Aggression and Peacefulness in Humans and Other Primates

This book explores the role of aggression in primate social systems and its implication for human behaviour. Of particular interest are questions such as: how do primates use aggression to maintain social organization; what are the costs of agression; and why do some primates avoid aggressive behaviour altogether?

Violence and peacefulness as behavioral potentialities of primates; Aggression as a well-integrated part of primate social relationships; A critique of the Seville statement on violence; Dominance hierarchies as partial orders: a new look at old ideas; Determinants of aggression in squirrel monkeys; Causes and consequences of nonaggression among the woolly spider monkey or muriqui; The development of dominance relations before puberty in cercopithecene societies; The development of agonistic and affiliative structures in preschool children; Cultures of war and peace; A comparative study of waorani and semai; The rise, maintenece and destruction of peaceable polity: a preliminary essay in political ecology; Social structure, psychocultural dispositions and violent conflict: extensions from a cross-cultural study.