Johan van der Dennen

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at University of Groningen

Purpose – This chapter contributes to comparative biopolitics and reviews primatological literature, especially about our nearest relatives, the Great Apes. Design/methodology/approach – Biopolitics in this chapter means evolutionarily informed political science, with emphasis on power relations. I review the literature on intrasexual and intersexu...

This monograph-length contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means” reviews and assesses the state of ethnographic and political scholarship concerning how nonstate, tribal societies deal with peacemaking and peacekeeping. A central argument is that the condition among nonstate societies was and is neither one of permanent w...

In this introduction to the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means,” the journal’s editor questions the assumptions that underwrite standard approaches in the social sciences to the issue of how non-state, tribal societies have dealt with matters of war and peace. He in particular examines and finds wanting the ap...

I present the literature pro and con the concept of ‘killing inhibitions’ in humans and animals as formulated by students of preindustrial warfare such as Turney-High, Quincy Wright, and Keeley; (human) ethologists and primatologists such as Lorenz, Tinbergen, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Sommer, Vogel, Ghilglieri, and Wrangham; students of contemporary milita...

In this chapter, I use the term “biopolitics” to mean evolutionarily informed political science. Politics has been characterized as “Who gets what, when, and how” (Lasswell, 1936), but rather than about material possessions, politics is understood to be about power, more specifically about collective power, especially differential group power compe...

Buss postulates that the human mind has developed adaptations for killing (killing or homicide modules), that murder is qualitatively different from all other forms of violence, and that homicidal ideation (fantasies) almost invariably precedes carried-out kills, and he claims that Daly & Wilson’s slip-up argument fails because premeditated mate (s...

NIGEL SPIVEY. The Ancient Olympics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xxi, 273. $39-95 (CDN). Reviewed by Onno M. van NijfKAUSHIK ROY. From Hydaspes to Kargil: A History of Warfare in India from 326 BC to AD 1999. New Delhi: Manohar, 2004. Pp. 283. Rs 595. Reviewed by Pradeep BaruaNATHAN ROSENSTEIN. Rome at War: Farms, Families, and Deat...

Edited by Richard Sherlock - BussDavid M., The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), 278 pages. ISBN: 1-59420-043-2. Paperback, $15. - Volume 24 Issue 1-2 - Johan M. G. van der Dennen

Als eigenständige Disziplin ist die Soziobiologie im Jahre 1975 einem breiteren Publikum bekannt geworden, in dem Jahr, als Edward O. Wilsons Standardwerk „Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” in den Vereinigten Staaten erschienen war. Die große Aufmerksamkeit, die das Werk des bedeutenden Entomologen auch jenseits der Grenzen der Fachgelehrten fand, v...

Ethnocentrism is a nearly universal syndrome of attitudes and behaviors.

I present an inventory of theories of war causation (and on the origin of war) in preindustrial (traditional, foraging, 'primitive', hunter-gatherer, band- and tribe-level) societies, with emphasis on the roles of natural selection, sexual selection and kin selection. Also the school of sociocultural evolution is briefly discussed.

Als eigenständige Disziplin ist die Soziobiologie im Jahre 1975 einem breiteren Publikum bekannt geworden, in dem Jahr, als Edward 0. Wilsons Standardwerk „Sociobiology: The New Synthesis“ Vereinigten Staaten erschienen war. Die große Aufmerksamkeit, die das Werk des bedeutenden Entomologen auch jenseits der Grenzen der Fachgelehrten fand, verdankt...

This volume discusses various theories regarding the origin of warfare in primitive societies as it relates to the evolution of a male-coalitional reproductive strategy. Aggression and agonistic behaviors are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The term ‘primitive’ as used in this chapter may give rise to some misunderstandings. It seems only appropriate, therefore, to make myself perfectly clear on this subject. I do not use the term primitive in any negative or derogatory sense, nor in a non-complex sense (primitive societies may in fact be more complicated than modern ones), but rather...

In this chapter biological theories of the origin of warfare in human evolution and/or biological theories of primitive warfare will be reviewed and criticized. Biological theories are considered to be those which derive their main concepts from evolutionary biology, ethology and related disciplines. The theories reviewed range from the period of S...

1. 1 THE STUDY OF CONFLICT Polemos Pantoon Pater Heraclitus Conflict on all levels of organic existence is pervasive, persistent, ubiquitous. Conflict is the universal experience of all life forms. Organisms are bound in multiple conflict-configurations and -coalitions, which have their own dynamic and their own logic. This does not mean, however,...

War has been regarded variously during history. Herakleitos called war the father of all things and looked on it as the motive force that kept the world going. It has been compared both with sickness and with health. The arguments vindicating warfare stem from various ideologies which have in common that they place the human person second to collec...

Book review: James Silverberg and J. Patrick Gray (Eds.) Aggression and Peacefulness in Humans and other Primates (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; pp. 310; ISBN 0 19 507119 0)