Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland
About: This article is published in History: Reviews of New Books.The article was published on 1991-04-01. It has received 107 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Peacemaking & Feud.
Citations
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TL;DR: The CuPS approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other, to provide a rudimentary but integrated approach to understanding both within- and between-culture variation.
Abstract: The CuPS (Culture × Person × Situation) approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other. Culture is important because it helps define psychological situations and create meaningful clusters of behavior according to particular logics. Individual differences are important because individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse or reject a culture's ideals. Further, because different cultures are organized by different logics, individual differences mean something different in each. Central to these studies are concepts of honor-related violence and individual worth as being inalienable versus socially conferred. We illustrate our argument with 2 experiments involving participants from honor, face, and dignity cultures. The studies showed that the same "type" of person who was most helpful, honest, and likely to behave with integrity in one culture was the "type" of person least likely to do so in another culture. We discuss how CuPS can provide a rudimentary but integrated approach to understanding both within- and between-culture variation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en
463 citations
Cites background from "Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, ..."
...…that it does in other systems, where positive reciprocity (as in gift exchange) tends to be a “total social fact” (Mauss, 2000) or where negative reciprocity (as in the willingness to punish those who have crossed you) is necessary for self-defense (Cohen & Nisbett, 1994; Miller, 1990, 1993)....
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TL;DR: It is argued that the wide interpretation of the experimental evidence must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild,” because there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment.
Abstract: Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms - "strong" and "weak" reciprocity - that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free- riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a "narrow" and a "wide" reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in "real-world" situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation "in the wild." In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing.
417 citations
Cites background from "Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, ..."
...In line with this idea, people in small-scale societies distinguish between legitimate (and proportionate) retaliation and illegitimate (and disproportionate) retaliation (von Fürer-Hameindorf 1967; Miller 1990)....
[...]
TL;DR: An approach to morality is developed as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions, and the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally.
Abstract: What makes humans moral beings? This question can be understood either as a proximate "how" question or as an ultimate "why" question. The "how" question is about the mental and social mechanisms that produce moral judgments and interactions, and has been investigated by psychologists and social scientists. The "why" question is about the fitness consequences that explain why humans have morality, and has been discussed by evolutionary biologists in the context of the evolution of cooperation. Our goal here is to contribute to a fruitful articulation of such proximate and ultimate explanations of human morality. We develop an approach to morality as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions. In this environment, the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally. Those who offer less than others will be left out of cooperation; conversely, those who offer more will be exploited by their partners. In line with this mutualistic approach, the study of a range of economic games involving property rights, collective actions, mutual help and punishment shows that participants' distributions aim at sharing the costs and benefits of interactions in an impartial way. In particular, the distribution of resources is influenced by effort and talent, and the perception of each participant's rights on the resources to be distributed.
407 citations
Cites background from "Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, ..."
...…subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at punishment and illegitimate (and disproportionate) retaliation (von Fürer-Haimendorf 1967; Miller 1990).9 Although humans, in a mutualistic framework, have not evolved an instinct to punish, some punishment is nonetheless to be expected in…...
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TL;DR: The actual customs of open-source software imply an underlying theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure, which is related to an analysis of the hacker culture as a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away.
Abstract: After observing a contradiction between the 'official' ideology defined by open-source licenses and the actual behavior of hackers, we examine the actual customs which regulate the ownership and control of open-source software. We discover that they imply an underlying theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure. We relate that to an analysis of the hacker culture as a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away. We then examine the implications of this analysis for conflict resolution in the culture, and develop some prescriptive implications.
302 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract.
Abstract: This paper introduces an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract. Under this assumption courts cannot perform their normal function in standard economic analysis of contract law, where they deter opportunistic breach because they can verify the promisor's behavior. Nonetheless, the model shows that despite judicial incompetence people will voluntarily enter legally enforceable, jointly valuable contracts. The reason is that when parties care about their reputations, and are engaged in repeated interaction, they can deter certain forms of otherwise profitable opportunism by credibly threatening a mutually destructive lawsuit. The law, on this theory, generates value not by directly deterring bad behavior, but by supplying parties with the ability to retaliate when they are harmed. The paper explores the model's implications for understanding contracting and contract law.
272 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: The CuPS approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other, to provide a rudimentary but integrated approach to understanding both within- and between-culture variation.
Abstract: The CuPS (Culture × Person × Situation) approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other. Culture is important because it helps define psychological situations and create meaningful clusters of behavior according to particular logics. Individual differences are important because individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse or reject a culture's ideals. Further, because different cultures are organized by different logics, individual differences mean something different in each. Central to these studies are concepts of honor-related violence and individual worth as being inalienable versus socially conferred. We illustrate our argument with 2 experiments involving participants from honor, face, and dignity cultures. The studies showed that the same "type" of person who was most helpful, honest, and likely to behave with integrity in one culture was the "type" of person least likely to do so in another culture. We discuss how CuPS can provide a rudimentary but integrated approach to understanding both within- and between-culture variation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en
463 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the wide interpretation of the experimental evidence must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild,” because there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment.
Abstract: Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms - "strong" and "weak" reciprocity - that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free- riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a "narrow" and a "wide" reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in "real-world" situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation "in the wild." In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing.
417 citations
TL;DR: An approach to morality is developed as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions, and the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally.
Abstract: What makes humans moral beings? This question can be understood either as a proximate "how" question or as an ultimate "why" question. The "how" question is about the mental and social mechanisms that produce moral judgments and interactions, and has been investigated by psychologists and social scientists. The "why" question is about the fitness consequences that explain why humans have morality, and has been discussed by evolutionary biologists in the context of the evolution of cooperation. Our goal here is to contribute to a fruitful articulation of such proximate and ultimate explanations of human morality. We develop an approach to morality as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions. In this environment, the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally. Those who offer less than others will be left out of cooperation; conversely, those who offer more will be exploited by their partners. In line with this mutualistic approach, the study of a range of economic games involving property rights, collective actions, mutual help and punishment shows that participants' distributions aim at sharing the costs and benefits of interactions in an impartial way. In particular, the distribution of resources is influenced by effort and talent, and the perception of each participant's rights on the resources to be distributed.
407 citations
TL;DR: The actual customs of open-source software imply an underlying theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure, which is related to an analysis of the hacker culture as a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away.
Abstract: After observing a contradiction between the 'official' ideology defined by open-source licenses and the actual behavior of hackers, we examine the actual customs which regulate the ownership and control of open-source software. We discover that they imply an underlying theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure. We relate that to an analysis of the hacker culture as a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away. We then examine the implications of this analysis for conflict resolution in the culture, and develop some prescriptive implications.
302 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract.
Abstract: This paper introduces an informal model of contracting where courts are assumed to be radically incompetent, that is, they are unable to determine whether a party in a contract dispute has engaged in opportunistic behavior (breach), although they can determine whether parties intended to enter a legally enforceable contract. Under this assumption courts cannot perform their normal function in standard economic analysis of contract law, where they deter opportunistic breach because they can verify the promisor's behavior. Nonetheless, the model shows that despite judicial incompetence people will voluntarily enter legally enforceable, jointly valuable contracts. The reason is that when parties care about their reputations, and are engaged in repeated interaction, they can deter certain forms of otherwise profitable opportunism by credibly threatening a mutually destructive lawsuit. The law, on this theory, generates value not by directly deterring bad behavior, but by supplying parties with the ability to retaliate when they are harmed. The paper explores the model's implications for understanding contracting and contract law.
272 citations