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Lionel Tiger
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The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System Hardcover – January 1, 1987

by Lionel Tiger (Author)
3.4 3.4 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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A noted anthropologist probes humanity's struggle between good and evil and explains the evolution of humanity's current tangle of moral, ethical, and social confusion
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  1. Print length
    345 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harpercollins
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1987
  5. ISBN-10
    0060390700
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0060390709
  7. See all details
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    Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2015
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  • Hiram Caton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Off the beaten track
    Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2004
    I reviewed this book for a science journal not long after its publication. Rated it four out of five. Why come back eighteen years later? Charting the paths followed over the past three decades toward the goal of a `biosocial science' brought me back. The author is the collaborator with Robin Fox on the best-seller, The Imperial Animal, which explores the evolutionary roots of male behaviour. Among anthropologists of those days, talk about biological roots of cultural behaviour was against the grain. Add the additional negative that the authors seemed to be saying that patriarchal attitudes and behaviour are evolutionary destiny, and you've got serious heresy.

    This book is more of the same. The theme is the fit and misfit between our industrial mode of social organization and the natural sociability that evolved for hunter-gatherer existence. The title derives from the circumstance that Tiger's assessment turns up more misfits than fits, which is to say that we're not well adapted to the urban habitat that we've created over the past couple of centuries. These misfits are what he styles `evil'. `My concern', he says, `is principally with behavioural pollution, with the ways in which the natural behaviour of our species is restricted, thwarted, distorted, stretched, disallowed, or otherwise harshly or uncongenially molded by a way of living and earning'. But like other aspects of human behaviour, evil is denatured in the industrial system. The natural way of moral thinking personifies evil and attributes it to a malignant will. The industrial system, by contrast, is beyond the control of individuals and groups who operate the system and routinely generates `vast outcomes that no one wanted'. These outcomes-the `pathologies of our way of life'-are the `characteristic modern form of evil'.

    The metaphor of injury and healing is also expressed in Tiger's conception of his task as a behavioural scientist. He would generate a `science of skilful husbandry' to maximize adaptation to the urban zoo `just as veterinarians and biologists do for animals in captivity'. If that sounds to you like Max Weber's `iron cage' analogy, you've got it right.

    Although Tiger conjures a science of behaviour as his resource base, he doesn't write science here. Instead he presents a vision of the human condition by launching an abundance of speculations, observations, and anecdotes. Conversational prose displaces the tedium of complex argument, and striking metaphors displace conceptual analysis.

    One wall of the cage is constructed by supplanting the kin association of bans and villages by the formal structures of law and class differentiation. Behavior becomes organized, bureaucratized, regular, predictable. But for the human animal such behaviour is `extraordinarily exotic' because spontaneous and emotionally satisfying conduct toward kin is replaced by rule-governed behaviour whose rationale is its function. The penalty? Work paced by productive function displaces natural rhythms. The village commune is jerry-rigged as a contractual association that draws us into functional relation with anonymous millions, thanks to carrot and stick discipline. The spontaneity of village sociability is replaced by opaque bureaucracies.

    The main thrust of Tiger's book is a discussion of the impacts of the industrial system on sexuality. The contraceptive pill is taken-for-granted, but the familiarity masks the fact that it is a profound intervention. We know that, but the author's forte is drawing out its consequences for the relation between the sexes, child-parent relations, social and employment expectations and, not least of all, women's self-relations. He also underscores the long-term consequence of anti-natalism-lower birth rates relative to pro-natalist populations resulting, eventually, in displacement. Twenty years ago this trend was well marked in Europe and the United States, if generally ignored. Today the rate of change projects displacement of Caucasians as the majority population in the US, Britain, and some European countries by 2070. Already influx plus the growth of Muslim populations exerts constant pressure on our multi-cultural tolerance, institutionally and individually. Undisguised `Islamophobia' is rampant among some politics elites. The answer is `anti-Americanism' among other political elites. Question: will `melting pot' assimilation happen at a rate quick enough to diffuse the simmering ethnic antagonisms?

    Tiger proposes no convincing solutions to these and other challenges, but were he writing today, I suspect he would say that the `war on terrorism' is more a symptom than a remedy. And I for my part bid adieu by strongly recommending this book as a quality tutorial in understanding our complex society.
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