ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
ments and the struggle of nation-states to prevent such feuds from disrupting the newer, civil fabric of society.
According to ethnographic and historical evidence, “[blood] revenge, or blood feud,
which is defined as the expectation of retaliatory violence, following a murder, against
the offender or the offender’s kin,” has been a common aspect of human existence
(Nivette, 2011, p. 8; see Otterbein, K. F. & Otterbein, C. S., 1965). Evolutionary explanations of blood feuds tend to see them as “example[s] of kin solidarity” conforming to predictions of kin selection (Daly & Wilson, 1982, p. 375; see also Chagnon,
1988). However, ethnographic and historical records also reveal aspects of blood
feuds for which conventional evolutionary explanations, including kin selection, cannot account. Such aspects include the existence of traditional rules and practices –
passed from ancestor to descendant, from one generation to the next, often for many
generations – governing blood feuds and the fact blood feuds often envelop a greater
number of kin with coefficients of relatedness lower than conventional evolutionary
explanations predict are the extent and limit of significant kinship.
Significantly – and crucial to contextualizing Shakespeare’s play – conventional evolutionary explanations cannot explain the tendency of blood feuds to decrease in
states, where some overarching political entity brings into close and persistent contact
multiple peoples within state boundaries. A universal challenge in the formation and
persistence of states is to persuade individuals to cooperate with non-kin, typically
through a combination of deemphasizing kinship and emphasizing forms of fictive
kinship among “fellow citizens” of the state. Essential to this goal is the suppression
of traditional forms of justice that threaten the cohesion of the state – especially blood
feuds. We argue that a full understanding of Romeo and Juliet must situate it within
the context of a shift from traditional kinship behavior and social organization based
upon the influence of common ancestors to the nontraditional influence of non-kin
encouraging the civility and citizenship crucial to the formation and persistence of
modern nation-states.
Blood Feuds and Cultural Traditions
Contrary to earlier claims (see Otterbein & Otterbein, 1965), Daly and Wilson (1982)
convincingly demonstrate that blood feuds were a part of life in most, if not all, traditional social environments of ethnographic record, noting its cross-cultural variability
and possible function:
The phenomenon of collaborative homicide perpetrated by close relatives will be
familiar to many cultural anthropologists, especially in the context of feuds between rival lineages. According to Given, “although the formal, institutionalized
blood feud had ceased to be a feature of English society by the 13th century, kinsmen on occasion still exacted revenge for the death of one of their relatives”…[Given, 1977, p. 44]. A perusal of ethnographic sources suggests that
blood revenge is extremely widespread, although the detailed prescriptions of the
duties of the victim’s relatives vary cross-culturally … There could hardly be a
more dramatic example of kin solidarity than the sacred obligation of vengeance.
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