The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (158 page)

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Authors: Steven Pinker

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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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80. Hunting-farming tradeoff: Gat, 2006; North et al., 2009; Steckel & Wallis, 2009.
81. First states: Steckel & Wallis, 2009.
82. Cruelty and despotism in early states: Betzig, 1986; Otterbein, 2004; Spitzer, 1975.
Chapter 3: The Civilizing Process
 
1. Norbert Elias: Fletcher, 1997.
2. Gurr graph of homicide in England: Gurr, 1981.
3. Survey of violence perception: See note 1 to chapter 1.
4. History of homicide: Cockburn, 1991; Eisner, 2001, 2003; Johnson & Monkkonen, 1996; Monkkonen, 1997; Spierenburg, 2008.
5. Long-term homicide trends: Eisner, 2003.
6. Homicides in Kent: Cockburn, 1991.
7. Correlation of homicide with other violence: Eisner, 2003, pp. 93–94; Zimring, 2007; Marvell, 1999; Daly & Wilson, 1988.
8. Quacks: Keeley, 1996, pp. 94–97; Eisner, 2003, pp. 94–95.
9. Constancies in homicide: Eisner, 2003, 2009; Daly & Wilson, 1988.
10. Decline in elite violence: Eisner, 2003; Clark, 2007a, p. 122; Cooney, 1997.
11. Verkko’s Law: Daly & Wilson, 1988; Eisner, 2003; Eisner, 2008.
12.
The medieval housebook
: Elias, 1939/2000, pp. 513–16; discussion on pp. 172–82; Graf zu Waldburg Wolfegg, 1988.
13. Furious gusto of knightly destruction: Tuchman, 1978, p. 8.
14. Everyday violence in the Middle Ages: Elias, 1939/2000, p. 168.
15. “his brains flowed forth”: Hanawalt, 1976, pp. 311–12, quoted in Monkkonen, 2001, p. 154.
16. Violent medieval entertainment: Tuchman, 1978, p. 135.
17. Cutting off noses: Groebner, 1995.
18. “whether a nose once cut off can grow back”: Groebner, 1995, p. 4.
19. Impetuousness in the Middle Ages: Elias, 1939/2000, pp. 168–69.
20. “childishness noticeable in medieval behavior”: Tuchman, 1978, p. 52.
21. “slight compression of the lips”: D. L. Sayers, introduction,
The song of Roland
(New York: Viking, 1957), p. 15, quoted in Kaeuper, 2000, p. 33.
22. “pearls and rubies” in handkerchief: Elias, 1939/2000, p. 123.
23. “anything purulent”: Elias, 1939/2000, p. 130.
24. Disgust as an adaptation: Curtis & Biran, 2001; Pinker, 1997, chap. 6; Rozin & Fallon, 1987.
25. Changes in swearing: Pinker, 2007b, chap. 7.
26. Pissabeds and windfuckers: Hughes, 1991/1998, p. 3.
27. Self-control: Daly & Wilson, 2000; Pinker, 1997, chap. 6; Schelling, 1984.
28. Universal propriety: Brown, 1991; Duerr, 1988–97, but see Mennell & Goudsblom, 1997.
29. “no zero point”: Elias, 1939/2000, pp. 135, 181, 403, 421.
30. Number of political units in Europe: Wright, 1942, p. 215; Richardson, 1960, pp. 168–69.
31. Military revolution: Levy, Walker, & Edwards, 2001.
32. “States make war and vice-versa”: Tilly, 1985.
33. King’s peace: Daly & Wilson, 1988, p. 242.
34. Blood money and coroners: Daly & Wilson, 1988, pp. 241–45.
35. “The Christian attitude . . . held that money was evil”: Tuchman, 1978, p. 37.
36. “commercial law prohibited innovation”: Tuchman, 1978, p. 37.
37. Evolution of cooperation: Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Ridley, 1997; Trivers, 1971.
38. Free markets and empathy: Mueller, 1999, 2010b.
39. Doux commerce: Quoted in Fukuyama, 1999, p. 254.
40. Major transitions in evolution: Maynard Smith & Szathmáry, 1997. For a review, see Pinker, 2000.
41. Positive-sum games and progress: Wright, 2000.
42. Decivilizing process in Nazi Germany: de Swaan, 2001; Fletcher, 1997; Krieken, 1998; Mennell, 1990; Steenhuis, 1984.
43. Continuation of homicide decline in Nazi Germany: Eisner, 2008.
44. Problems for the Civilizing Process: Eisner, 2003.
45. State legitimacy and nonviolence: Eisner, 2003; Roth, 2009.
46. Informal norms of cooperation: Ellickson, 1991; Fukuyama, 1999; Ridley, 1997.
47. Equality matching: Fiske, 1992; see also “Morality and Taboo” in chap. 9 of this book.
48. Homicide rate in ranchers: Roth, 2009, p. 355. The rate per 100,000 adults for ranchers, taken from figure 7.2, is multiplied by 0.65 to convert it to a rate per 100,000 people, as suggested on p. 495 of Roth’s book.
49. Changing socioeconomic profile of violence: Cooney, 1997; Eisner, 2003.
50. “I have beat many a fellow”: Quoted in Wouters, 2007, p. 37.
51. “There are men to whom nothing”: Quoted in Wouters, 2007, p. 37.
52. “With the battle-ax”: S. Sailer, 2004, “More diversity = Less welfare?”
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/diverse.htm
.
53. Civilization of the middle and working classes: Spierenburg, 2008; Wiener, 2004; Wood, 2004.
54. Crime as self-help justice: Black, 1983; Wood, 2003.
55. Motives for homicide: Black, 1983; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Eisner, 2009.
56. Murderers as martyrs: Black, 1983, p. 39.
57. Violence as a public health problem: See Pinker, 2002, chap. 17.
58. Definition of a mental disorder: Wakefield, 1992.
59. Police and African Americans: Black, 1980, 134–41, quoted in Cooney, 1997, p. 394.
60. Judicial system uninterested in low-status people: Cooney, 1997, p. 394.
61. neighborhood knucklehead: MacDonald, 2006.
62. Self-help in the inner city: Wilkinson, Beaty, & Lurry, 2009.
63. Persistence of clan violence in Europe: Eisner, 2003; Gat, 2006.
64. Fine line between civil war and organized crime: Mueller, 2004a.
65. Reliability of cross-national crime statistics: LaFree, 1999; LaFree & Tseloni, 2006.
66. The homicide rates for individual countries come from UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2009. If a WHO estimate is listed, I used that; if not, I report the geometric mean between the high and low estimates.
67. World homicide rate: Krug et al., 2002, p. 10.
68. Europeans eat with swords: Elias, 1939/2000, p. 107.
69. Low crime in autocracies and established democracies: LaFree & Tseloni, 2006; Patterson, 2008; O. Patterson, “Jamaica’s bloody democracy,”
New York Times,
May 26, 2010. Civil war in anocracies: Gleditsch, Hegre, & Strand, 2009; Hegre, Ellingsen, Gates, & Gleditsch, 2001; Marshall & Cole, 2008. Civil war shades into crime: Mueller, 2004a.
70. Post-decolonization violence in New Guinea: Wiessner, 2006.
71. Enga proverbs: Wiessner, 2006, p. 179.
72. Civilizing offensives: Spierenburg, 2008; Wiener, 2004; Wood, 2003, 2004.
73. Civilizing offensive in New Guinea: Wiessner, 2010.
74. Vacuous explanations of American violence: see Pinker, 2002, pp. 308–9.
75. Americans more violent even without guns: Monkkonen, 1989, 2001. Approximately 65 percent of American homicides are committed with firearms, Cook & Moore, 1999, p. 279; U.S. Department of Justice, 2007, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 7,
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_07.html
. This means that the American homicide rate without firearms is higher than the total homicide rates of most European countries.
76. Homicide statistics for countries and regions: See note 66.
77. Black and white homicide rates: Fox & Zawitz,
Homicide trends in the US,
2007.
78. Race gap in crime surveys: Skogan, 1989, pp. 240–41.
79. North-South difference not just a black-white difference: Courtwright, 1996, p. 61; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996.
80. 19th-century American violence: Gurr, 1981; Gurr, 1989a; Monkkonen, 1989, 2001; Roth, 2009.
81. Irish American homicide: Gurr, 1981, 1989a; Monkkonen, 1989, 2001.
82. Decline of northeastern urban homicide: Gurr, 1981, 1989a.
83. History of the race gap in violence: Monkkonen, 2001; Roth, 2009. Increasing black-white homicide gap in New York: Gurr, 1989b, p. 39.
84. Code of the streets: Anderson, 1999.
85. Democracy came too early: Spierenburg, 2006.
86. “the South had a deliberately weak state”: Monkkonen, 2001, p. 157.
87. Most killings were reasonable: Monkkonen, 1989, p. 94.
88. Jacksonian justice: quoted in Courtwright, 1996, p. 29.
89. More violence in the South: Monkkonen, 2001, pp. 156–57; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996; Gurr, 1989a, pp. 53–54, note 74.
90. Southern culture of honor: Nisbett & Cohen, 1996.
91. Honor killing versus auto theft: Cohen & Nisbett, 1997.
92. Insulted southerners: Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwarz, 1996.
93. Lumping it: Ellickson, 1991. Herding and violence: Chu, Rivera, & Loftin, 2000.
94. Ox-stunning fisticuffs: Nabokov, 1955/1997, pp. 171–72.
95. Drunken cowboys: Courtwright, 1996, p. 89.
96. Homicide rates in the Wild West: Courtwright, 1996, pp. 96–97. Wichita: Roth, 2009, p. 381.
97. Ineffective justice in the Wild West: Courtwright, 1996, p. 100.
98. He Called Bill Smith a Liar: Courtwright, 1996, p. 29.
99. Dirty deck, dirty neck: Courtwright, 1996, p. 92.
100. Gold rush property rights: Umbeck, 1981, p. 50.
101. Gomorrah: Courtwright, 1996, pp. 74–75.
102. Violence is a young man’s game: Daly & Wilson, 1988; Eisner, 2009; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996.
103. Evolutionary psychology of male violence: Buss, 2005; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Geary, 2010; Gottschall, 2008.
104. On track to reproductive failure: Daly & Wilson, 1988, p. 163.
105. Alcohol and violence: Bushman, 1997; Bushman & Cooper, 1990.
106. Women pacified the West: Courtwright, 1996.
107. Pacifying effects of marriage: Sampson, Laub, & Wimer, 2006.
108. Uptick in violence in the 1960s: Eisner, 2003; Eisner, 2008; Fukuyama, 1999; Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985.
109. Homicide boom: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Fox & Zawitz, 2007.
110. Black homicide rate: Zahn & McCall, 1999.
111. Marriage boom: Courtwright, 1996.
112. Baby boom can’t explain crime boom: Zimring, 2007, pp. 59–60; Skogan, 1989.
113. Perennial invasion of barbarians: Wilson, 1974, pp. 58–59, quoted in Zimring, 2007, pp. 58–59.
114. Relative cohort size not enough: Zimring, 2007, pp. 58–59.
115. Common knowledge and solidarity: Chwe, 2001; Pinker, 2007b, chap. 8.
116. Informalization in dress and manners: Lieberson, 2000. Informalization in forms of address: Pinker, 2007b, chap. 8.
117. Decline of trust in institutions: Fukuyama, 1999.
118.
Proletarianization
from Arnold Toynbee;
defining deviancy down
from Daniel Patrick Moynihan; quoted in Charles Murray, “Prole Models,”
Wall Street Journal
, Feb. 6, 2001.
119. Timekeeping and self-control: Elias, 1939/2000, p. 380.
120. Conning the intellectuals: See, e.g., Pinker, 2002, pp. 261–62.
121. Rape as radical chic: See Brownmiller, 1975, pp. 248–55, and chap. 7, for numerous examples.
122. Rape as insurrection: Cleaver, 1968/1999, p. 33. See also Brownmiller, 1975, pp. 248–53.
123. Intelligent and eloquent rapist: Jacket and interior blurbs in Cleaver, 1968/1999.
124. Retreat of the justice system: Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985, pp. 424–25. See also Zimring, 2007, figure 3.2, p. 47.
125. Decriminalization of public disorder: Fukuyama, 1999.
126. Failure to protect African Americans: Kennedy, 1997.
127. Paranoia about the police: Wilkinson et al., 2009.
128. Moynihan report: Massey & Sampson, 2009.
129. Perverse incentives: Fukuyama, 1999; Murray, 1984.
130. Skepticism of parenting effects: Harris, 1998/2008; Pinker, 2002, chap. 19; Wright & Beaver, 2005.
131. American homicide rates: FBI
Uniform crime reports,
1950–2005, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2010b.
132. Canadian homicide: Gartner, 2009.
133. European homicide: Eisner, 2008.
134. Decline in other crimes: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics,
National crime victimization survey
, 1990 and 2000, reported in Zimring, 2007, p. 8.

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