Book Talk: Brian Ferguson's Chimpanzees, War, and History

In this engaging and timely book, Professor R. Brian Ferguson brings us into a debate that runs hot in contemporary scholarship and online discussion: are men predisposed to war? Within this debate, chimpanzee behavior is often cited to explain humans' propensity for violence; the claim is that male chimpanzees kill outsiders because they are evolutionarily inclined, suggesting to some that people are too. In Chimpanzees, War, and History (Oxford UP, 2024), Ferguson challenges this consensus.

By historically contextualizing every reported chimpanzee killing, Ferguson provides detailed demonstration of the connection between human impact and intergroup killing of adult chimpanzees. Second, he argues that killings within social groups reflect status conflicts, display violence against defenseless individuals, and payback killings of fallen status bullies. Ferguson deconstructs efforts to illuminate human warfare via chimpanzee analogy, and provides an alternative anthropological theory grounded in Pan-human contrasts that is applicable to different types of warfare. Bringing readers on a journey through theoretical struggle and clashing ideas about chimpanzees, bonobos, and evolution, Ferguson opens new ground on the age-old question--are men born to kill?

R. Brian Ferguson is Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark, and the founding director of the Rutgers-Newark Graduate Program in Peace and Conflict Studies. He has studied war since the 1970s and has developed a general theoretical perspective that encompasses ethnology, archaeology, biological anthropology, historical anthropology, and militarism in the world today.

Moderated by: Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Associate Professor, Carter School Director of the Genocide Prevention Program

Speakers: 

• R. Brian Ferguson, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark
• Rick W. A. Smith, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at George Mason University, Affiliate Faculty of Women and Gender Studies Program
• Leslie Dwyer, Associate Professor, Carter School
• Anneke Deluycker, Associate Professor, Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation