Is War Part Of Human Nature? w/ Douglas Fry

Hello, everybody! Before the weekend starts, I bring you an interview with Dr. Douglas P. Fry. He is Professor and Chair in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has written extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution in his own books and in journals such as Science and American Anthropologist. His work frequently engages the debate surrounding the origins of war, arguing against claims that war or lethal aggression is rooted in human evolution. He’s the author or editor of books like The Human Potential for Peace; Beyond War; War, Peace, and Human Nature; and Nurturing Our Humanity.

In this episode, we focus on the anthropology of war. Dr. Fry critiques the evolutionary psychology approach to war. We go through some of the flaws with the archaeological evidence presented by Steven Pinker in The Batter Angels of Our Nature. We then get into the ecological and social conditions that favor war, and critiques about the data Napoleon Chagnon collected on the Yanomamö. We also talk about violence-defusing mechanisms in mammals. We end the interview talking about ways of preventing war in modern societies.

https://youtu.be/uz9xPBQ_CO0

Link to podcast version (Anchor): http://bit.ly/2NuPq43