Order and anarchy
Subtitle: civil society, social disorder and war
By: Robert Layton.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Cambridge, England; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 197
ISBN-13: 9780521857710; 9780521674430
Subjects: Social stability.; Violence.; Social evolution.; Civil society.
Description: "Through the study of civil society, the evolution of social relations, and the break down of social order, Order and Anarchy re-examines the role of violence in human social evolution. Drawing on anthropology, political science and evolutionary theory, it offers a novel approach to understanding stability and instability in human society. Robert Layton provides a radical critique of current concepts of civil society, arguing that rational action is characteristic of all human societies and not unique to post-Enlightenment Europe. Case studies range from ephemeral African gold rush communities and the night club scene in Britain to stable hunter-gatherer and peasant cultures.

The dynamics of recent civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chad, Somalia and Indonesia are compared to war in small-scale tribal societies. The author argues that recent claims for the evolutionary value of violence have misunderstood the complexity of human strategies and the social environments in which they are played out."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Social cohesion and civil society; title: Self interest and the evolution of society; title: The breakdown of social order; title: War, biology and culture.