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Ethnic Conflict and Indoctrination

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There is no concluding chapter to this interesting multidisciplinary display of modern evolutionary social science, which is a pity. As the editors indicate in their informative introduction, although all contributions take seriously the potential of the life sciences, including evolutionary models, there is no consensus, not even about the definition of indoctrination. As many authors do not specify or make explicit what "indoctrination" means to them, this makes it sometimes difficult to establish whether or not the different arguments and theories presented are mutually exclusive, complementary or relate to different issues. The first editor sees indoctrination as any formal or informal process leading to socialization, a special learning mechanism serving bonding and we-group demarcation, the second editor sees is as political socialization, performed in a purposive manner by an external, specialized instution or staff. Caton would include self-inculculation. The editors indicate that these issues were discussed at the conference, but not resolved. That is not surprising, since the concept of indoctrination is laden with values. It is taken for granted that indoctrination is something bad, and even when it is has a "positive" function, it is "childish" (Caton). Of course it all depends on the perspective one wishes to take, and whose interests are being served. After all, since George Orwell wrote "1984" we know that propaganda comes from the Ministry of Truth.

Although the proposed definitions of indoctrination could just as well refer to persuasion, teaching or social learning in general, almost all authors implicitly or explicitly assume that: 1. indoctrination in premodern societies has served to weld groups with a tight loyalty and 2. that indoctrinability is a universally found characteristic of humans and 3. involves the predisposition to be inculculated with values or loyalties that run contrary to immediate individual interest. (Although schoolchildren might argue that this is exactly what teaching is all about ). Consequently, indoctrinability poses problems for evolutionary explanations: how could such a tendency spread in a population if those who are susceptible to indoctrination risk their lives for a cause that benefits others? Several authors find the solution lies in group selection.

Group selection Rushton explicitly discusses group selection in the special case of human ultrasociality, reffering to the familiar arguments by E.O. Wilson and D.S. Wilson & Sober of groups so tightly cemented that they became "vehicles" of selection. Richerson & Boyd rightly point out that the trouble with a group selection hypothesis is our mating system. Few demic boundaries are without considerable intermarriage, and wife capture is one of the main motives for raids on neighbours. The human groups that compete are demographically very open and violent conflict increases migration rates. Instead, Richerson & Boyd think culturally based strategies are more plausible locomotives of group selection than genetically based strategies. According to them, group selection is based on cultural variation and the marking of group boundaries by cultural symbols. Using these cultural devices, humans are able to create and maintain groups that impose high levels of altruism on their members and punish or exclude cheaters. MacDonald thinks he has found a group (Jews) which has been able to effectively follow a cultural group selection strategy. However, the attempt to make group selection more palatable by invoking "culture" does not help. With Eibl-Eibesfeldt, one cannot see any real differences between "cultural" and "genetic" group selection, since the outcome remains the same.

In an interesting contribution, Wiessner proposes an alternative hypothesis for the evolution of indoctrinability that does not invoke group selection. She argues that indoctrination is required to counteract family solidarity, because strong family loyalty could inhibit the formation of effective exchange networks, necessary as "insurance policies" to reduce risks outside the group. However, Schiefenhövel notes that indoctrination can be directed to partly overcoming ethnicity to build larger alliances, traditionally aimed at creating large-scale networks that serve the ambitions of powerful males. But this ideology did not have the same everyday effects as the one stressing ethnicity and Wiessners recognizes this as she states that indoctrination was and is also used to close boundaries and bind competing social groups.

As a logical correlate of group selection, the evolution of indoctrinability is linked to our proneness to collective aggression and intergroup competition in the form of warfare. However, indoctrination is not only used as an instrument of group antagonism. In relation to the susceptibility of humans to indoctrination for ideologies which lead to intergroup hostility, the conclusion must be that as with many other evolutionary traits in humans, the biopsychology underlying indoctrination seems to be a rather versatile instrument, allowing different solutions to a multitude of ecocultural challenges. Also, as van der Dennen aptly reminds us, a Darwinian approach should also look at the possibility of (indoctrination for) peace and nonviolence as an adaptation to particular political ecological circumstances.

The volume gives little attention to the development of indoctrinability and to the distiction between social learning, teaching and indoctrination. According to Eibl-Eibesfeldt humankind's identification via symbols bears much resemblance to imprinting phenomena, whereas Salter calls spontaneous imprinting the polar opposite of indoctrination. Several authors implicitly assume that indoctrination serves to enhance already existing tendencies. Others indicate that indoctrination is used to inculcate beliefs for which subjects show low indoctrinability, although the difference may be partly due to differences in perception of what constitutes "indoctrination".

The book contains interesting and for the most part highly readable contributions. If any conclusion could be drawn, it would have to be that the predisposition for indoctrinability (however defined) seems to have a biological basis, but its content is culturally stipulated. Perhaps it is more fruitful to focus the future research and the debate the editors call for at the end of their introduction, on what behaviours, rules and norms we learn more readily than others (without using value laden labels) and which require more active teaching efforts than others. Schiefenhövel sees a way out of the indoctrination dilemma: indoctrinate (teach?) children to be vigilant so that the forces of indoctrination do not overpower them.

Informed students of Homo sapiens have long noted that there is virtually no justification for the concept of "race" in our species, since the within group differences on almost all traits are much greater than the between group differences for any known taxonomy of racial groups. The same can be said even more strongly for a biological concept of "ethnicity." Yet human beings are keenly sensitive to both "race" and "ethnicity" as biological concepts; i.e., people widely feel connected by kinship and geneology to others of their group---the insiders--- and are very willing to extend this feeling to mistrust and hatred of other groups---the outsiders.

Racial and ethnic prejudices are unmitigated evils, but they can be eliminated only if we understand them from a scientific point of view.

According to the dominant paradigm in social theory for much of the previous two centuries, human beings are an ideological 'tabula rasa' on which virtually any array of cultural beliefs and values can be inscribed through the appropriate socialization practices. This view suggests that prejudices can be eliminated by simply teaching people that they are wrong.

But many students of human society, myself included, have found that human beings have a certain predilection for prejudice and ethnic hatred. This prejudice is easily aroused and leads people to make great personal sacrifices in supporting "their own." Ethnic conflict today is doubtless the leading cause of war and the violation of personal rights, not to mention a major force in preventing economic and political development around the world.

This book, which included contributions by the editors as well as about two dozen experts in various areas of behavioral theory, attempts to develop an alternative behavioral perspective, in which a predisposition to favor insiders and punish outsiders, even at a fitness cost to oneself, is somehow innately human. However, unlike many innately human traits, which are exhibited in virtually all societies (see Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), ethnic prejudice is often absent and must be evokes by charismatic leaders or social conditions. For this reason the editors call this predisposition an "evolved trait of indoctrinability," and the other contributors follow their lead.

Ethnic conflict and Indoctrination is a very fine sourcebook for those who would model the physiology, varienty, and dynamics of ethnic prejudice, but it does not produce answers. This is in part because most of the contributions aim to provide partial insights into the issue by close analysis of particular aspects of the problem. It is also because no one has a generally plausible model of why human beings are so willing to incur fitness costs on themselves on behalf of groups of virtually unrelated individuals. By far the most useful analytical paper in the book, to my mind, is that of Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, "The Evolution of Human Ultrasociality," who make it clear that the same evolutionary and behavioral mechanisms that account for cooperation and prosociality in humans is doubtless also responsible for ethnic hatred and the predisposition toward violence.