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The Learning Environment for Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior Among the !Kung

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The Learning Environment for Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior Among the !Kung University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Anthropology Faculty Publications Anthropology, Department of May 1978 The Learning Environment for Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior among the !Kung Patricia Draper University of Nebraska, Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub Part of the Anthropology Commons Draper, Patricia, "The Learning Environment for Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior among the !Kung" (1978). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 12. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in Learning Non-Aggression: The Experience of Non-Literate Societies, Ashley Mon- tagu, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Pp. 31–53. Copyright © 1978 Ashley Montagu. Used by permission. [Chapter 3] The Learning Environment for Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior among the !Kung Patricia Draper The !Kung, a hunter-gatherer people of the Kalahari Desert, are of in- terest to this collection of writings on the teaching of non-aggression for a variety of reasons. They have been described as a “harmless people” by Thomas (1958) in a book-length account of the social life and cultural val- ues of !Kung who lived in South West Africa. An opposite characterization of !Kung emerges from an unpublished study by Richard Lee. This study, based on interviews and examination of genealogical records collected in the field, reports on incidents of homicide among !Kung. The murder rate, according to Lee, is rather frequent for a people purported to be harmless and unaggressive. Still other writers, dealing more generally with factors common to hunter-gathering and band-level peoples (Service, 1966; Hoe- bel, 1954, 1958; Lee and DeVore, eds., 1968) have pointed out that hunt- ing and gathering groups possess few formal mechanisms for dealing with social conflict. Such peoples typically rely on informal mechanisms of social control such as gossip, ridicule, sorcery, shunning, ostracism, and public de- bating which lead to the formation of consensus. In discussing the problem of social control in such societies, anthropologists show how conflicts are resolved circuitously and in a lengthy fashion. They point out that the aim 31 32 Patricia Draper in Learning Non-Aggression (1978) Learning Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior among the !Kung 33 of conflict resolution is not to place blame or necessarily to punish an of- different starting point in the ethnographic analysis. There are many exam- fender, but rather to restore amicable relations among individuals. ples of the “central cultural theme” approach. A few of the best known are The !Kung, therefore, are a provocative case study; a controversy exists Malinowski’s portrayal of reciprocity and exchange among the Trobriand as to whether they are harmless or, in fact, murderous. In addition, since Islanders (Malinowski, 1920, 1922), Chagnon’s treatment of aggression the !Kung are by now well studied, one can use specific information about and ritualized conflict in both film and written documents (Asch and Ch- !Kung behavior to examine general propositions about social control and agnon, 1970; Chagnon, 1977), and, of course, Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of interpersonal conflict in hunting and gathering societies generally. Culture (Benedict, 1934). This paper will address the question of interpersonal conflict and ag- The opposite approach, in which an anthropologist describes a culture gression among !Kung, with particular emphasis on the learning environ- by topic, treating different cultural systems in turn (e. g., religion, econom- ment of children and how it relates to the learning of aggressive behavior. ics, socialization, and so forth), is currently out of fashion. For all the mer- Of concern here will be parental attitudes toward children’s behavior and its of this more exhaustive and balanced strategy, it can render the rough, techniques for dealing with conflict. In the !Kung case there are many fac- crannied texture of social life into a flat, but admittedly easy to absorb, tors such as settlement pattern, economy, and the value of sharing which porridge. are less obviously related to values about child-rearing but which have sub- In writing an essay on aggression in !Kung life, one encounters some of stantial impact on the social and emotional climate in which children are the problems outlined above. Aggression, conflict, and violence—none of reared. This paper will describe, therefore, not only some aspects of child these are culturally elaborated preoccupations. Nor could one argue that a socialization that bear on the teaching of non-aggression, but also these central cultural theme is concerned with an opposite set of values—the en- other dimensions of social organization which are relevant to the ability of forcement of peace and the suppression of aggression. From this point of !Kung to discourage interpersonal aggression and to encourage group co- view, values about interpersonal aggression do not qualify as an especially operation. I will leave a discussion of the issue, “Are the !Kung unaggres- auspicious position from which to view the cultural terrain. Nevertheless, sive, aggressive, harmless, or murderous?” to the concluding section of this the !Kung are a people who devalue aggression; they have explicit values paper. against assaulting, losing control, and seeking to intimidate another person Before proceeding directly to the topic, there are a few caveats which by sheer force of personality. Furthermore, on a daily basis and over months should be laid before the reader. These concern the problems which an an- of fieldwork one finds that overt physical acts by one person against an- thropologist faces in presenting and interpreting information. other are extremely rare. In two years I personally observed three instances When anthropologists describe the exotic peoples with whom they in which people lost control and exchanged blows: two twelve-year-old girls have lived and studied, they often organize their analyses around themes who wrestled and fought with fists; two women who scratched and kicked or preoccupations which are themselves central to the people’s cultural life. each other over a man (the husband of one of the women); and two men This procedure can be a convenient and culturally sensitive vehicle for ex- who violently shoved each other back and forth, shouted and separated to position; the pivotal institution or set of values becomes the basis for show- gather weapons, only to be dissuaded by other people from their respec- ing connections among superficially discrete and independent cultural pro- tive camps. In a fourth case I saw two women who had fought the night be- cesses. A disadvantage of this approach is that it necessarily underplays fore. Lorna Marshall, an anthropologist with much experience among the other customs which could legitimately achieve equal prominence given a !Kung, makes a similar report: 34 Patricia Draper in Learning Non-Aggression (1978) Learning Aggression and Anti-Social Behavior among the !Kung 35 During seventeen and a half months of fieldwork with the Nyae system in what is now southern Angola, Botswana, and South West Africa, Nyae !Kung . , I personally saw only four flare-ups of discord and until recent times they subsisted by hunting and gathering. The great and heard about three others which occurred in neighboring majority of !Kung-speaking people of today have abandoned their tradi- bands during that period. All were resolved before they became tional foraging life style and are living in sedentary and semisquatter status serious quarrels. [Marshall, 1976, pp. 311-12] in or near villages of Bantu pastoralists and European ranchers. A minor- If the !Kung succeed in avoiding direct physical confrontation in most ity of !Kung, amounting to a few thousand people, are still living by tradi- instances, they clearly experience the same emotions which, in other societ- tional foraging techniques, and these are the people who are described in ies, would lead more quickly to hostile acts. The !Kung harbor hatreds, jeal- this paper. ousies, resentments, suspicions—the full panoply of negative emotions. In The few remaining groups of still mobile !Kung subsist on wild veg- fact, their oral traditions are remarkably violent and fratricidal for a people etable foods and game meat. They are seminomadic, moving their camps who, on the surface, maintain the appearance of simple communal harmony at irregular intervals, from a few days to several weeks. They live in small (Biesele, 1972 a, 1972b, 1975, 1976). The difference between the !Kung groups, averaging about thirty-five people, but these bands vary from as and other peoples is that the circumstances of their life are such that they few as fifteen to as many as sixty-five persons. The factors that affect group must dampen their passions to manageable levels or, that failing, separate size are chiefly season and the availability of water. During the rainy season themselves from the people whose society they cannot tolerate. Interest- (October to March), group censuses are lower, owing to the fact that water ingly, the !Kung themselves take on an edgy irascibility when their life style and bush foods are widely available in most regions of the desert. Smaller changes away from that which one sees in small mobile groups living in the numbers of people in the form of two and three family groups spread out bush and depending on foraging and hunting for subsistence (Lee, 1972a). over the bush. As the dry season nears and the temporary watering places The discussion in this paper will concern a group of about 120 bush-liv- dry up, the people begin to regroup and fall back on the remaining water ing !Kung whom I studied in 1968 and 1969.
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