Herding, Warfare, and a Culture of Honor: Global Evidence

Benjamin Enke of Harvard University and his co-authors examine the importance of norms of revenge and punishment in perpetuating global conflicts. They focus on the well-known ‘culture of honor’ hypothesis from social psychology, which posits that traditional herding practices tend to generate moral systems conducive to punishment and revenge-taking. Using a combination of ethnographic and folklore data, global information on the frequency and intensity of conflicts, and multinational surveys, Benjamin Enke and his team find that the descendants of herders experience significantly more frequent and severe conflict today, and they report being more willing to take revenge and punish others in global surveys. These patterns are found across ethnolinguistic groups, subnational regions, and countries.

In this Quantitative History Webinar, Benjamin Enke will present their research in detail. The evidence suggests that a society’s traditional form of subsistence generated a functional morality that plays an important role in shaping conflict across the globe today.

Benjamin’s co-authors: Yiming Cao (Boston University), Armin Falk (briq Institute on Behavior & Inequality and University of Bonn), Paola Giuliano (University of California Los Angeles) and Nathan Nunn (Harvard University)

Discussant: Joy Chen, Assistant Professor of Economics, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business