Articles on war

In light of frequent smallscale violent demonstrations here in Colombia (students throwing rocks and homemade bombs at the police and things like that), I've been trying with my wife to decipher why violence is accepted as a mode of expression here in Colombia but not in the US. At least in my idealized vision of the US, we respect the police and other government actors because we recognize them as the instruments of a society of which we are a part. Of course we are vigilant about police brutality, we write down badge numbers of officers we think are acting inappropriately, we stage protests against government policies we view as unjust. But all of this is usually done in a nonviolent fashion, and our natural instinct is to consider invalid the use of violence. None of this is the case in Colombia, where state actors and the state itself are often viewed with hostility.

So anyway, I've been pondering this lately, and I happened to run across R. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist who works a lot on war. You can hear an interesting interview with him here, in which among other things he discusses the history of the New York police. He talks about how until the early 20th century the police were basically hired strikebreakers, and then an organized crime racket. More importantly for me, and recalling Howard Zinn's depictions of US history, Ferguson points out that until the creation of police departments across the US and their widespread deployment to beat the hell out of mobs and protesters, the violent riot was a common tool of political expression in the US. Weekly or monthly riots were the norm in most 19th-century US cities. Even our Revolution basically started as a bunch of mob actions. If this is all true, then what I perceive as US citizens' reticence towards violent uprising is not an inherent cultural trait but rather one that was developed in the past century or so, through the effective use of nonlethal police repression, and the gradual inclusion of working people in the common project of US society. The lack of these measures would explain the violent civic habits of Colombians, and suggest methods to change these habits (though hopefully without repressing civic engagement).

Here are two more articles on war by Ferguson. One discusses his findings from a lifetime of studying war, and the other talks about war in ancient human history. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have.