Politeness around the World

The world over, one of the major preconditions for producing a violent society is the lack of a state or central authority to intervene in conflicts (Daly and Wilson, 1988; Pitt- Rivers, 1968).

Yet, despite the theoretical predictions and the empirical evidence showing high rates of violence in such cultures, anthropologists who survey societies with minimal govern­ment often find a world where everyday life is marked by friendliness, congeniality, and helpful interdependence. To Westerners who assume that people's acts are or should fol­low from their personal feelings, such a world seems quite surprising (Miller 1984). But it should not be. People are often quite friendly because of what they fear below the sur­face. As Elizabeth Colson (1975) wrote,

We listen to informants' fears and to their tales of violence... and we diagnose a world of warring factions, of feud, of frequent acts of aggression We look around us, however, and we find people

apparently behaving with kindness, generosity, and forbearance, avoiding disputes and sharing resources, tolerant of each other's foibles. What we may miss is the connection between the two sets of social facts: the beliefs are related to the behavior.... [I]t should therefore be no surprise to us if some people live in what appears to be a Rousseauian paradise because they take a Hobbesian view of their situation: they walk softly because they believe it necessary not to offend others whom they regard as dangerous. (1975: 37).

This pattern is found in a great many traditional, interdependent societies in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Africa. That is, people in such societies tend to be “extraordinarily afraid of each other and afraid of supernatural beings...(Thus, they) may act in extremely polite, gracious, or generous fashion, but these social acts may or may not entail corre­sponding personal feelings of love, liking, or trust” (Fiske, Markus, Kitayama, and Nis- bett 1997: 115).

From classical Greek civilization where “hospitality must be offered and must be ac­cepted” to many contemporary societies, people give and give graciously because they fear the enmity and anger of others (see Gould 1973: 91, 88). As one Tonga informant explained, “It is not safe to deny (others). The only thing to do is to give” (Colson 1975: 47-49).

People in such societies try to prevent violence because they believe long spirals of revenge will result from single acts of aggression. Thus, they try to avoid the triggering incidents that can bring on catastrophic blood feuds. These practices lead to a strong em­phasis on being slow to anger, to being a “quiet man,” or to having thick skin—“seven thumbs thick” in the case of the Iroquois Indians—so that uncontrollable conflicts do not begin unnecessarily (Colson 1975: p. 41). Such extreme emphasis on conflict avoidance can be seen among the Inuit around Point Barrow, where “revenge cycles within the community were... greatly feared. Several informants remember fellow villagers, hys­terical after the death of a loved one, being physically held down by kinsmen who re­peated over and over again, ‘Don't kill anyone, don’t kill anyone; if you kill somebody their relatives will kill us all’” (Hennigh 1972: 90). Thus, as in many other societies, there is “peace in the feud” or rather the threat of feud (Colson 1975: 43; Gluckman 1955).

Here it is extremely important to note that there is some debate over just how much violence really exists in such societies. That is, whether people in these societies actually experience much violence or whether they live in the fear of violence that will probably never come is a matter of some contention (see review by Colson 1975). But there are two points to be made. The first is that even if violence in the form of physical aggres­sion rarely occurs, it certainly is a psychological fact that people live with in their every­day lives.

The second point is that quantitative studies demonstrate that, for at least some of these societies, actual violence is incredibly high. For example, the traditional !Kung San “have been immortalized by anthropologists as ‘the gentle people’” (Daly and Wilson 1988: 224). Yet, they have a homicide rate over a 50-year period of 29 per 100,000 per year (Lee 1979). To put this in perspective, it would mean that the !Kung San have a rate of homicide three times higher than the U.S. average and have homicide figures compa­rable to those of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Revenge among the !Kung San is also not an idle threat. “If a killing occurred it was more likely than not be followed by a retaliatory killing; 15 of the 22 homicides were events in blood feuds” (Lee 1979: 392).

Even more striking are the Gebusi of lowland New Guinea. Despite their strong em­phasis on friendliness and “good company,” they have a homicide rate that has been “conservatively calculated to have been at least 568 per 100,000 per annum (e.g., over 50 times the current U.S. rate of killing from all sources)” (Knauft 1985: 2). Their homicide rate is “among the highest reported for any human society” and, indeed, almost one-third of all adult deaths between 1940 and 1982 were products of violence (Knauft 1985: 2). In Knauft's analysis of Gebusi violence, he describes how “good company” and violence are inextricably bound together. Further, his research suggests not only how violence can enforce a norm of congeniality but also how persistent congeniality may actually feed a cycle of violence. That is the part of the process we turn to next.