Add to wishlist
In The Better Angels of Our Nature Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that modern history has witnessed a dramatic decline in human violence of every kind, and that in the present we are experiencing the most peaceful time in human history. But what do top historians think about Pinker's reading of the past? Does his argument stand up to historical analysis?
In The Darker Angels of our Nature, seventeen scholars of international stature evaluate Pinker's arguments and find them lacking. Studying the history of violence from Japan and Russia to Native America, Medieval England and the Imperial Middle East, these scholars debunk the myth of non-violent modernity. Asserting that the real story of human violence is richer, more interesting and incomparably more complex than Pinker's sweeping, simplified narrative, this book tests, and bests, 'fake history' with expert knowledge.
Preface
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
1. Steven Pinker and the Nature of Violence in History
Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale
Part One: Interpretations
2. The Inner Demons of The Better Angels of Our Nature
Dan Smail
3. The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Writing the History of Violence
Dag Lindström
4. Progress and Its Contradictions: Human Rights, Inequality, and Violence
Eric D. Weitz
5. Pinker's Technocratic Neoliberalism, and Why It Matters
David Bell
6. Steven Pinker, Norbert Elias and the Civilizing Process
Philip Dwyer and Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen
Part Two: Periods
7. Steven Pinker's 'Prehistoric Anarchy': A Bioarchaeological Critique
Linda Fibiger
8. Getting Medieval on Steven Pinker: Violence and Medieval England
Sara M. Butler
9. History, Violence and the Enlightenment
Philip Dwyer
Part Three: Places
10. The Complexity of History: Russia and Steven Pinker's Thesis
Nancy Kollmann
11. Necrology of Angels: Violence in Japanese History as a Lens of Critique
Michael Wert
12. British Imperial Violence and the Middle East
Caroline Elkins
Part Four: Themes
13. A History of Violence and Indigeneity: Pinker and the Native Americas
Matthew Restall
14. The Rise and Rise of Sexual Violence
Joanna Bourke
15. Where Angels Fear to Tread: Racialized Policing, Mass Incarceration, and Executions as State Violence in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Robert T. Chase
16. The Better Angels of Which Nature? Violence and Environmental History in the Modern World
Corey Ross
17. On Cool Reason and Hot-Blooded Impulses? Violence and the History of Emotion
Susan K. Morrissey
Part Five: Coda
18. Pinker and Contemporary Historical Consciousness
Mark Micale
Bibliography
Index
Description
In The Better Angels of Our Nature Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that modern history has witnessed a dramatic decline in human violence of every kind, and that in the present we are experiencing the most peaceful time in human history. But what do top historians think about Pinker's reading of the past? Does his argument stand up to historical analysis?
In The Darker Angels of our Nature, seventeen scholars of international stature evaluate Pinker's arguments and find them lacking. Studying the history of violence from Japan and Russia to Native America, Medieval England and the Imperial Middle East, these scholars debunk the myth of non-violent modernity. Asserting that the real story of human violence is richer, more interesting and incomparably more complex than Pinker's sweeping, simplified narrative, this book tests, and bests, 'fake history' with expert knowledge.
