ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 1, January 2015
scendants; the long-term effect of this influence is that those traditions that promoted
the leaving of descendants in the past tended to persist and increase in frequency
among descendants of those ancestors in succeeding generations (Steadman & Palmer,
2008). Briefly put, the DLS Hypothesis argues that the tradition of passing descent
names, in combination with the prescription exhorting descendants to be kind to all
kin identifiable by that descent name, functions to extend kinship and kinship behavior far beyond the range of kin explainable by kin selection (see Coe et al., 2010;
Palmer & Steadman, 1997). Moreover, the transmission of patrilineal descent names
requires marriage, which in turn dramatically increases the number of individuals offspring recognize as kin (Chagnon, 1988; Palmer, Steadman & Coe, 2006). Robin Fox
(1967) explains how these traditions enable “large lineages or clans…[to] grow up
over time as the descendants of the original ancestor/ancestress” accumulate (p. 122).
These traditions also account for why blood feuds and warfare often came to create
allies out of kin far more distantly related than kin selection predicts (see Palmer &
Steadman, 1997; Coe et al., 2010).
Recognition of the role of traditions in creating, sustaining, spreading, and regulating
kinship behavior is not only necessary to explaining the existence of blood feuds, but
also to explain the dramatic decrease of blood feuds in nation-states. Amy Nivette
(2011) summarizes the findings of Daly and Wilson (1982) by stating: “They conclude that the prevalence of blood feuds does indeed vary across cultures, but maintain that feuding and revenge are cross-culturally universal in non-state societies” (p.
8). Many factors are undoubtedly responsible for cross-cultural variation in the frequency of blood feuds, but the stipulation that their universal occurrence is limited to
“non-state societies” points to a fundamental – and perhaps universal – aspect of
blood feuds: the attempt to suppress them in states.
States and the Suppression of Blood Feuds
The formation of states encapsulating multiple distinct categories of people considering themselves descendants of a common ancestor (e.g., tribes; ethnic groups; gens),
but unrelated to other categories of people also living in the state, causes a fundamental change in the social environment, bringing individuals into close and sustained
interaction with non-kin (Diamond, 2012). Thus, a universal challenge in the formation and persistence of state political structures, as Aristotle recognized, has been
to persuade individuals to cooperate with non-kin (Arnhart, 1990; 1994). From examples such as the Code of Hammurabi in the earliest city-states to the efforts of many
modern nation-states to prevent internal ethnic violence, states attempt to persuade
individuals to treat non-kin as they treat actual kin (Diamond, 2008). Tactics often, if
not universally, include a combination of deemphasizing the “axiom of kinship amity”
forming the basis of human cooperation for tens of thousands of years, while emphasizing forms of political, often also religious, fictive kinship among all “fellow citizens” of the state (e.g., patriotism) (Fortes, 1969, p. 232). A major goal of this process
is the cessation traditional forms of justice that threaten the cohesion of the state –
especially blood feud – the opportunities for which increase within state boundaries,
as contact with non-kin increases the opportunities for people to die at the hands of
non-kin toward whom traditions of proscribing revenge with rules of reconciliation
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