Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T22:12:55.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe

An evolutionary perspective on ethnoreligious violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

Jordan Kiper  and
Richard Sosis
Jordan Kiper*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Richard Sosis*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
*
Correspondence: Jordan Kiper, M.A., Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, U-2176, Storrs, CT 06269-2176. Email: [email protected]
Richard Sosis, Ph.D., James Barnett Professor of Humanistic Anthropology and Director of the Evolution, Cognition, and Culture Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, U-2176, Storrs, CT 06269-2176. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Group violence, despite much study, remains enigmatic. Its forms are numerous, its proximate causes myriad, and the interrelation of its forms and proximate causes poorly understood. We review its evolution, including preadaptations and selected propensities, and its putative environmental and psychological triggers. We then reconsider one of its forms, ethnoreligious violence, in light of recent discoveries in the behavioral and brain sciences. We find ethnoreligious violence to be characterized by identity fusion and by manipulation of religious traditions, symbols, and systems. We conclude by examining the confluence of causes and characteristics before and during Yugoslavia’s wars of disintegration.

Keywords

Collective violenceethnic violenceidentity fusionintergroup conflictreligious system
Type
Articles
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Spring 2016 , pp. 27 - 47
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Žižek, S., In Defense of Lost Causes (New York: Verso, 2009), p. 3.Google Scholar
Dojčinović, P., “Word scene investigations: Toward a cognitive linguistic approach to the criminal analysis of open source evidence in war crimes cases,” in Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers’ Corner to War Crimes, Dojčinović, P., ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 71–117.Google Scholar
Brown, R. B., Religion and Violence (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Harris, S., The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: WW Norton, 2004).Google Scholar
Cavanaugh, W. T., The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Cohen, Y., Brown, B. R., and Organski, A. F., “The paradoxical nature of state making: The violent creation of order,” American Political Science Review, 1981, 75(4): 901–910.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sosis, R. and Alcorta, C., “Militants and martyrs: Evolutionary perspectives on religion and terrorism,” in Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, Sagarin, R. and Taylor, T., eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 105–124.Google Scholar
Kimball, C., When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).Google Scholar
Johnson, D. P. and Reeve, Z., “The virtues of intolerance: Is religion an adaptation for war?,” in Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation, Clarke, S., Powell, R., and Savulescu, J., eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 67–87.Google Scholar
For example, Swann, W. B., Gomez, A., Huici, C., Morales, F., and Hixon, J. G., “Identity fusion: The interplay of personal and social identities in extreme group behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009, 96: 995–1011.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sosis, R. and Kiper, J., “Religion is more than belief: What evolutionary theories of religion tell us about religious commitment,” in Challenges to Religion and Morality: Disagreements and Evolution, Bergmann, M. and Kain, P., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 256–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szep, J., “Special Report: Buddhist Monks Incite Muslim Killings in Myanmar, Reuters, April 8, 2013,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/08/us-myanmar-violence-specialreport-idUSBRE9370AP20130408.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., “The adaptationist-byproduct debate on the evolution of religion: Five misunderstandings of the adaptationist program,” Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2009, 9: 315–332.Google Scholar
Toft, M. D., The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
For example, Petersen, R., Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, R. and Laitin, D., “Ethnic and nationalist violence,” Annual Review of Sociology, 1998, 24: 423–452, p. 428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, M. and Rex, J., The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Migration (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Petersen, 2002.Google Scholar
Fearon, J. D. and Laitin, D. D., “Explaining interethnic cooperation,” American Political Science Review, 1996, 90(4): 715–735.Google Scholar
McDonald, M., Navarrete, C. D., and Van Vugt, M., “Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: The male warrior hypothesis,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society-Biological Sciences, 2012, 367(1589): 670–679.Google Scholar
For example, Boesch, C., Crockford, C., Herbinger, I., Wittig, R., Moebius, Y., and Normand, E., “Intergroup conflicts among chimpanzees in Tai National Park: Lethal violence and the female perspective,” American Journal of Primatology, 2008, 70: 519–532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Potts, M. and Hayden, T., Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World (Dallas, TX: Benbella Books, 2008).Google Scholar
Boehm, C., “Ancestral hierarchy and conflict,” Science, 2012, 336: 844–847.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boehm, C., Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame (New York: Basic Books, 2012).Google Scholar
Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L., “The evolution of war and its cognitive foundations,” Institute for Evolutionary Studies Technical Report, 1988, 88(1): 1–14.Google Scholar
For example, Wrangham, R., “Evolution of coalitionary killing,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 1988, 42: 1–30.Google Scholar
Johnson, D. P. and MacKay, N. J., “Fight the power: Lanchester’s laws of combat in human evolution,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 2015, 36: 152–163.Google Scholar
For example, Choi, J. and Bowles, S., “The coevolution of parochial altruism and war,” Science, 2007, 318: 636–640.Google Scholar
Le Blanc, S. A., Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Wrangham, 1999.Google Scholar
Glowacki, L. and Wrangham, R., “The role of rewards in motivating participation in simple warfare,” Human Nature, 2013, 24(4): 444–460.Google Scholar
Petersen, M., “Towards a folk psychology of security: Insights from evolutionary psychology,” Evolution, Security Studies (ISSF Roundtable on “Biology and Security”, 2010, 1: 53–63.Google Scholar
Bernard, H., Fischbacher, U., and Fehr, E., “Parochial altruism in humans,” Nature, 2006, 442: 912–915.Google Scholar
Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Appleton and Company, 1871).Google Scholar
Darwin, 1871, pp. 155–157.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A., “Five rules for the evolution of cooperation,” Science, 2006, 314(5805): 1560–1563.Google Scholar
Choi and Bowles, 2007.Google Scholar
Rusch, H., “The evolutionary interplay of intergroup conflict and altruism in humans: A review of parochial altruism theory and prospects for its extension,” Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 2014, 281(1794): 1–9.Google Scholar
Oakley, B. A., “Concepts and implications of altruism bias and pathological altruism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013, 110: 10408–10415.Google Scholar
Glowacki and Wrangham, 2013.Google Scholar
Choi and Bowles, 2007.Google Scholar
Rusch, 2014.Google Scholar
Jordan, J., McAuliffe, K., and Warneken, F., “Development of in-group favoritism in children’s third-party punishment of selfishness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014, 111(35): 12710–12715.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parks, C. D., Joireman, J., and Van Lange, P. A., “Cooperation, trust, and antagonism: How public goods are promoted,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013, 14: 119–165.Google Scholar
Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L., “Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America, 2001, 98(26): 15387–15392.Google Scholar
Mcfarlan, S., Walker, R., Flinn, M., and Chagnon, N., “Lethal coalitionary aggression and long-term alliance formation among the Yanomamo,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America, 2014, 111: 16662–16669.Google Scholar
Choi and Bowles, 2007.Google Scholar
See also Bowles and Gintis, 2011.Google Scholar
Choi and Bowles, 2007, p. 640.Google Scholar
McCullough, M., Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).Google Scholar
For example, Roan, S., “Bitterness as mental illness?,” Los Angeles Times, 2009, May 25:.Google Scholar
McCullough, 2008, p. 49.Google Scholar
de Waal, F. B. and Pokorny, J. J., “Primate conflict and its relation to human forgiveness,” in Handbook of Forgiveness, Worthington, E. L., ed. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2005), pp. 17–35.Google Scholar
Hrushka and Henrich, 2006.Google Scholar
Fehr, E. and Fischbacher, U., “Social norms and human cooperation,” Trends in Cognitive Science, 2004, 8(4): 185–190.Google Scholar
Fehr, E. and Fischbacher, U., “Third party punishment and social norms,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 2004, 25: 63–87.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., and Fehr, E., “In search of Homo economcius: Experiments in 15 small-scale societies,” American Economic Review, 2001, 91(2): 73–79.Google Scholar
McCullough, 2008.Google Scholar
McCullough, 2008.Google Scholar
Bloom, S. L., “Reflections on the desire for revenge,” Journal of Emotional Abuse, 2001, 2(4): 61–94.Google Scholar
Strobel, A., Zimmerman, J., Schmitz, A., Reuter, M., Lis, S., Windmann, S., and Kirsch, P., “Beyond revenge: Neural and genetic bases of altruistic punishment,” Neuroimage, 2011, 54(1): 671–680.Google Scholar
Hugh-Jones, D. and Leroch, M., “Intergroup Revenge: A Laboratory Experiment on the Causes. Social Science Research Network.” 2013, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2275173.Google Scholar
Bowles, 2008.Google Scholar
Van Vugt, 2009.Google Scholar
Wrangham, 1999.Google Scholar
Alexander, R. D., The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987).Google Scholar
Turchin, P., War and Peace and War: The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations (New York: Pi Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Roscoe, P., “Intelligence, coalitional killing, and the antecedents of war,” American Anthropologist, 2007, 109(3): 485–495.Google Scholar
Durrant, R., “Collective violence: An evolutionary perspective,” Aggression and Violent Behavior, 2011, 16: 428–436.Google Scholar
Roscoe, 2007.Google Scholar
Forsyth, D. R., Group Dynamics, 5th ed. (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks and Cole, 2009).Google Scholar
Whitley, B. E. and Kite, M. E., The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2010).Google Scholar
Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W., and Sherif, C. W., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman, OK: University Book Exchange, 1961).Google Scholar
Walker, R. S. and Bailey, D. H., “Body counts in lowland South American violence,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 2013, 34: 29–34.Google Scholar
Keeley, L. H., War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Olzak, S., The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
See, Wimmer, A., Cederman, L. E., and Min, B., “Ethnic politics and armed conflict: A configurational analysis of a new global data set,” American Sociological Review, 2009, 74: 316–337.Google Scholar
Walker, I. and Smith, H., Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Gurr, T. R., Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).Google Scholar
Eidelson, R. J. and Eidelson, J. I., “Dangerous ideas. Five beliefs that propel groups toward conflict,” American Psychologist, 2003, 58(3): 182–192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gonen, J. Y., The Roots of Nazi Psychology: Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Marcus, K., “Accusation in a mirror,” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, 2012, 43(2): 357–393.Google Scholar
Chirot, D., “Introduction,” in Ethnopolitical Warfare: Causes, Consequences, and Possible Solutions (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001), p. 10.Google Scholar
Kramer, R. M. and Messick, D. M., “Getting by with a little help from our enemies: Collective paranoia and its role in intergroup relations,” in Intergroup Cognition and Intergroup Behavior, Sedikides, C., Shopler, J., and Insko, C. A., eds. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998).Google Scholar
Bolaffi, G., Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003), p. 332.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. and Boyd, R., Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).Google Scholar
De Dreu, C. K., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Salvi, S., and Handgraaf, M. J., “Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011, 108(4): 1262–1266.Google Scholar
Cashdan, E., “In-group loyalty or out-group avoidance? Isolating the links between pathogens and in-group assortative sociality,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2012, 35(2): 82.Google Scholar
Gil-White, F. J., “Are ethnic groups biological “species” to the human brain? Essentialism in our cognition of some social categories,” Current Anthropology, 2001, 42(4): 515–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslam, N., “Dehumanization: An integrative review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2006, 10(3): 252–264.Google Scholar
Harris, L. and Fiske, S. T., “Dehumanizing the lowest of the low: Neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups,” Psychological Science, 2006, 17(10): 847–853, p. 848.Google Scholar
Fiske, S. T., Social Beings: Core Motives in Social Psychology (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004).Google Scholar
Bandura, A., “Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1999, 3: 193–209.Google Scholar
Bandura, A., “Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency,” Journal of Moral Education, 2002, 31(2): 101–119.Google Scholar
Zimbardo, P., The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (New York: Random House, 2007).Google Scholar
Šmihula, D., The Use of Force in International Relations (Fresno, CA: Veda, 2013).Google Scholar
Barkan, S. and Snowden, L. L., Collective Violence (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2007).Google Scholar
World Health Organization, “Collective Violence,”http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/collective/en.Google Scholar
Staub, E., “The origins and prevention of genocide, mass killing, and other collective violence,” Peace and Conflict Journal of Peace Psychology, 1999, 5(4): 303–336.Google Scholar
Staub, E., “Genocide and mass killing: Origins, prevention, healing, and reconciliation,” Political Psychology, 2000, 21(2): 367–382.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T. and Amodio, D. M., “Political ideology as motivated social cognition: Behavioral and neuroscientific evidence,” Motivation and Emotion, 2012, 36: 55–64.Google Scholar
Hatemi, P. K. and McDermott, R., “A neurobiological approach to foreign policy analysis: Identifying individual differences in political violence,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 2012, 8: 111–129.Google Scholar
Goldhagen, D. J., Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).Google Scholar
Staub, 1999.Google Scholar
Oberschall, A., “Propaganda, hate speech and mass killings,” in Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers’ Corner to War Crimes, Dojčinović, P., ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 183.Google Scholar
Marcus, K., “Accusation in a mirror,” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, 2012, 43(2): 357–393.Google Scholar
Marcus, 2012, p. 359.Google Scholar
Benesch, S., “The ghost of causation in international speech crime cases,” in Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers’ Corner to War Crimes, Dojčinović, P., ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 254–268.Google Scholar
Staub, 1999, p. 308.Google Scholar
Saxon, D., “Propaganda as a crime under international humanitarian law: Theories and strategies for prosecutors,” in Propaganda, War Crimes Trials and International Law: From Speakers’ Corner to War Crimes, Dojčinović, P., ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 125.Google Scholar
Bond, M. H., “Culture and aggression: From context to coercion,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2004, 8: 62–78.Google Scholar
Cordes, H., Body-Gendrot, S., and Spierenburg, P., Violence in Europe: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Springer, 2009).Google Scholar
Tilly, C., The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Swann, W. B., Gomez, A., Huici, C., Morales, F., and Hixon, J. G., “Identity fusion: The interplay of personal and social identities in extreme group behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009, 96: 995–1011.Google Scholar
Swann et al. 2009, p. 995.Google Scholar
Barber, B. K., “Contrasting portraits of war: Youths’ varied experiences with political violence in Bosnia and Palestine,” International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2008, 32(4): 298–309.Google Scholar
Swann, W. B., Gomez, A., Dovidio, J., Hart, S., and Jetten, J., “Dying and killing for one’s group: Identity fusion moderates responses to intergroup versions of the trolley problem,” Psychological Science, 2010, 21: 1176–1183.Google Scholar
Swann, W. B., Gomez, A., Huici, C., Morales, F., and Hixon, J. G., “Identity fusion and self-sacrifice: Arousal as a catalyst of pro-group fighting, dying and helping behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010, 99: 824–841.Google Scholar
Swann, W. B., Jensen, J., Gomez, A., Whitehouse, H., and Morales, F., “When group membership gets personal: A theory of identity fusion,” Psychological Review, 2012, 119(3): 441–456.Google Scholar
Swann et al., 2009.Google Scholar
Bozerlan, H., Violence in the Middle East: From Political Struggle to Self-Sacrifice (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004).Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H., McQuinn, B., Buhrmester, M., and Swann, W. B., “Brothers in arms: Libyan revolutionaries bond like family,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014, 111(50): 17783–17785.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swann, Gomez, Huici, et al., 2010, p. 825.Google Scholar
Browning, C., Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins Publishing, 1992).Google Scholar
Zimbardo, 2007.Google Scholar
Tobeña, A., “Lethal altruists,” in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009), vol. 1167, pp. 5–15.Google Scholar
Swann et al., 2012.Google Scholar
Swann et al., 2012, p. 3.Google Scholar
Swann et al., 2009.Google Scholar
Swann et al., 2009, p. 1009.Google Scholar
Li, D., “Echoes of violence: Considerations on radio and genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Genocide Research, 2004, 6(1): 9–27.Google Scholar
Li, pp. 14–16.Google Scholar
Kiper, J., “War propaganda, war crimes, and post-conflict justice in Serbia: An ethnographic account,” International Journal of Human Rights, 2015, 19(5): 572–591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchens, C., God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hatchet Book Company, 2009).Google Scholar
Kiper and Sosis, 2014.Google Scholar
Sosis, 2009.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., “Religions as complex adaptive systems,” in Mental Religion: The Brain, Cognition, and Culture, Clements, N., ed. (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan), in press.Google Scholar
Alcorta, C. and Sosis, R., “Ritual, religion, and violence: An evolutionary perspective,” in Handbook of Religion and Violence, Juergensmeyer, M., Kitts, M., and Jerryson, M., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 573–596.Google Scholar
Kiper and Sosis, 2014.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. and Sosis, R., “The religious system as adaptive: Cognitive flexibility, public displays, and acceptance,” in The Biological Evolution of Mind and Behavior, Voland, E. and Shiefenhovel, W., eds. (New York: Springer-Verlag Publishers, 2009), pp. 243–256.Google Scholar
Purzycki, B. and Sosis, R., “Religious concepts as necessary components of the adaptive religious system,” in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Philosophy: Evolution and Religion, Frey, U., ed. (Marburg, Germany: Tectum Verlag, 2010), pp. 37–59.Google Scholar
R. Sosis, in press.Google Scholar
R. Sosis, in press.Google Scholar
Bulbulia, J. and Sosis, R., “Signaling theory and the evolution of religions,” Religion, 2011, 41(3): 363–388.Google Scholar
Rappaport, R., Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Alcorta, C. and Sosis, R., “Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols: the evolution of religion as an adaptive complex,” Human Nature, 2005, 16: 323–359.Google Scholar
Sosis, R. and Alcorta, C., “Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior,” Evolutionary Anthropology, 2003, 12: 264–274.Google Scholar
Irons, W., “Religion as a hard-to-fake sign of commitment,” in Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment, Nesse, R., ed. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp. 292–309.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., “Religious behaviors, badges, and bans: Signaling theory and the evolution of religion,” in Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion, Volume 1: Evolution, Genes, and the Religious Brain, McNamara, P., ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006), pp. 61–86.Google Scholar
Bulbulia, J., “Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention,” Evolution and Cognition, 2004, 10: 19–38.Google Scholar
Sosis and Alcorta, 2003, see also R. Sosis and C. Alcorta, “Militants and martyrs: Evolutionary perspectives on religion and terrorism,” in Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, R. Sagarin and T. Taylor, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, pp. 105–124.Google Scholar
Johnson, D. P., “Gods of war: The adaptive logic of religious conflict,” in The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, Bulbulia, J., Sosis, R., Geret, C., Harris, E., and Wyman, K., eds. (Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press, 2008), pp. 111–117.Google Scholar
Alcorta and Sosis, 2013.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., Kress, H., and Boster, J., “Scars of war: Evaluating alternative signaling explanations for cross-cultural variance in ritual costs,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 2007, 28(4): 234–247.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995), original work published, 1912.Google Scholar
Rappaport, 1999.Google Scholar
Alcorta and Sosis, 2005.Google Scholar
Sosis, R., “Why sacred lands are not indivisible: The cognitive foundations of sacralizing land,” Journal of Terrorism Research, 2011, 2: 17–44.Google Scholar
See also, Johnson, D. P. and Toft, M. D., “Grounds for war: The evolution of territorial conflict,” International Security, 2014, 38(3): 7–38.Google Scholar
Lincoln, B., Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), original work published, 1991.Google Scholar
Oberschall, 2012.Google Scholar
Atran, S. and Ginges, J., “Religious and sacred imperatives in human conflict,” Science, 2012, 336: 855–857.Google Scholar
Turner, V., The Ritual Process (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969).Google Scholar
Hassan, N., “An arsenal of believers,” The New Yorker, 2001, November 19: 36–41.Google Scholar
van Gennep, A., The Rites of Passage , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960; original work published, 1909.Google Scholar
van Gennep, A., p. 69.Google Scholar
Alcorta, C., “Religion and the life course: Is adolescence an ‘experience expectant’ period for religious transmission?,” in Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion, Volume II: The Neurology of Religious Experience, McNamara, P., ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2006), pp. 55–80.Google Scholar
Alcorta, C., “Music and the miraculous: The neurophysiology of music’s emotive meaning,” in Miracles: God, Science, and Psychology in the Paranormal, Volume 3: Parapsychological Perspectives, Ellens, J. H., ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2008), pp. 23–52.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H. and Lanman, J., “The ties that bind us: Ritual, fusion, and identification,” Current Anthropology, 2014, 55(6): 674–695.Google Scholar
Turner, p. 10.Google Scholar
Atran, S., “Genesis of suicide terrorism,” Science, 2003, 299(5612): 1534–1539.Google Scholar
Jurgensmeyer, M., Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise in Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Atwill, D., “Holy culture wars: Patterns of ethno-religious violence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century China,” in Belief and Bloodshed: Religion and Violence Across Time and Tradition (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007), pp. 115–130.Google Scholar
Sosis and Alcorta, 2008, p. 107.Google Scholar
Sidel, J., Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Sosis, R., Phillips, E., and Alcorta, C., “Sacrifice and sacred values: Evolutionary perspectives on religious terrorism,” in Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War, Shackelford, T. and Weeks-Schakelford, V., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 233–253.Google Scholar
Wiebe, D., “Pseudo-speciation of the human race: Religions as hazard-precaution systems,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2013, 25(4–5): 410–430.Google Scholar
Staub, 1999.Google Scholar
Sen, A., “A world not neatly divided,” New York Times, 2001, November 21: 23.Google Scholar
Rogel, C., The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), pp. 24–27.Google Scholar
Rogel, C., The Breakup of Yugoslavia and Its Aftermath, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 15–26.Google Scholar
Finian, A., The Collapse of Yugoslavia, 1991–1999 (Wellingborough, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2004).Google Scholar
Pesic, V., “Serbian nationalism and the origins of the Yugoslav crisis,” Peaceworks (United States Institute for Peace), 1996, 8(12), http://www.usip.org/publications/serbian-nationalism-and-origins-yugoslav-crisis.Google Scholar
Remet, S., The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 119, 350–361.Google Scholar
Jovic, D., Yugoslavia: A State That Withered Away (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009), p. 32.Google Scholar
Jovic, 2009.Google Scholar
Remet, 2006, p. 319.Google Scholar
Remet, 2006, pp. 339–355.Google Scholar
Gagnon, V. P., The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatian in the 1990s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Glenny, M., The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (New York: Penguin Books, 1996).Google Scholar
Remet, S., Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Glenny, 1996.Google Scholar
Benesch, 2012.Google Scholar
Benesch, 2012, p. 264.Google Scholar
Eko, L. S., New Media, Old Regimes: Case Studies in Comparative Communication Law and Policy (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, 2012), pp. 380–390.Google Scholar
Perica, V., Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Wilmer, F., The Social Construction of Man, the State, and War: Identity, Conflict, and Violence in Former Yugoslavia (New York: Routledge, 2002).Google Scholar
Steele, D., “Religion as a fount of ethnic hostility or an agent of reconciliation?,” Religion and War, Janjic, D., ed. (Belgrade: European Movement, 1994).Google Scholar
Benesch, 2012.Google Scholar
Dojčinović, 2012, p. 95.Google Scholar
Oberschall, 2012, pp. 177–179.Google Scholar
de la Brosse, R., Political Propaganda and the Plan to Create a “State for all Serbs”: Consequences of Using the Media for Ultra-Nationalist Ends. Expert Report to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 2003, http://hrp.bard.edu/slobodan-milosevic-trial-public-archive/.Google Scholar
R. de la Brosse, 2003.Google Scholar
Oberschall, 2012, pp. 183–85.Google Scholar
Steele, 1994.Google Scholar
Wilmer, 2002.Google Scholar
Dojčinović, 2012.Google Scholar
MacDonald, B., Balkan Holocausts? Serbian and Croatian Victim-Centered Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia (Manchester, UK: Manchester Press, 2002), p. 65.Google Scholar
Sells, M., The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar
Armata, J., Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), p. 192.Google Scholar
Tanner, M., Croatia: A Nation Forged in War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).Google Scholar