoflocalcommunitiestoorganisetheir