TY  - BOOK
AU  - Layton,Robert
TI  - Order and anarchy: civil society, social disorder and war 
SN  - 0521857716
AV  - HM896 .L39 2006
U1  - 303.62 22
PY  - 2006///
CY  - Cambridge, England, New York
PB  - Cambridge University Press
KW  - Social stability
KW  - Violence
KW  - Social evolution
KW  - Civil society
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; 1; Civil society and social cohesion --; 2; Self-interest and social evolution --; 3; The breakdown of social order --; 4; Warfare, biology and culture
N2  - "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."--BOOK JACKET
ER  -