Understanding Violence: Social Context and Meaning, Exercises of Law

Download Understanding Violence: Social Context and Meaning and more Exercises Law in PDF only on Docsity! 1 What is violence? The social context for both the performance and understanding of violence is of central importance. One often hears the term ‘senseless violence’, in cases where a serious violent incident was apparently unprovoked or has arisen from ‘insignificant’ insults or altercation. The notion of ‘senseless’ violence is, by implication, contrasted to some other ‘reasonable’ kind, or perhaps suggests that what we find repugnant needs to be placed beyond the bound of sense. Most people probably have a tacit conception of what constitutes a reasonable response to offence or provocation – so, for example, a fatal shooting following an altercation over a parking place appears inexplicable and senseless. Yet many acts of extreme violence occur in response to apparently minor incidents and violence nearly always has ‘sense’, that is, social meaning, to both perpetrators and victims. The targets of violence are rarely chosen randomly and victims and perpetrators are often already known to each other. In some cases the attribu- tion ‘senseless’ refers to an assumed mental illness or other pathology that might account for otherwise incomprehensible behaviour. But these are them- selves frames of meaning that are often invoked in order to deal with behaviour demonstrating extreme inhumanity. Even if some violent perpetrators act because of a pathology, the specific timing and nature of their actions will have meaning since even the ‘most dangerous people are not doing anything violent’ most of the time (Collins 2008: xx). Apparently inexplicable acts of extreme violence might be derived from past experiences of humiliation (Gilligan 2000). Moreover, violence often takes on ritual properties, is subject to cultural definitions and straddles the boundary between the physical and cultural (Robb 1997). It is intimately bound up with pain, security, transgression and concepts of the body and its placing in the social order. Like many other critical issues in the social sciences, the field is marked by controversy. There is an extensive literature on the ‘causes’ of violence, although some criminologists and sociologists argue that posing causal ques- tions is inappropriate and detracts from understanding the cultural, emotional and visceral dynamics of the act. The ‘same’ behaviour might be judged violent in some circumstances but not others – such as physical contact between players 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 6 27/12/2010 12:23:17 PM What is Violence? 7 on the sports field as opposed to strangers on the street. Violence might be casual and perpetrated by individuals or be highly structured and politically organized. While violence is generally thought of as illegitimate and illegal, by contrast with the ‘legitimate’ force exercised by the state, the most destructive and extensive instances in recent history have been state organized and sanc- tioned. States have organized violence both as a means of punishment but also of entertainment and glorification of its power – as with the Ancient Roman ‘games’. Further, violence is not only descriptive of a form of behaviour, but is always normative in that it evokes a negative evaluation such that attempts to legitimate violence will use terms such as ‘force’, ‘defence’, ‘resistance’, and so forth. ‘To call something “violent”’ says Bäck (2004: 223) ‘is often to give at least a prima facie reason why it is morally wrong’. As Marvin and Ingle (1999: 312) point out, people rarely accept responsibility for violence – to own or enjoy it is taboo except for the most ritually circumscribed conditions. Moreover, since violence is intimately interconnected with the body, pain and vulnerability, its discussion evokes fundamental issues of security, embodiment, culture and power. Concepts of violence The question of violence has generated a large literature. This book is not centrally concerned with definitions or with the growing philosophy of vio- lence (e.g., Schinkel 2010; Žižek 2008) but rather with developing sociological analyses of the multiple modalities of violence. However, it should be noted that there are trends and counter-trends, paradoxes and dilemmas that defy simple reductions. It might be true that ‘violent acts are performances of power and domination offered up to various audiences as symbolic accomplishments’ (Ferrell et al. 2008: 11), but it is difficult to arrive at more specific definitions. Elizabeth Stanko’s often-cited definition is that violence is ‘any form of behav- iour by an individual that intentionally threatens to or does cause physical, sexual or psychological harm to others or themselves’ (Stanko 2001: 316). This might be a reasonable working definition but violence need not be individual and is very often collective; the issue of intention is problematic (as we will see below); psychological harm is different from and more difficult to establish than physical and sexual harm; the notion of self-harm might often be appro- priate but is sometimes contested; not all ‘harm’ arises from acts that would conventionally be regarded as ‘violent’ – they might arise from neglect or neg- ligence, for example – and it is at least worth questioning whether a ‘threat’ is itself violence. Threats certainly trade on fear of violence by the threatened person, but there are probably far more threats made than actual violence (as 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 7 27/12/2010 12:23:17 PM Violence and Society 10 include ‘thrills’, ‘retribution’ and ‘produce compliance’ in addition to monetary gain. Again, Englander (2007b: 3–4) writes of ‘instrumental aggression’ to achieve a goal as opposed to ‘hostile aggression’ that is enacted for its ‘own sake’ as a form of stimulus-seeking. The latter is sometimes described as ‘expressive violence’ that is performed for intrinsic gratification and might express an underlying emotion such as hate, or gratifies a desire for a ‘high’ from violence. There is an extensive literature that points to the (learned?) pleasures of violence – an argument developed in Topalli (2006), whose interviews with violent offenders point to a sensual dynamics, gaining a high from the enactment of violence that he argues is not well understood by many existing criminological theories. According to the instrumental/expressive distinction, the latter is less limited to the attainment of specific goals and is therefore likely to be more severe. For example, McDevitt et al.’s (2002) famous typology of hate crime offenders distinguishes violence that is defensive (to ‘protect neighbourhoods’) and retaliatory (a response to an actual or rumoured incident) from more expressive violence motivated by ‘thrill and ‘mission’ (‘to rid the world of evil’). Similarly, Wieviorka (1995: 69–76) uses the instrumental/expressive dichotomy to dif- ferentiate modalities of racist violence. Racist violence might be instrumentally linked to preserving an entrenched system of social domination and will be limited to maintaining the inferior position of the racialized group, as was the case with antisemitic violence for several centuries. However, where the incli- nation is to communally exclude the group, violence may become unbounded mass terror and sadism, performed for the enjoyment of domination and cru- elty in itself. Examples of this are seen in the Holocaust and other instances of genocide, but are manifest in many instances of violence including domestic violence (Dobash and Dobash 1992). It will be argued later that intimacy and breaching boundaries of the self are essential to interpersonal violence. However, the instrumental/expressive distinction has been widely criticized since, in practice, the two are often combined. It can be argued that violence will always involve a heightened state of affective arousal even if it is aimed at instrumental gain. While robbery is done for gain, perpetrators might get a ‘high’ from the risk, and much violence is about asserting dominance over the victim (Levi and Maguire 2004: 811). Thus describing all violence as ‘instru- mental’ on the grounds that some kind of ‘gain’ is involved overlooks how goal-directed violence provides gratification for perpetrators, not least the pleasure of exerting unchallenged power. Rational choice models of instrumen- tal violence argue that actors will make decisions about the likely costs and benefits of using violence, which might sometimes be so. However, in many instances of homicide, for example, there is likely to have been no such calcula- tion of cost and gain, especially where killing involves ritual and symbolic aspects. In what Katz (1988) calls ‘Righteous Slaughter’, people murder to 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 10 27/12/2010 12:23:17 PM What is Violence? 11 defend what they believe is ‘good’, at least at the moment they act. These mur- ders emerge quickly, most lack premeditation, are fiercely impassioned, are conducted with an indifference to legal consequences and are therefore unaf- fected by the risk of certain and severe punishment. Ritual aspects of such killing might involve degradation and defilement of the body which has no instrumental purpose. This is discussed further in Chapter 7. The ritual and non-instrumental dimensions of violence are also apparent in genocide and other forms of collective violence. This is discussed further in Chapter 9. Therefore, the analytical distinction between instrumental and expressive might prove useful and assist in making distinctions between patterns of vio- lence and its resolution, even if the two are likely to be present in many instances of violence. Violence and social theory Violence has not been a topic of central concern to sociological theory. It has of course been a major topic of research, especially in relation to violent crime and social conflict. But theoretically it has tended to be regarded as residual to questions of social integration, the state, power and conflict. Delanty (2001) points out that sociology emerged in relatively peaceful times and was ani- mated by a vision of social order within a world of internally pacified nation states. Violence is what happens when integrative institutions and values break down. Even Marx, despite his generally unsentimental references to the inevi- tability of violence as a ‘cleansing force’ in revolutionary change did not theorize violence per se, even less explore its potential as an agent of social formation. Subsequent Marxists spent a great deal of energy developing theo- ries of social order and cohesion (ideology, hegemony, reified consciousness, etc.) rather than of violent struggle. Weber notably contrasted legitimate forms of domination to physical force and assumed that to persist for any time a social order would have to be based on legitimate (non-violent) domination. In such approaches the significance of violence (or its threat) in everyday life may have been neglected. The ‘recourse to violence and war’ Giddens commented, ‘is an extraordinary blank spot in social theory’ (1996: 22), although he proceeds to discuss military and not interpersonal violence.5 Durkheim is something of an exception here and developed an analysis of violence that in some ways points towards the significance of violent scapegoat- ing in later writers such as Freud and Girard. Durkheim’s (2001: 404ff) description of ‘piacular rituals’ (that deal with death and calamity) prefigures 5This is also largely the case in Maleševi (2010) too although this is an important and systematic development of a sociology of war and collective violence. 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 11 27/12/2010 12:23:17 PM Violence and Society 12 Girard’s concept of the mimetic dynamics of violence. Graham (2007) points out that in Durkheim’s account of these rituals, sadness is exalted and ampli- fied by its contagion from consciousness to consciousness, and is then expressed outwardly in the form of exuberant and violent movements. The result is some- thing like a ‘panic of sadness’. This panic turns to anger, and Durkheim says, ‘one feels the need to break and destroy something, and this is taken out on oneself or on others’ (Durkheim 2001: 297–8)6. Participants imagine that out- side are evil beings whose hostility can be appeased only by suffering – which can be directed against scapegoats. This insight suggests an idea that was to be central in Girard (e.g., 1977) that violence is not inimical to civilization but on the contrary lies at the core of social bonding. Collective killing, subsequently re-enacted through sacred rituals and myths establishes social unity, at least for a time, while emerging legal codes address that which must be prohibited to maintain that peace. However, the obligation to follow a law involves a radi- cally different kind of social bond than the totemic ritual, a distinction that will be addressed here. While attempting to place war and violence at the centre of social theory, Giddens (1996) discusses violence in terms of military power and the ‘monop- oly of violence’ in the nation state. Following Elias, he focuses on the civic ‘pacification’ of the social spaces bounded by nation states and non-state- sanctioned violence (para-militaries, irregulars, civil conflict, domestic and other criminal violence) is mentioned only in passing (Giddens, 1985: 120–1). This is done partly on the grounds that secessionist civil wars still have the creation of a nation state as their objective, and are therefore part of the his- torical trend towards the national monopoly of violence. Nonetheless, not only does this ignore the extent of violent interactions within ‘pacified’ civil socie- ties, but it avoids the question – what if the very processes of national remem- brance and identity invokes and sustains potentially violent sociality? What if the idea of the nation is founded upon the sacrificial death of those who have fought in wars, as Marvin and Ingle (1999) argue, in which case violence lies at the heart of modern social collectivities? Violence and power A central theme in much theorization of violence is that it is intimately con- nected with power, as an instantiation of domination, especially of men over women. This has opened research into the violence of everyday life and its institutionalization in concepts of masculinity and the state. Violence does not arise in a vacuum; rather it generally occurs in a repeated and patterned way, 6Piacular rites (but not the link with Girard) are discussed by Mukherjee (2010). 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 12 27/12/2010 12:23:17 PM What is Violence? 15 and criminological theories. Evolutionary and biological theories often regard aggression (which needs to be differentiated from violence) as an innate evolu- tionarily adaptive trait present in all people. Advocates of this view sometimes draw direct comparisons between primal and contemporary violence, for example between evidence of injuries from the Palaeolithic (Stone Age, between 200,000 and 10,000 years ago) and Saturday night admissions to a hospital Accident and Emergency departments. Evolutionary theories at most explain a capacity for violence rather than its manifestation and incidence in particular times and places. These arguments are discussed in Chapter 2. There is also a wide array of relevant criminological theories, although these are mostly theories of crime rather than aggression/violence per se. Some rele- vant criminological theories are briefly listed below, although readers will find them dealt with extensively elsewhere, e.g., Marsh et al. (2006: 91–133) and O’Brien and Yar (2008). Differential Association is a social learning theory developed by Sutherland et al. (1939/1992) who claimed that criminal behaviour is transmitted through generations via learning. Since the law is made politically by the most powerful (a view that was around prior to the 1970s ‘new deviancy theorists’), why do some obey and others offend? Criminal and non-criminal behaviour are both expressions of general needs and values – a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfa- vourable to violations of law. Most learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate personal groups and this learning includes the often complicated tech- niques of committing the crime, and the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations and attitudes. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity. This is a very general theory that simplifies the complexity of processes of normative learning and does not explain why there might be an excess of associations favourable to lawbreaking in certain social locations. Differential Association was addressed later in subcultural theories, such as Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) who claimed that there is a subcultural ethos where violent and physically aggressive responses are expected in some situations. Attitudes favourable to violence (most prominent among adolescent males) are learned through a process of differential association. However, a further difficulty with this is that Differential Association has an undeveloped theory of cognitive-moral learning. A more sophisticated theory was developed by Piaget and Kohlberg. In Kohlberg’s (1981) final ‘post-conventional’ stage of moral development, moral judgement involves reasoning rooted in concepts of ethical fairness and laws are evaluated in terms of their coherence with basic principles of fairness rather than upheld simply because they exist. Thus, he argues, there is an understanding that elements of morality, such as regard for life and human welfare, transcend particular cultures and societies and are to be upheld irrespective of other conventions or normative obligations. According 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 15 27/12/2010 12:23:17 PM Violence and Society 16 to this view, adherence to the law is linked to a judgement that it is reasonable and fair rather than a simple balance of ‘associations’ and moral action might in some circumstances involve breaking the law. Strain and institutional anomie. Robert Merton’s (1938) influential theory of crime identifies a potential ‘strain’ in modern societies where there is a dis- juncture between collective cultural goals (such as financial success) and the institutional norms for their attainment. Legitimate means to attain success are education, thrift, deferral of gratification (this was the 1930s, prior to credit-fuelled consumer growth) and occupation. But inequalities structure access to legitimate means and the goal of financial success is not available to everyone, and this discrepancy causes ‘strain’. Merton proposed a famous model of modes of adaptation: • Conformity – achieving success through legitimate means (generates little or no crime). • Ritualism – reject the socially approved goals or reduce expectations of success but gain pleasure from enacting the means, e.g., performing a job as an end in itself (again generates little or no crime). • Retreatism – give up on both the goals and the means and find alternative lifestyles (might involve some crime, such as illicit drug use). • Rebellion – reject both goals and means and replace them with new ones, as with new social movements, religious cults and militias where some crime will occur. • Innovation – accept the goals but innovate means of attainment, as in organized crime, white-collar crime, insurance fraud, bribery, prostitution, etc. Most criminal activity will involve innovation. This appears to explain property crime and many achievement-oriented forms of rule breaking, such as plagiarism, use of illicit substances in sport, bribing opponents, etc., although it does not necessarily account for non-property, especially ‘expressive’, crime. Nor does it explain why people who have access to the institutional means for attainment nonetheless break the rules – such as Conrad Black, who was for a time the third biggest newspaper magnate in the world but was convicted in 2007 of diverting millions of dollars of funds for personal benefit. Finally, this model does not provide a specific explanation of violence, although this is discussed further in Chapter 7 in relation to homicide. Subcultural theories focus on processes of social learning within (especially) youth cultures where, according to one proponent, ‘The process of becoming a delinquent is the same as the process of becoming a Boy Scout. The difference lies only in the cultural pattern with which the children associate’ (Cohen 1955: 14). Cohen developed Merton’s theory of social strain and argues that ‘delinquency’ is motivated less by material gain as opposed to expressive acts (such as vandal- ism and violence) through which working-class adolescents reject the dominant middle-class values. Cloward and Ohlin (1960) suggested that there were three types of subcultures, each following Merton’s categories, namely: 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 16 27/12/2010 12:23:18 PM What is Violence? 17 • Criminal: where adolescents pursue crime for material gain. This subculture is generally found in localities where there is an established pattern of adult crime providing an ‘illegitimate opportunity structure’ in which adolescents learn the ‘tricks of the trade’. • Conflict: where an illegitimate opportunity structure is not available, delinquents form conflicting gangs out of frustration and engage in expressive crime, including violence. • Retreatist: the behaviour of those who cannot succeed in either of the other types of subculture who might be involved in drug use and hustling. Standard criticisms of these theories (and one that we will meet often here) is that they over-predict criminality since the majority of young men (and even less women) do not join delinquent subcultures even though they might experience status frustration. The majority of those that do will cease offend- ing during their twenties. The role of the wider social environment and the reactions of authorities are not addressed as determinants of youth subcul- ture. Further, where identifiable groups do exist there can be dynamic move- ment between objectives. For example, in Northern Ireland many involved in paramilitary activity during the 1980s moved into organized crime in the 1990s and are now remerging as legitimate parliamentarians (Deane 2008). One of the most influential critiques of subcultural theory was Matza’s (1964) drift theory. He claimed that rather than form permanent oppositional subcultures, individuals could be part of a ‘subculture of delinquency’ with- out taking part in offending behaviour. This will be significant in the analysis of racist offending in Chapter 8. Adolescents might act out delinquent roles from time to time – drift into these activities rather than adopt an alternative way of life – and nonetheless express adherence to dominant norms, including dominant notions of masculine behaviour. The latter is evident in their recourse to ‘techniques of neutralization’ through which offenders both attempt to deny intent and express commitment to conventional norms. These techniques are: • Denial of responsibility and intent (e.g., ‘It wasn’t my fault’). • Denial of injury – did not cause any harm or damage (e.g., It wasn’t a big deal; they could afford the loss’). • Denial of the victim – the victim deserved whatever action the offender committed (e.g., ‘They had it coming’). • Condemnation of the condemners (e.g., ‘You were just as bad in your day’). • Appeal to higher loyalties (e.g., ‘My friends needed me, what was I going to do?’). The concept of neutralization techniques has been highly influential and has been applied to violent offenders (e.g., Ray et al. 2004). However, Topalli (2004) argues that the theory does not explain the behaviour of ‘nonconven- tionally oriented individuals’ such as ‘hardcore’ street offenders who do not discount responsibility through neutralization but affirm their crimes as 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 17 27/12/2010 12:23:18 PM Violence and Society 20 the victim cannot be seen); deception, for example when the killer avoids social contact with the victim often through establishing dominance in attention space; absorption in technique and routine – for example a hit-man regarding contract killing as ‘just a job’. This account of violence can be combined with Scheff and Retzinger’s (1991) theory of micro-interactional patterns that lead to violent confrontation. However, these focus on the role of ‘unacknowledged shame’ – that is, negative but largely repressed feelings of failure to have one’s sense of self validated in interaction especially with significant others. The accumulated sense of shame is transformed into rage when parties get into a cycle of reciprocal shaming. Collins points out (2008: 344–5) that this cycle can also be understood in terms of a failed interaction ritual that breaks mutual solidarity and therefore lowers inhibitions to violence, although he also notes that most escalating quarrels break off at the brink of violence and we need to understand the paths that lead from verbal confrontation to violence. Critique of causality. Causal explanations in the social sciences have always been controversial and contested by interpretative phenomenological approaches that aim to understand the quality of the act rather than place it within an external framework. Schinkel (2004) argues that in social science the ‘causal path remains in the dark’. He draws partly on David Hume’s cri- tique of causality – that what is called ‘cause’ is merely observed regularity – but also argues that causal accounts lose focus on the meaning of violence and the nature of the phenomenon. In particular, it ‘ignores the aesthetics of violence’ – its intrinsic features pursued for ‘its own sake’. In this context he cites the existence of websites devoted to extreme violence, the idea of ‘hoo- liganism as fun’ and the preoccupation of art with violence. However, his favourable reference to the ‘ground-breaking work of Lorenz’ (who is dis- cussed in Chapter 2) reveals an implicit belief that violence is an innate human capacity. This ignores many issues about the differential occurrence of violent actions within and between societies and over time and its multiple styles. Even if everyone possesses the ‘will to violence’, it is still appropriate to question why it appears in some times and spaces more than others. He does not say quite what he regards as ‘aesthetic violence’ and his references to filmic violence seem to eclipse the difference between representations of violence and the real thing. The aesthetic metaphor is telling in that it assumes that the artistic creator and violent actor are both autonomous and cannot be explained with reference to anything outside themselves. Both of these assumptions, though, are questionable – violence might arise more from situ- ations of interaction than from individuals and patterns of violence might be explicable in terms of broader social processes. However, while autotelic vio- lence is not a sufficient explanation of patterns of violence, there are circum- stances in which violent spirals (such as tit-for-tat killings in Northern Ireland) 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 20 27/12/2010 12:23:18 PM What is Violence? 21 create a kind of autonomous violence as a self-sustaining activity (Stewart and Strathern 2002: 41). Violence is socially organized A theme of this book is that violence needs to be understood not primarily as a problem of individual behaviour but embedded in social and cultural relation- ships. Moreover, levels and types of violence are not constant across societies and throughout history. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence that these change over time and are related to other complex changes in social organization. Norbert Elias (1897–1990) famously advanced the thesis of the ‘civilizational process’ that between the European Middle Ages and the modern period there was a transformation of social ‘habitus’ (lifestyles, norms and per- sonality) first apparent in a growth of courtly etiquette around eating, sexual behaviour and the body that gradually established new norms of interpersonal conduct in wider society. Linked to increasing social interdependence and the growth of the state’s monopoly of the means of violence, a modern personality emerged that was increasingly self-regulating, calculating, reserved and man- nered in everyday (especially public) interactions. One consequence of this personality structure was a diminution of interpersonal aggressiveness and violence. Elias’s thesis is dependent on a Freudian concept of social control over instinctual (especially sexual and aggressive) drives, although he ‘histori- cizes’ Freud’s theory in that rather than regard it as a timeless conflict between civilization and instincts he views the relationships between the body and emotional performance as changing over time in response to wider social transformations. Elias’s thinking has been influential in sociological studies of violence. In a not dissimilar way, Cooney (2003) writes of a trend towards ‘privatization of violence’. Over several hundreds of years manners and increased restraint around public aggression has resulted in a decline in public violence but at the same time a proportionate increase in intimate–familial violence, an issue not addressed by Elias. Other theorists too, notably Michel Foucault, from a very different theoretical standpoint, have identified a historical shift in modes of discipline with the birth of the prison along with new techniques of self-reflection. There is controversy of course about the historical support for these theses but in both approaches there is a focus on modernity as a process of enclosure within structured spaces. Not only social order but also violence is spatially organized. Sometimes the potential for violence is dramatized by visible markers such as the ‘Peace Lines’ separating communities in conflict and Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast, Derry and elsewhere in Northern Ireland. At other times urban divides are less visible and appear in 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 21 27/12/2010 12:23:18 PM Violence and Society 22 crime reports, tacit knowledge of relevant agencies and of course everyday mapping of dangerousness in the city. These issues are discussed in Chapter 4. The evolutionary context Violence is complex and difficult to define and even if a comprehensive theory of violence were possible, this would need to be interdisciplinary (Glasser 1998). There are many levels at which violence could be studied: sociological, anthropological, psychological, physiological, genetic, etc. The focus of this book is sociological but the wider disciplinary context within which violence is researched cannot be ignored. Violence is affective behaviour that engages neurological processes – mostly people get aggressive when they are angry or aroused and particular areas of the brain and physiological systems that under- lie emotion are generally active. This does not mean that aggression is ‘caused’ by neurological events. Indeed, one study comparing children with aggressive conduct disorder (CD) with a control group found that only in the CD group certain brain areas (the amygdala and ventral striatum) were stimulated by witnessing deliberately caused pain, suggesting that they enjoyed watching pain (Decety et al. 2009). This suggests that some people might learn to derive gratification from pain (and aggression) rather than aggression being explicable in terms of brain function. However, the idea that human aggression has a bio- logical and evolutionary basis is long-standing and is currently becoming increasingly popular through the influence of evolutionary psychology. It is claimed, for example, that where universal forms of aggression can be identified – such as masculine defence of honour and status – there will be an evolutionary bases for these. Or at least that at some time these behaviours solved some adaptation problem. There is a large area of research that com- pares human behaviour to that of other primates and finds similarities – chimps hunt one another in packs, for example (although bonobos do not), orang-utans regularly rape, and gorillas kill unrelated infants. Even though few would now claim that these behaviours are somehow hard-wired into humans, evolution- ary psychologists claim that evolution works on genes and genes influence the development of individual physiology. Therefore, the argument goes, we must link evolution to particular genes (or combinations) and these to developmen- tal processes, brain pathways and actual behaviour. For example, in most socie- ties male status-seeking mechanisms and territory defence systems have developed, which leads to violence under some conditions. Is there some sort of genetic mechanism that accounts for the (near) universality of male status-seeking in the great apes? These kinds of backward comparisons can seem like ‘just-so stories’ and it is important to recognize that widespread 02-Ray-4191-Ch-01.indd 22 27/12/2010 12:23:18 PM