Homicide in the Context of Killing (USP): Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

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== The Anthropology of Homicide ==
== The Anthropology of Homicide ==
'''3. Intraspecific intragroup violence is at the core of the homicide question.''' Violence of the human animal is much like violence of the non-human animal. Animal violence is usually interspecific: The predators practice offensive violence, whereas their victims practice defensive violence to prevent being eaten. Intraspecific competition is usually ritualized and related to fight for access to food, water, and sex. On the other hand, intra-specific killings are not as rare as once believed. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, 1966, still believed that that intra-specific killings like homicide and warfare only occurred in humans. Fact is that human violence is normally interspecific, but regularly also intraspecific. Intraspecific violence has proven to be useful in evolutionary terms. Especially for males. Intraspecific violence of the human animal normally takes the form of intergroup violence which tends to reinforce parochial altruism and improved survival chances. When intraspecific violence goes intragroup, there is a higher likelihood of negative social reactions (definition as homicide and intensive sanctions).
'''3. Intraspecific intragroup violence is at the core of the homicide question.''' Violence of the human animal is much like violence of the non-human animal. Animal violence is usually interspecific: The predators practice offensive violence, whereas their victims practice defensive violence to prevent being eaten. Intraspecific competition is usually ritualized and related to fight for access to food, water, and sex. On the other hand, intra-specific killings are not as rare as once believed. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, 1966, still believed that that intra-specific killings like homicide and warfare only occurred in humans. Fact is that human violence is normally interspecific, but regularly also intraspecific. Intraspecific violence has proven to be useful in evolutionary terms. Especially for males: Reproductive benefits from intergroup (intra-specific) aggression are high in humans, but primarily accrue to males. - Intraspecific violence of the human animal normally takes the form of intergroup violence which tends to reinforce parochial altruism and improved survival chances. Human patterns of warfare, especially risk-taking, require private incentives or sanctions to solve the collective action problem. This is especially true for humans, and within human groups it is more common in cultures with greater risk-taking and elaborate cultural institutions and complex social organization. In more recent evolutionary times, variation in war practices reflects cultural group selection. Features of more successful groups spread within and between populations. Warfare can enable the rise of ultrasocial normals and complex societies. Groups that contain more individuals willing to behave altruistically towards in-group members, and act parochially towards outgroup members may achieve greater evolutionary success in warfare driving the evolution of human parochial altruism. Self-sacrificial behaviour in war is thus associated with improved group outcomes. - When intraspecific violence goes intragroup, there is a higher likelihood of negative social reactions (definition as homicide and intensive sanctions).


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4. '''The male human animal is a schizophrenic killer.''' Cum grano salis. He likes to think of himself as a peaceful being, but indulges in the extermination of living organisms - including of his own species.
iolence, but they are neither the only ones to practice intra-specific violence and killings, nor are they the worst ones (the worst one with 20 out of every 100 deaths by intra-specific violence is the meerkat).'''
*Alexander Georgiev (2013): Humans are a highly aggressive species in comparison to other animals, probably as a result of an unusually high benefit-to-cost ratio for intra-specific aggression (male-male coalitionary killings). Early modern humans killed each other at a rate of about 1300 in 100,000. But the worst is the meerkat: 20,000 out of 100,000 (mostly youngsters) lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their own kind (José María Gómez et al. 2016). The meerkats are followed by two types of monkeys and assorted lemurs, the New Zealand sea lion, long-tailed marmot, lion, branded mongoose, and grey wolf - then comes the human animal (fission-fusion). A consolation: Killings of humans by humans are not an immutable feature of all members and collectives of humans. Much depends on the environment (Maori vs. Moriori).


4. '''The male human animal is a schizophrenic killer.''' He likes to think of himself as a peaceful being, but indulges in the extermination of living organisms - including of his own species.  
5. '''Genocide is not foreign to the human species'''. It can be seen as specific kind of coalitionary intergroup aggression that occurs when attackers are able to kill at high gain and low cost to themselves.
*Georgiev (2013): Humans are a highly aggressive species in comparison to other animals, probably as a result of an unusually high benefit-to-cost ratio for intra-specific aggression. This conclusion is supported by frequent and widespread occurrence of male-male coalitionary killing and by male-female sexual coercion. Sex differences in violent aggression in humans and other species probably evolved by sexual selection and reflect different optimal competitive strategies for males and females.


5. '''Genocide is not foreign to the human species'''. It can be seen as specific kind of coalitionary intergroup aggression that occurs when attackers are able to kill at high gain and low cost to themselves. Alexander Georgiev: "Consider, for example, the situation of the European colonial armies that first encountered the local populations in America, Africa, Asia, or Australia. The benefits of using violent aggression against the indigenous populations were enormous: taking away their land, their possessions, and even their people to use as slaves. The costs of the colonists’ aggression were minimal: armed with rifles, they could quickly kill large numbers of indigenous individuals at little or no physical risk to themselves. Moreover, the indigenous populations looked different and spoke a different language; it must have been quite easy for the colonists to find a psychological, political, historical, or religious justification for their violence, without suffering any consequences. These unusually high benefit/cost ratios for violent aggression against people from other countries are rare or nonexistent in animals, which may explain why large-scale aggression toward conspecifics is absent in animals, with the possible exception of chimpanzees and some species of ants and termites that stage wars against other colonies, destroying or taking away their resources and enslaving the workers."
:Georgiev: "Consider, for example, the situation of the European colonial armies that first encountered the local populations in America, Africa, Asia, or Australia. The benefits of using violent aggression against the indigenous populations were enormous: taking away their land, their possessions, and even their people to use as slaves. The costs of the colonists’ aggression were minimal: armed with rifles, they could quickly kill large numbers of indigenous individuals at little or no physical risk to themselves. Moreover, the indigenous populations looked different and spoke a different language; it must have been quite easy for the colonists to find a psychological, political, historical, or religious justification for their violence, without suffering any consequences. These unusually high benefit/cost ratios for violent aggression against people from other countries are rare or nonexistent in animals, which may explain why large-scale aggression toward conspecifics is absent in animals, with the possible exception of chimpanzees and some species of ants and termites that stage wars against other colonies, destroying or taking away their resources and enslaving the workers."
 
Reproductive benefits from intergroup (intra-specific) aggression are high in humans, but primarily accrue to males.
 
Human patterns of warfare, especially risk-taking, require private incentives or sanctions to solve the collective action problem. This is especially true for humans, and within human groups it is more common in cultures with greater risk-taking and elaborate cultural institutions and complex social organization. In more recent evolutionary times, variation in war practices reflects cultural group selection. Features of more successful groups spread within and between populations. Warfare can enable the rise of ultrasocial normals and complex societies. Groups that contain more individuals willing to behave altruistically towards in-group members, and act parochially towards outgroup members may achieve greater evolutionary success in warfare driving the evolution of human parochial altruism. Self-sacrificial behaviour in war is thus associated with improved group outcomes. Not all animals kill also members of their own kind, but the human animal does. In that sense we humans are "bad". But we are not the worst.
 
A study published in the journal Nature found modern humans to be pretty dangerous, killing each other at a rate of about 13 in 1,000. At least we're not the worst. That title goes to, surprise, the meerkat. "Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their own kind (José María Gómez et al. 2016). The meerkats were followed by two types of monkeys and assorted lemurs. The New Zealand sea lion, long-tailed marmot, lion, branded mongoose, and grey wolf round out the top 11. Not surprisingly, violence was more common among mammals who share territory than among loners like bats and whales. (Fission-fusion societies).
 
Killings of humans by humans are not an immutable feature of all members and collectives of humans. Much depends on the environment (Maori vs. Moriori).


== The History of Homicide ==
== The History of Homicide ==
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