Homicide: Foundations of Human Behavior [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Although nominally about the material designated in its title, this book is no mere collection of statistics, but contains wide-ranging discussions of evolutionary psychology, which Daly & Wilson use as the framework for an understanding of the phenomenon of homicide. So if the propensity to homicide is bred into the human race by millennia of natural selection, so also are other phenomena with which society struggles, like sexual harassment. I guess my point is that this book is about homicide and more. It's also lucid and even witty. It reads like a detective story, which indeed it is, but the culprit here is manifold rather than singular. The book will also furnish guidance to those who subscribe to the view that arrest, conviction, and incarceration will have only limited effects on the homicide rate, and that homicide be treated also as a public health problem. Daly & Wilson consider anthropological data from around the world and historical data as well to draw their inferences. In the most common type of murder the perpetrator and victim are young men who know each other and are in (ostensible) conflict over some trivial matter. But Daly & Wilson say that murder is the rare outcome of a common situation where two men face off against each other with each trying to appear more formidable and dangerous than the other. The (biological) reason they behave as they do is that such behavior causes them to acquire (or keep) control of the reproductive behavior of their women. Think about it: wimps, who allowed their women to be taken away from themselves, left no wimp genes in the gene pool. Of course there are a lot of other kinds of murders: children are occasionally murdered, sometimes by their natural parents, but more often by step-parents. It appears that there is a basis for the ever-popular myth (in many cultures, not just western European) of the evil step-parent. Husbands murder wives, but this seems to be a case of violence being used to control the wife's reproductive behavior, and the violence gets out of hand. When wives murder husbands (a rarer occurrence) it tends to be defensive in nature. Wonderful book! Very thought provoking.

I've now read this book about 10 times over the past three years while teaching an evolution of human behavior course at the college where I'm employed. I was motivated to say a few supportive words about this book because I have become convinced of its groundbreaking importance in the scientific literature. After a decade of reading and studying evolutionary anthropology/psychology I find no other single book that so clearly and convincingly articulates the application of Darwinian thinking to modern human behavior. It is a perfect text to use with students as it not only teaches a wealth of information, but is also an excellent example of critical interpretation of data. Many of my students have commented on the power of this book to transform them into appreciative readers of science. From my own experience, it is one of a few books that transformed me from a standard social science undergraduate--mired in theoretical mush--into a more critical and thoughtful scholar. The other books that influenced me were by Sarah Hrdy, Don Symons, and later, Jarome Barkow et al. I encourage anyone interested in human behavior to read this book. Bring along a collegiate dictionary if your vocabulary is anything like that of my undergraduates!

A classic in evolutionary psychology. The ideas are still fresh despite the book now being 25 years old, as most subsequent work is based on this book. Well-written and packed with data, it's considerably more careful (and less sensationalist) than some others that have followed. Strongly recommended to anyone with an interest in either the causes of violence or in evolutionary psych... it's an example of how to do it right.