Among serious anthropologists John Hawks' blog is the most read while Peter Klevius' blog is the least* read. Why? Is it because of Klevius' "Saudiphobia"/"islamo(fascism)phobia"?
* So have patience with Klevius self-citations (and do read the chapter Science and References in Demand for Resources) which clearly are more important for general science than for Klevius own satisfaction.
Richard Lee's The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society came 1979 and was the main trigger of Klevius first letter to Georg Henrik von Wright (Wittgenstein's successor at Cambridge) on the topic and Klevius 1981 article Demand for Resources and 1992 book with the same title.
Out of respect and as support for Lee's work Klevius also bought the expensive Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunter-Gatherers (1999), which, of course, was of no practical use for Klevius.
Here's John Hawks recent blog-post:
Hawks writes:
He (Lee) has written an article in this year’s Annual Review of Anthropology that examines both uses and misuses of hunter-gatherer ethnography in theory-building about human nature: “Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution: New Light on Old Debates.”
In the introduction to the article, he recounts a story involving his “Man the Hunter” co-editor, the late Irven DeVore:
Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, a brilliant US legislator in the 1960s and the founder of the scholarship program that bears his name, was just one public figure struggling to come to grips with the import of Lorenz’s theses. I vividly remember the late Irven DeVore coming into my office at Harvard University. “I just got off the phone with Senator William Fulbright calling from Washington,” Devore said. “He asked me ‘Professor DeVore, if Konrad Lorenz is right, how are we ever to negotiate a nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union?’”
DeVore reassured Fulbright that Lorenz’s views were far from universally accepted among anthropologists, that violence in human history was a variable not a constant, and that its causes and expressions were far more complex than could be explained simply by pure animal instinct.
DeVore’s disclaimers appeared to calm Senator Fulbright’s nerves, and in fact the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) went on to successfully negotiate a series of nuclear arms reduction treaties over the years. Nevertheless, the question of violence in human history continued to animate the debate within anthropology, fueled by Robert Ardrey’s “killer ape” hypothesis in his books African Genesis (Ardrey 1961) and The Territorial Imperative (Ardrey 1966). Interest was sustained by Napoleon Chagnon’s (1968) influential ethnography of the “fierce” Yanomamo and more recently by the writings of Wrangham & Peterson (1996), such as Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. I have labeled this persistent thread within anthropology and related disciplines as the “Bellicose School” (Lee 2014).
I am spending some time reading this review and taking notes, and it bears close reading. Lee’s theme is that many people who use “hunter-gatherers” as a category are actually lumping things that are quite different from each other. If you want to use ethnographic studies of today’s people to say anything about prehistoric people, you need to understand that any living group may be like ancient people in some ways, and very different from ancient people in other ways.
Klevius writes: When it comes to Konrad Lorentz I share Lee's view - as clearly stated on page 20 in Demand for Resources (1992):
Det finns ett flertal delikata kulturantropologiska fördomar som fått starka grepp på allmänheten. En sådan gäller föreställningen om människans aggressivitet som en oemotståndlig negativ biologisk kraft som måste få utlopp. Att hävda detta och samtidigt förorda kanaliserad aggressivitet i syfte att förmildra verkningarna av densamma innebär i själva verket att man kulturellt skapar och stimulerar beteendemönster av negativ karaktär. Fysiskt våld mot artfränder är liksom utvidgat resursbegär en inlärd egenskap. Den organiserade form av fysiskt våld mot artfränder som krig innebär verkar inte vara äldre än det utvidgade resursbegäret. Troligen hänger de intimt samman.
And translated from original English, i.e. Swedish, to modern English:
There are several delicate cultural-anthropological prejudices which have got a strong grip on the public. One is the view about human aggression as an irresistible negative biological force which has to be released. To argue this while simultaneously proposing channeled aggressiveness for the purpose of mitigating its effects, in fact, means that one culturally creates and stimulates patterns of negative behavior. Same species violence is, like expanded demand for resources, a learned behavior. The organized form of violence, i.e. war, seems not to be older than expanded demands for resources. They are likely intimately connected.
The civilized wo/man walks
back in her/his foot steps,
strikes a light and lets her/himself be enlightened
and glorified
Only the forgotten suffering,
and the shadow behind her/him,
hovering over the future,
are greater (P. Klevius 1992, title page).
"The archeologist of knowledge finds
in his/her digging
often him/herself"
(P. Klevius 1992:7)
The concept of freedom is created,
like diamonds,
only under pressure
(P. Klevius 1992:33)
More from Demand for Resources (1992, ISBN 9173288411):
So called civilized societies can be described as dynamic, hence contrasting against the more static appearance of the economic setting (lack of investment) of e.g. hunter-gatherers.
A re-classification of human societies departing from C. Levi-Strauss idea about "warm" and "cold" societies (Klevius 1992):
A Without 'extended demands for resources' (EDFR).
B Affected by EDFR but still retaining a simplistic, "primitive" way of life.
C Civilized with EDFR
These categories are, of course, only conceptual. Applied to a conventional classification the following pattern appears:
1 The primitive stage when all were hunter/gatherers (A, according to EDFR classification).
2 Nomads (A, B, C).
3 Farmers (B, C).
4 Civilized (C).
As a consequence EDFR is here used as a concept tied to civilization (and its preliminary stages) The above also suggests a critique against our conventional conception of a simplistic connection between intelligence and performance as (wrongly) exemplified by C. Popper's scenario of a World 1-3 transition of human cultural development.
(Implications of this view can be seen in Klevius theory of mind EMAH, The Even More Astonishing Hypothesis, which deals with the mind/body "problem" and the closing gap between not only humans and other living things but also betweenhumans and machines).
Here's the last part of the chapter Khoe, San and Bantu (in Demand for Resources, Klevius 1992).
For those who don't master original English there are some modern English words as well in the text:
I begreppet San inryms de tre grupperna !Kung, !Xu och G!wi vilka alla har egna närbesläktade men självständiga språk. Av dessa grupper är det G!wi som kan antas stå närmast det klassiska samlar/jägarsamhället även om egentligen inga grupper i dag återfinns i de kulturmönster som förekom ännu på 50-60-talet.
En uppskattning av de traditionella egenskaperna i kulturmönstret hos San (konventionellt grupp 1, URB-grupp A) inkluderar frånvaro av domesticering, lös sammanhållning, ofixerad, icke hierarkisk beslutsordning samt i det närmaste obefintlig materiell status (undantag utgör t.ex. jaktvapen och byten före den oundvikliga fördelningen).
Patricia Draper har i anslutning till "The Harvard !Kung Bushmen Study Project" gjort en undersökning om skillnader i könsroller hos kringvandrande klassiska samlar/jägargrupper och stationära "mångsysslande" !Kung grupper. Hon fann då bl.a. "that !Kung society may be the least sexist of any we have experienced" samt att detta märks genom "women's subsistence contribution and the control women retain over the food they have gathered, the lack of rigidity in sex-typing of many adult activities including domestic chores and aspects of child socialization; the cultural sanction against physical expression of aggression; the smaller group size; and the nature of the settlement pattern." Hon noterar vidare att "authoritarian behavior is avoided by adults of both sexes." Alla dessa egenskaper naggades enligt Draper i kanten hos de stationära grupperna.
En pionjär då det gällde att påvisa hur lite arbete som San samlar/jägarna lade ner på födoanskaffning och boende var Richard Lee som 1963 studerade den bland antropologer numera välkända Dobe Base Camp 12. Han levde med dem, noterade metodiskt allt han såg, mätte och vägde såväl mat som människor, tog tid på allt de gjorde och resultatet av hans, och senare även andras arbeten kan sammanfattas i Marshal Sahlins ord: "If the affluent society is one where all the people's material wants are easily satisfied this is the first affluent society." Han fortsatte: "The human condition must keep man the prisoner at hard labor of a perpetual disparity between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means... " och vidare "There is (instead) a road to affluence, departing from premises... that human wants are few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate."
I mitten av 70-talet kunde bl.a. Diane Gelburd konstatera att bushmännens liv i Dobe hade ändrat karaktär sedan Richard Lee's fältstudier. Hyddorna var byggda av lera istället för av gräs och stod längre ifrån varandra. En del fick dörrar i takt med att de fylldes med personliga ägodelar. Man byggde stängsel för djuren som man nu införskaffat. Likadant var det med benresterna som tidigare enbart bestått av lämningar från vilda djur men 1976 till 80% bestod av benrester från domesticerade djur.
Samtidigt skedde förändringar i de interna sociala relationerna. Fördelning av tillgångar minskade och formerna för t.ex. äktenskap komplicerades p.g.a. nya, förut okända problem kring egendomsfrågor.
"What explains the shattering of this society"? frågade sig John Yellen från The National Science Foundation anthropology program. Han fortsätter: "It hasn't been a direct force, a war, the ravages of disease..." och svarar slutligen: "1t is the internal conflicts, the tensions, the inconsistencies, the impossibility of reconciling such different views of the world."
Till detta kan tilläggas att Khoi och San har levt i flera tusen år sida vid sida utan att de samlande/jagande San blivit boskapshållare. Dessutom har de jordbrukande ochboskapsskötande Bantufolken för åtminstone 500 år sedan invaderat Khoisan?folkens traditionella marker.
Det är alltså något mer som skall till för att knäcka ryggraden på ett typiskt San-samhälle. Handlar det om en kritisk punkt för försörjningsunderlag/befolkningsstorlek? Finns det en nedre gräns för antalet individer i en fungerande samlar/jägarkultur? I vilket skede exakt bryts det sociala immunförsvaret gentemot utvidgade resursbegär ner?
Oavsett om det finns en kritisk punkt eller om det är fråga om en långsamt ökande spänning som efter hand får det ena fästet efter det andra att ge efter så ser vi här uppkomsten av den spricka mellan kulturformer där det utvidgande resursbegäret med varierande framgång slagit rot.
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