PLIR 3400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Totalitarianism, International Criminal Court, Steven Pinker
18 Aug 2016
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Readings: (b) steven pinker, the better angels of our nature [2011], xxi-xxvii, 1-72, 129-168, 189-200p (skim), 228p-255 (skim) Steven pinker - the better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. What do you make of his discussion of ideology? (c) jay solomon and carol lee, obama contends with arc of instability, wall street journal. But, difficult to observe chimps and bonobos out in the wild. Even ritual war is deadly in per capita terms. Early on, anthropologists believed that there wasn"t much damage done because in comparison to nuclear weapons. But if you look at percentages, per capita terms, they"re fairly dead. But morning raids are the ones that are even deadlier, high body counts. Big problems of sampling and data quality. Statistically speaking (includes intergroup violence and homicide) Even pinker suggest there"s no clear trend in regard to intergroup violence (as opposed to homicide).
