Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 22:535–552, 2012

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1091-1359 print/1540-3556 online
DOI: 10.1080/10911359.2011.598727

Anthropology of Violence: Historical and

Current Theories, Concepts, and Debates in
Physical and Socio-cultural Anthropology

SARAH ACCOMAZZO
School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

This literature review describes the theoretical contributions of

physical and socio-cultural anthropology to an understanding of
violence, based on the common themes expressed by founders of
anthropology that are still visible in today’s post-modern anthro-
pological concepts and theories. The review focuses on three dis-
tinct eras: founding theories and concepts (1880s–1940s); modern
theories and concepts (1950s–1970s); and post-modern theories
and concepts (1980s to the present). Though anthropologists have
been accused of maintaining or perpetrating violence themselves
due to theoretical and methodological trends, new post-modern
concepts have moved toward integrated theories of violence that
encourage an activist anthropologist and incorporate concepts
such as globalization and colonialism. The review concludes with
a conceptual map.

KEYWORDS Anthropology, violence, theory

INTRODUCTION

Since anthropology’s early beginnings as a unique discipline of academic

inquiry, anthropologists have engaged in scholarly work around issues that
fall into the larger category of ‘‘violence’’ or are closely related to violence
and have proposed concepts and theories that have been used to understand
aspects of violence. Interestingly, the usage of the term violence to represent
a specific area of study in anthropology, as in ‘‘anthropology of violence,’’ has
come into popular discussion only since the 1980s and has been the subject
of much debate between prominent scholars in the field. However, in 2004,

Address correspondence to Sarah Accomazzo, School of Social Welfare, University of

California, 120 Haviland Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

535
536 S. Accomazzo

anthropologist Neil Whitehead took others to task, writing that anthropology

has proven resistant to confronting some of the major violence in the twenti-
eth century and perhaps has even perpetrated violence itself; unless anthro-
pology can move forward conceptually, theoretically, and methodologically,
Whitehead warns that anthropology ‘‘risks becoming intellectually marginal
to both the subjects and consumers of its texts’’ (p. 2). This provocative
issue has framed the present-day discussion of anthropology of violence
and provides the backdrop for this literature review.
This review provides an overview of the historical and contemporary
anthropological theories and concepts in physical and socio-cultural anthro-
pological studies of violence and will also discuss the current tensions and
debates within the growing field of anthropology of violence. Three distinct
eras are considered (1880s–1950s, 1950s–1970s, and 1980s to the present),
with physical anthropology reflecting the general theme of objective the-
ory and socio-cultural anthropology representing more subjective theory.
Though anthropologists have disagreed on many theoretical and conceptual
aspects of violence, their work has converged on a few key issues. First, it
is clear that anthropologists who study violence have generally shifted from
older theories (more simplistic, one-dimensional conceptions of violence
based on fieldwork in more stable and smaller societies) to more complex
and multi-layered theories and concepts (incorporating the greater reality
of larger, unstable societies impacted by colonialism and globalization).
As it is impossible for an anthropologist to leave behind his or her own
cultural values and paradigms when studying violence, anthropologists need
to remain aware of the dangers of making judgments about the practices
of another culture to not stand by as injustices are done. Though both
historical and current anthropologists have been charged with inadvertently
overlooking violence (purposely ignoring violence for various reasons or
even contributing to violence through methodological techniques and cer-
tain anthropological practices), the discipline of anthropology has made
significant contributions to a conceptual and theoretical understanding of
violence.

METHODS

Using the Google search engine, the search began with the key phrase
‘‘Anthropology of Violence’’ and led to four course syllabi on ‘‘anthropology
of violence’’ from various campuses across the country. In addition to the
readings found on the syllabi, each professor was contacted for further
recommendations. Also, faculty in the U.C. Berkeley Department of Anthro-
pology provided suggestions for additional sources.
The U.C. Berkeley electronic database system (Melvyl Pilot and OskiCat)
was used to search two major anthropological databases (Anthrosource and
 Anthropology of Violence 537

Anthroplus). Keywords included anthropology of violence, violence, aggres-

sion, theory, genocide, and warfare. In addition, five major collections (pub-
lished from 1986–2004), entitled similarly to ‘‘Anthropology of Violence,’’
were reviewed.
This literature review has several limitations. Though anthropology in-
cludes four main fields (physical, archaeological, socio-cultural, and linguistic
anthropology) (Moore, 2008, p. 33), this review focuses on physical and
socio-cultural anthropology of violence and does not address archaeology
or linguistics. As anthropologists have written so extensively on aspects of
violence, this review is not comprehensive but highlights several of the most
prominent theoretical concepts and debates.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The Role of Theory in Anthropology of Violence

Before continuing, it is important to acknowledge a debate among anthro-
pologists about the role and nature of theory in anthropology. Interestingly,
until the 1960s, theories directly dealing with violence were fairly scarce,
except for evolutionary theories (Otterbein, 1999; Scheper-Hughes & Bour-
gois, 2004; Whitehead, 2004c). Though anthropologists were conducting
ethnographies on topics related to violence, such as warfare practices and
violent rituals within societies, they did not often directly theorize about
violence. Several reasons have been suggested as to why violence was so
neglected early on in anthropological theory. Otterbein (1999) has proposed
the following explanations: (1) anthropologists did not often conduct field-
work in societies where warfare (and thus obvious violence) was occurring,
(2) anthropologists were often pacifists and morally opposed to warfare and
violence and so chose not to study these topics, and (3) anthropologists
failed to understand the historical and political contexts of the people they
studied and so missed the importance of war and violence (p. 795). Other
explanations include (1) anthropologists did not want to buy into the stereo-
type of barbaric, savage cultures, (2) anthropologist have tended to ‘‘see
the good’’ in cultures, or (3) anthropology has not developed proper tech-
niques for training students to conduct fieldwork in violent environments,
so anthropologists either deliberately or unconsciously avoided studying
and theorizing on violence (Nordstrom & Robben, 1996; Scheper-Hughes
& Bourgois, 2004).

Theoretical Trends in Anthropology of Violence

This review traces several theoretical and conceptual debates that have oc-
curred throughout studies of violence in anthropology. This section briefly
538 S. Accomazzo

outlines several of the main trends that are rooted in concepts proposed
by founders of anthropology, have been prevalent throughout the study of
violence in anthropology, and are reflected throughout this review.
First, Moore (2008) and Layton (1997) describe two trends of thought
that have developed in anthropological theory: (1) objective lines of the-
ory influenced by the biological sciences that attempt to find explanations,
causes, and laws for human social behavior and that view ‘‘social life as
transactions in goods and services’’ (Layton, 1997); and (2) subjective lines
of theory, connected to the humanities, that are more concerned with inter-
pretation and finding meaning. These two lines of theoretical inquiry date
back to some of the founders of anthropology in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, namely Lewis Henry Morgan, who proposed a sci-
entific, developmental stage theory of social and cultural evolution, and Franz
Boas, who rejected evolutionary theories and embraced an anti-theoretical,
more humanistic perspective, questioning the usefulness of theory because
cultures are so complex and the results of different historical processes,
requiring the use of ethnographic methods to conduct objective, detailed
studies of cultures (Moore, 2008). Similarly, anthropologists who study vi-
olence have reflected specifically on the utility of theory in understanding
and studying violence. Whitehead (2004c) summarizes the current debate
as tensions between scientific voices, suggesting that anthropologists should
focus on creating theories of violence using scientific evidence or on more
humanistic efforts to record, observe, and create narratives about violence.
Also, as the world had become increasingly fragmented and intercon-
nected, anthropological theory has both diverged and converged (Moore,
2008). Early on in anthropological inquiry, there were only a few theoretical
frameworks from which anthropologists operated (evolutionary theories and
anti-theoretical, culturally relative theories), leading to fairly concrete, one
dimensional conceptions of culture (Hinton, 2002). Currently, however, the
world has become more complex through globalization and technology, and
anthropologists operate from multiple and diverse theoretical perspectives
that reflect this more abstract and interrelated, yet disjointed, reality (Hinton,
2002; Kuper, 2002; Moore, 2008).
However, anthropologists have agreed on two points regarding theory.
First, culture is inherently more complex and nuanced than originally un-
derstood, and theories must reflect this (Moore, 2008). Second, theories are
culturally and politically constructed, so anthropologists must examine their
own cultural and political contexts when developing theory about culture
(Kuper, 2002; Layton, 1997; Moore, 2008).
Debates about evolutionary versus non-evolutionary theories of vio-
lence remain one of the most hotly contested topics. Physical anthropologists
have leaned toward explanations of violence that are based in evolutionary
theories, stating that characteristics such as aggression and competitiveness
are inherent in humans, and violence is one of the tools that has served an
 Anthropology of Violence 539

evolutionary function of helping species to survive and thrive (Otterbein,

1999; Silverberg & Gray, 1992; De Waal, 1992; Schroeder & Schmidt, 2001).
Conversely, social and cultural anthropologists have leaned toward expla-
nations of violence that are based in structural, symbolic, and experiential
theories (Layton, 1997; Moore, 2008; Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004;
Whitehead, 2004c). Though some have proposed approaches that integrate
these two fundamentally different perspectives (Silverberg & Gray, 1992;
Stewart & Strathern, 2002), there has been, and remains, a divisive split
between those who accept an evolutionary perspective and those who reject
it (DeWaal, 1992). Theories are, in the end, both useful and dangerous
(Layton, 1997).

FOUNDING PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES

AND CONCEPTS (1880s–1950s)

Physical anthropology is built on evolutionary, biological theories that are

rooted in the work of Charles Darwin. In 1859, Darwin published On the
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, forever changing the nature
of the social sciences by proposing that humans are descended from apes
and that through a process of evolution and natural selection, the strongest
individuals survive and the weakest die out (Moore, 2008). In essence,
random variations in genetics account for survival in various environments,
and aggressiveness and competition are inherent human traits that help
the strongest in a species to survive (Layton, 1996). Early anthropologists
applied these ideas to culture. In 1877, Lewis Henry Morgan published his
classic work Ancient Society, in which he proposed a stage theory of social
and cultural evolution for understanding the development of human society
(Moore, 2008). Morgan suggested that a continuum of cultural progress exists
and that all cultures fall somewhere on this continuum, with ‘‘most primitive,’’
including savagery and barbarism, at one end, and ‘‘most civilized’’ on the
other (Moore, 2008, p. 23). Differences in cultures merely meant that they
were in different stages of development (not that they were biologically
inferior), and thus, cultures with savage or barbaric violent practices were
just further behind on the evolutionary continuum. Evolutionary theories of
culture, building on Darwin and Morgan, gained increasing popularity.
In an example of early physical anthropologists utilizing an evolutionary
model to explain aspects of violence, in The Evolution of Culture and Other
Essays (1906), Pitt-Fox uses an evolutionary model to explain why weapons
of war have developed similarly in different cultures over time. Pitt-Fox states
that primitive and savage societies utilize weapons that have been copied
from weapons used by animals, (e.g., monkeys throw stones and porcupines
throw quills at intruders), giving primitive humans the ideas of building
and throwing spears as a means of protection (pp. 82–84). As civilizations
540 S. Accomazzo

have advanced, they have created more specialized and complicated tools.
Though he states that it might be hard for people from a ‘‘civilized society’’
to admit that their ancestors were once ‘‘incapable of designing the weapons
we find in the hands of savages of the present day’’ (p. 96), he concludes
that the development in the use of primitive weapons to advanced weapons
has occurred cross-culturally, and societies are merely in different stages of
development.
The work of Bronislau Malinowski (1926) and his ideas of functionalism
also contributed to an understanding of violence during these early years.
Malinowski studied people living on the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea
from 1914 to 1920 and concluded that culture provides a medium to meet the
basic biological, physiological, and social needs of humans (Layton, 1997).
He argued against ideas of evolution, stating that culture is not the result of
evolutionary stages but is a function of the society’s present needs (Layton,
1997). Every society has the same needs, and these needs could be identi-
fied and compared, along with the cultural practices to meet these needs,
using detailed ethnographic methods (Moore, 2008). Malinowski’s functional
theory, though influential in cultural anthropology as well, was also used by
physical anthropologists to connect his ideas about the functional quality of
culture to the ideas that violence was used by societies to gain status and
resources (Moore, 2008).

MODERN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES

AND CONCEPTS (1950s–1980s)

Due mostly to the idea of cultural relativism and the anti-evolutionary influ-
ence of Franz Boas and his students, evolutionary theories were unpopular
from the early 1900s until the 1950s, (Layton, 1996; Moore, 2008). However,
evolutionary theories once again gained credence in the 1950s due in part to
the work of anthropologist Leslie White (Moore, 2008). Through his studies
of Native American communities throughout the American Southwest, White
suggested that there are scientific ways to study and compare cultures,
coming from a culturally deterministic viewpoint that emphasized that culture
exists independently from societies, and so generalizations about culture are
possible and can be learned by studying and comparing societies (Moore,
2008). With the advent of scientific inquiry, anthropology faced a need to
become more scientific, and evolutionary theories provided a platform for
this type of inquiry.
Physical anthropologists (also called sociobiologists or socioecologists)
after the 1950s often used scientific and statistical methods to study violence
through comparing aggression and conflict in animals and humans (Leyton,
2003). One common theory is that aggression is an innate tendency that all
living species possess, and thus aggressive, and/or violent, acts have served
 Anthropology of Violence 541

an evolutionary purpose of allowing living creatures to establish dominance

and thus have more access to resources, including, for example, material
items such as food and also sexual partners (Knauft, 1991). Many studies have
observed the behavior of monkeys and have applied these understandings
to human interactions.
For example, Pereira (1992) conducted a study on two free-ranging
groups of yellow baboons in Kenya from 1980 to 1981 to better under-
stand why dominant females interfere in fights between offspring. He found
that dominant females prevented their own decline in rank among other
females, and the decline of their matrilineal line, by intervening in fights
between juvenile females and supporting either their own kin over non-
kin or the oldest participant. However, dominant females intervened less in
fights between juvenile males and did not promote status acquisition among
male kin members, instead only supporting the larger, higher-positioned
male. Pereira suggests that it is too risky for adult females to intervene with
juvenile males, who are getting much bigger and stronger, and so might
endanger the status of their daughters in getting males. He concludes that
with more research, ‘‘the interplay between process of development and
their reproductive ramifications will be revealed and roles for development
in the evolution of social behavior should be illuminated’’ (p. 143). This study
demonstrates several important principles (refined in the 1950s to the 1970s)
that physical anthropologists have used to study violence. First, Pereira uses
a study of aggression in primates to gain understanding about the evolution
of culture and social behavior, suggesting that aggression and violence are
strategies used by baboons to help their evolutionary progress. Also, he
uses careful, ethnographic fieldwork methods to make objective observations
about the subjects of his study, along with accepted statistical methods to
carefully analyze his data.

POST-MODERN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL

THEORIES AND CONCEPTS (1980s TO THE PRESENT)

Physical anthropologists have conducted many kinship studies by using ani-

mals to identify how humans have used aggression and violence to keep their
own kin lines dominant within society (De Waal, 1992). For example, John
Patton (2000) suggests that an evolutionary biological paradigm of aggression
has often neglected to address the question of ‘‘Why do soldiers die for
their country?’’ (p. 417). He suggests that the concept of reciprocal altruism
(putting aside conflicts, based on shared interests, to form coalitions to
oppose other groups) can answer this question, citing two studies conducted
among chimpanzees and baboons, by Goodall in 1986 and one by Kummer
in 1971 (Patton, 2000). Patton applied these findings to the Conambo, an
Ecuadorian agricultural community that has a history of violence with other
542 S. Accomazzo

communities, observing that male warriors who took the most risks in battle
had the highest status within the community (and thus more access to
resources) and had significantly more wives than other men. He took this
to mean that violence served an instrumental function in the Conambo
community of helping men gain status: The higher the risk, the more status a
man received. Warriors took extreme risks in battle because if they survived,
a biological, evolutionary-driven cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that the
benefits of status, prestige, and resources were worth it.
It is important to note that most post-modern physical anthropologists
have acknowledged that violence cannot be explained solely by evolutionary
and biologically based theories, because culture and the environment always
play a role (Cronk & Irons, 2000; De Waal, 1992; Knauft, 1991; Silverberg
& Gray, 1992). As De Waal writes, ‘‘Biologists obviously know that : : :
attitudes towards war and peace can be molded through education and
culture; that genes create potentials, not inevitabilities : : : ’’ (p. 41). Integrated
theories that acknowledge the contribution of physical anthropologists to an
understanding of violence but also combine concepts from both physical
and social-cultural anthropology are necessary (De Waal; Silverberg & Gray,
1992). This review will next consider socio-cultural anthropological theories
of violence.

1880s–1950s: FOUNDING SOCIO-CULTURAL

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES AND CONCEPTS

Altogether, socio-cultural anthropologists of the 1880s through the 1950s

published only minimally on topics directly related to violence and did
not contribute significantly to developing anthropological theories on vio-
lence. During this time, though cultures with violence were often studied
and violent practices were recorded in ethnographies, due to themes of
cultural and moral relativism (leading to anti-theoretical and comparative
approaches) and salvage anthropology, plausible theories and concepts on
violence were seldom advanced. In fact, some have argued that due to these
themes, anthropologists actually perpetrated violence upon the communities
they were studying.
Franz Boas is considered the founder of socio-cultural anthropology.
The views and the strategies he put forth have had tremendous impact on
the development of socio-cultural theories, including historical and current
socio-cultural theories of violence. Franz Boas’ views on anthropology were
both anti-theoretical and anti-evolutionary (Layton, 1997). In 1911, he con-
ducted a study of the craniums of 17,821 immigrants and determined that
cranial form was very irregular among family lines and also countries of
origin; he concluded from these results that traits that were proposed by
evolutionists to be genetically fixed, such as cranium shape, had in fact been
 Anthropology of Violence 543

modified by something else, presumably the environment (Moore, 2008).

This study formed the basis of Boas’s conclusions that cultures are integrated
wholes that are produced by specific historical contexts, not at all reflections
of evolutionary stages. He insisted on cultural relativism, suggesting that it is
not possible to compare cultures, as each culture is so complex and has been
formed by so many different processes within such specific and diverse con-
texts (Layton, 1997). He suggested that the best way to learn about a culture
was to take a humanistic (as opposed to scientific) approach and immerse
oneself in detailed, objective studies of other cultures, influencing many
generations of anthropologists to use ethnography and fieldwork (Moore,
2008). These theories and concepts have been reflected throughout cultural
anthropology’s approach to violence themes and have been particularly built
upon by post-modern anthropologists of the 1980s to the present.
The ideas of Boas led inadvertently to the development of ‘‘salvage
anthropology,’’ a tradition in anthropology that dominated cultural anthro-
pology from the 1900s to the 1950s and influenced the development of the-
ories of violence and even perpetrated violence themselves. Salvage anthro-
pologists tended to study small, self-contained, mostly stable, non-Western
societies by recording information on disappearing societies before they
were lost forever (Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004).
Arthur Kroeber (2004) was strongly influenced by the ideas of Boas
and used them to advance the concept of salvage anthropology through his
studies of Native Americans in California (Moore, 2008). Kroeber felt strongly
that culture is a mental construct that could not be explained by organic
individual needs. Using themes of cultural relativism and anti-theoretical
approaches, he noted that culture consisted of learned and shared elements
unique to each culture given its own historical processes (Moore, 2008).
Scheper-Hughes (2004) cites Kroeber’s work as an example of the dan-
gers of salvage anthropology and the violence it committed against its sub-
jects of study. Ishi, an Indian from one of the last Northern California tribes
to live in the wilderness, was captured by police in 1908 and spent the last
years of his life living at the University of California, Berkeley’s Museum
of Anthropology, a ‘‘live’’ specimen for anthropologists to study. Scheper-
Hughes scathingly denounces this ‘‘salvage anthropology’’ approach, stating
that anthropologists were primarily concerned with scientifically studying
Ishi and learning about his culture before he died, and any chance to study
his culture died with him. However, anthropologists completely overlooked
the fact that Ishi’s tribe had died out as a direct result of genocide committed
by the colonial American government and white settlers living in California;
in an attempt to create anthropological conceptual and theoretical frame-
works by studying Ishi’s use of tools and language, anthropologists both
ignored and contributed to the violence perpetrated against Ishi, his tribe,
and Native Americans throughout the country. It was only in 1999, after
Ishi’s brain was found preserved (against his explicit wishes to have his body
544 S. Accomazzo

buried in a traditional ritual) that the UC Berkeley Anthropology Department

issued an apology for its role in perpetrating violence against both one man
and an entire civilization.
Unfortunately, the concepts of cultural relativism (the idea that cultures
are the results of their own historical processes and thus are not compa-
rable) and salvage anthropology had long-ranging negative effects on the
study of socio-cultural violence during this period (Otterbein, 1999; Scheper-
Hughes & Bourgois, 2004). For example, cultural relativism led to a moral
relativism philosophy, where anthropologists attempted to observe cultures
without judgment in an attempt to avoid stereotyping practices in different
cultures (Whitehead, 2004b). Unfortunately, this well-intentioned attempt re-
sulted in anthropologists’ often ignoring violence happening before their eyes
or even missing the warning signs that violence, such as genocide, was about
to happen (Scheper-Hughes, 2004). Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois give the
example of anthropologist Richard Geertz, who studied communities in Bali,
Indonesia in the years leading up to the 1965 massacre of 500,000 people by
Islamic fundamentalists but whose research did not ever mention the clear
signs of the impending massacre. When Geertz was asked in 1996 why he
did not report on these signs, he stated that he had not wanted to draw away
from his other theoretical points or to engage in the ‘‘politics of advocacy’’ (p. 6).

1950s–1970s: MODERN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL

THEORIES AND CONCEPTS

Beginning in the 1950s, publications on warfare and general violence in-

creased dramatically (Ferguson, 2005; Otterbein, 1999). Anthropologists from
the 1950s to the 1970s tended to move away from attributing violence to
‘‘traditional’’ or ‘‘tribal’’ societies and began to acknowledge that violence
occurs in all societies (Whitehead, 2004c). The focus of studies shifted from
small, contained communities to studying larger, more complex communities
that were dealing with the affects of globalism, colonialism, and capitalism.
One explanation for this can be found in WWI and WWII, both of which
forced an acknowledgement that violence existed in many forms in the
Western world and inspired a new wave of theories on violence.
Modern theories and concepts of violence (1950s–1970s) focused more
on physical violence. They started to recognize that the definition of violence
is always relative and dependent on who is involved and that cultures
might define violence differently, bringing up concepts of legitimacy versus
illegitimacy and the rationality of violence. With all this came the beginning
recognition of the economic and political forces associated with violence
through colonialism and globalization.
Riches (1986) published an early collection of writings on an ‘‘anthropol-
ogy of violence’’ reflecting the growing attention given to violence through-
 Anthropology of Violence 545

out the 1950s to 1970s and led up to current, post-modern anthropological

concepts of violence. Riches proposed a theory of rational preemption to
explain why violence is utilized; in essence, perpetrators of violence always
have choices, but they pick violence because it secures an advantage over an
opponent before the opponent can act. Though violence has both expressive
(violence is a performance in that it communicates a message to all involved)
and instrumental (violence serves a specific purpose in the moment) motives,
he suggests that violence is usually utilized rationally and strategically by
perpetrators and with the intention to send a message to those involved and
also to the community at large. Riches also proposes a ‘‘triangle of violence,’’
stating that there are always three people involved in violence: the actor,
the victim, and the witness. Riches asserts that though violence is always
legitimate in the eyes of the actor, it may or may not be legitimate in the
eyes of the victims or witnesses.
Modern theories also started to acknowledge the role of economic and
political processes in violence though did not thoroughly start to acknowl-
edge the impact of forces such as colonialism and globalization. Riches
(1986) states that violence is often used as a strategy of choice because
violence is easily manipulated in political conflict; violence’s legitimacy is
always questionable, thus making it a choice strategy for getting people’s
attention quickly in political contexts.

POST-MODERNISM ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES

AND CONCEPTS (1980s TO THE PRESENT)

During the post-modern period, from the 1980s to the present, anthropolo-
gists have actively engaged in the study of violence, including establishing a
subfield of socio-cultural anthropology called Anthropology of Violence. Post-
modern anthropologists have proposed many diverse theories and conceptu-
alizations of violence, including the impact of colonialism and globalization
on anthropology, symbolic violence, structural violence, a violence contin-
uum, anthropologist as activist, and questioning definitions of violence and
the utility of theory. All of these theories and concepts reflect the themes of
socio-cultural anthropology: anti-evolutionary, anti-theoretical, and cultural
relativism.
As globalization became a recognized phenomenon in the twentieth
century, it became more and more apparent that early anthropologists had of-
ten studied small, relatively stable societies instead of larger, more complex,
unstable societies, the types of societies that had more violence and were
disrupted by colonialism (Ferguson, 2005; Hinton, 2002; Scheper-Hughes
& Bourgois, 2004; Stewart & Strathern, 2002). In addition, the civil war in
Vietnam and the visibility of genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia
drew attention to the fact that anthropologists had not considered violence
546 S. Accomazzo

as stemming from its colonial context (Ferguson, 2005; Scheper-Hughes &

Bourgois, 2004; Otterbein, 1999; Whitehead, 2004a). In fact, many post-
modern anthropologists have asserted that violence previously observed in
‘‘tribal’’ or ‘‘primitive’’ cultures was actually directly a result of colonialism
(Ferguson, 2004; Hinton, 2003; Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004; White-
head, 2004a).
The colonial impact on anthropological subjects of study has greatly
influenced socio-cultural approaches to violence. Two important concepts,
symbolic violence and structural violence, have gained popularity and are
related to the idea of the colonial impact on cultures. The concept of symbolic
violence was explored extensively by anthropologist Bourdieu (1977) in his
fieldwork in Algeria and other parts of Africa.
Bourdieu criticized anthropologists for spending so much time carefully
‘‘decoding’’ the customs of other cultures using their own culture as a base
point and for reducing foreign cultures to things that are familiar (kinship
systems, gift giving, etc.; Leyton, 2003). He suggested that anthropologists
lack a true understanding of what the customs symbolize to the people inside
the culture because they had not understood the symbolic systems used by
the people (how things are understood and represented to the people).
Following this line of thought, he suggests that symbolic power is a potent
force that does not rely on systems but instead rests on its acknowledgement
by the people with power and the ones who are acted upon with power
(Bourdieu, 1977). Similarly, symbolic violence is ‘‘the violence which is
exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity’’ (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 2004). Symbolic violence is a powerful idea that has appealed to
many anthropologists because it accounts for the shared dynamic between
a perpetrator, a victim, and a witness when both are taking their established
customs and patterns for granted, as part of their unconscious worldview.
Bourdieu and Wacquant give the example that male domination of women
no longer needs to be justified through contests of physical strength; instead,
it is a subconscious, symbolic construct that both men and women buy into
because it is part of a shared, internalized cultural norm. This concept has
been instrumental in forcing anthropologists to acknowledge violence that
is couched in all sorts of structures that are considered ‘‘normal,’’ and that
this everyday quality of this violence often result in its ‘‘invisible’’ quality
(Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004, p. 21).
Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence helped formulate another
widely utilized post-modern theory: Structural violence (not to be confused
with structuralism), the result of the large-scale, invisible social forces that
permeate society, makes up normal social practice that an individual takes for
granted but that, by their existence, commit violence (e.g., poverty, racism,
sexism, colonialism, government). Farmer (2004) gives the example of a
poor woman in Haiti who contracted AIDS after being forced into sexual
relations with a rich, married man and died after many years of working
 Anthropology of Violence 547

as a maid for minimal pay; Farmer suggests that colonialism and structural
violence all contributed to this woman’s suffering, as great inequities and
small opportunity for social mobility were created by America’s financial
support of the military coup, which put a few in power but increased
suffering in the lives of many others.
The theories of colonial violence, symbolic violence, and structural
violence have all contributed to a post-modern anthropological conception
that violence occurs in both war and peace and that the invisible, everyday
violences, as exemplified in the concept of structural violence, are often
the results of the larger, overarching political, economic, and institutional
forces that shape the visible violence that occurs between individuals and
families, such as domestic violence, rape, or one gang member’s shooting
another (Farmer, 2004; Bourgois, 2004; Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004).
However, anthropologists have failed systematically to recognize and name
structural violence during fieldwork, to understand its roots, and to con-
nect the micro-violences in everyday life as related to the larger, invisible,
but potent structural forces of violence (Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004;
Whitehead, 2004a).
Post-modern anthropologists have also turned their attention to one
other form of violence that has often been ignored in anthropology: ‘‘extraor-
dinary violence that is authorized, public, visible, and rewarded’’ (Scheper-
Hughes, 2008, p. 81). This violence is exemplified in genocide (‘‘dirty wars’’
or ‘‘state terror as usual’’) when governments use violence for control against
their own civilians in a public fashion that is generally condoned by soci-
ety. This type of violence has aspects of both invisible/structural violence
and the visible/everyday violence; the state uses structural violence to set
the stage for its own individual violences that are condoned by society
even when these violences, in fact, act to keep the structural violence in
place. Bourgois gives a heart-wrenching example of this by describing his
experiences during the Salvador Civil War in 1981, when the government,
supported by U.S. finances, killed and tortured civilians while ‘‘pursuing’’ the
guerilla rebel fighters (Bourgois, 2004). Scheper-Hughes posits a modern-
day example, drawing a striking parallel between the El Salvador Civil War
and the American government’s post-911 actions in both invading Iraq and
condoning torture of supposed terrorists (Scheper-Hughes, 2008). Scheper-
Hughes and Bourgois have thus suggested a ‘‘continuum of violence’’ to
account for the interconnectedness of all forms of violence, from the invisi-
ble/structural violence to the visible/every day micro-violence, to extraordi-
nary/reasonable/public violence.
The idea that anthropologists must change their role from one of ob-
jective observer to pro-active, human rights activist is one of the most de-
bated assertions in post-modern anthropology (Nordstrom & Robben, 1995;
Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, 2004; Whitehead, 2004c). It is proposed that
anthropologists themselves have committed violence by standing by and
548 S. Accomazzo

observing and recording violence, or ignoring violence, or trivializing vio-

lence, over the years. Scheper-Hughes feels strongly that anthropologists and
journalists and nongovernmental organization workers have a responsibility
to the communities they study and to the field of anthropology, to be, at the
least, an ‘‘engaged witness’’ as opposed to a ‘‘scientific spectator’’ advocated
by Boas and many other founders of anthropology (p. 26). Voncersely,
others, such as Nordstrom and Robben in their classic Fieldwork Under Fire
(2004), worry that an activist anthropologist runs the risk of pushing their
own (and most likely Western) values and world views and doing more
harm than good.
Nordstrom and Robben (1996) propose a more humanistic approach
to understanding violence, stating that ‘‘theory emerges from experience’’
(p. 4). Stewart and Strathern (2002) call for a more integrated theory of
violence that draws on the understanding of many disciplines, including
biology, sociology, and psychology, in addition to anthropology. Whitehead
(2004c) insists that new theories need to be developed to meet new under-
standings of violence, theories that focus more on the experiential aspects
of violence and view violence as a symbol and as a performance, not just as
an instrument of power and ritual.
An integrated theoretical perspective, combining the perspectives of
all different theories on violence, has been proposed by a few anthro-
pologists. Many physical and socio-cultural anthropologists have accepted
that anthropology of violence must incorporate both a biological and an
environmental, cultural perspective. However, tensions remain, as Scheper-
Hughes and Bourgois (2004) state, ‘‘We reject that violence is fundamentally
a question of hard-wiring, genes, or hormones, while accepting that these
contribute to human behavior : : : ’’ (p. 3). Nordstrom and Robben (1996)
suggest that balancing these tensions is part of the job of an anthropol-
ogist; if post-modern anthropologists truly seek growth, they must focus
on the experience of violence above all else and must keep the current
debates in mind when conducting fieldwork (recalling the subjective line
of theory posited at the beginning of the paper). Stewart and Strathern
(2002) propose moving toward an anthropological theory of violence that
combines the findings of physical and socio-cultural anthropology and also
brings in biological, historical, psychological, sociological, and other theories
on violence. Though post-modern anthropologists have theorized in many
different directions, they seem to feel strongly that anthropology of violence
must continue to move from studying small, stable communities and safe,
simplistic topics to engaging with larger, more complex societies that are
dealing with the more complex issues brought on by industrialization, glob-
alization, colonialism, and life in the modern world; they also seem to agree
that in this changing world, it is ever-more important for anthropologists to
continue to questions their own assumptions that they bring to every field
setting.
549
FIGURE 1 Conceptual map of anthropological theories and concepts of violence.
550 S. Accomazzo

CONCLUSION AND CONCEPTUAL MAP

Though anthropology of violence gained popularity only as a subfield of

study within anthropology since the 1980s, anthropologists have contributed
a significant body of work on violence. This review provides an overview
of the historical and current theories and concepts in both physical and
socio-cultural anthropology of violence. In an attempt to organize these
theories and concepts, three time periods have been suggested, including
Founding Theories and Concepts (1880s–1940s); Modern Theories and Con-
cepts (1950s–1970s); and Post-Modern Theories and Concepts (1980s to the
present). A conceptual map tracing these ideas is illustrated in Figure 1.
It is clear that physical anthropology has moved from its primary fo-
cus on evolutionary, theoretical, and cultural determinism perspectives to
emphasizing scientific, statistical methods and accounting for both genetic
and cultural forces. Though socio-cultural anthropology has stayed relatively
focused on the same anti-evolutionary, anti-theoretical, and cultural rela-
tivism perspectives, new understandings of violence now take into account
colonialism, globalization, symbolic, and structural violence and a continuum
of violence. Anthropologists also agree that any understanding of violence is
impacted by one’s own culture and thus have committed, across the board,
to remaining vigilant of judging violence based on personal values and
paradigms. An integrated theory of violence, proposed by many anthro-
pologists in different fields, shows promise in continuing to move the field
forward.

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