Carol R. Ember (Human Relations Area Files at Yale University)
Abstract. After a brief review of earlier cross-cultural research on warfare, I turn to more recent research focusing on eastern Africa, a region frequently plagued with subsistence uncertainty as well as violence. In that research, we explore whether resource unpredictability and chronic scarcities predict higher warfare frequencies, more taking of resources, and more atrocities. Our first aim was to confirm whether previous worldwide results (Ember and Ember 1992) that found a strong relationship between resource unpredictability and warfare holds up in eastern Africa. Two types of study have been conducted — a regional cross-cultural comparison of about 40 cultures using ethnographic material and more fine-grained analyses of livestock raiding and rainfall in northwestern Kenya using news reports and rainfall data from NASA. In the ethnographic comparison, we also examined whether resource problems predict more resource-taking during warfare (land, moveable property, and people) and more atrocities. Results generally support the worldwide results regarding warfare frequency, but results are not as clear regarding the effects of resource problems on frequency of resource-taking and atrocities. Results are generally in opposite directions in nonstate and state societies. State societies are more likely to commit atrocities than nonstates.