Martin Daly

Margo Wilson

A study of homicide in the context of evolutionary psychology, the attempt to understand social motives as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. Their close attention to the many complex aspects of the subject will be appreciated by those who wish deeper understanding and who, perhaps, may be involved in programs for prevention.

Homicide

Ahmad Alawad Sikainga

This is a comprehensive survey of the Sudanese Civil War. It traces its origins and sets out the problems of nationality/ethnicity that have led to the demise of one of the largest and most important states in Africa. The contents include an introduction to the political and economic background to the Civil War, an analysis of underdevelopment in Southern Sudan since independence, a study of the possibilities of constitutional discourse in the area, and a chapter on the foundation and expansion of the Sudan's People Liberation Army.

Civil War in the Sudan

Criminologists have known for decades that income inequality is the best predictor of the local homicide rate, but why this is so has eluded them. There is a simple, compelling answer: most homicides are the denouements of competitive interactions between men. Relatively speaking, where desired goods are distributed inequitably and competition for those goods is severe, dangerous tactics of competition are appealing and a high homicide rate is just one of many unfortunate consequences. Killing the Competition is about this relationship between economic inequality and lethal interpersonal violence.Suggesting that economic inequality is a cause of social problems and violence elicits fierce opposition from inequality's beneficiaries. Three main arguments have been presented by those who would acquit inequality of the charges against it: that "absolute" poverty is the real problem and inequality is just an incidental correlate; that "primitive" egalitarian societies have surprisingly high homicide rates, and that inequality and homicide rates do not change in synchrony and are therefore mutually irrelevant. With detailed but accessible data analyses and thorough reviews of relevant research, Martin Daly dispels all three arguments.Killing the Competition applies basic principles of behavioural biology to explain why killers are usually men, not women, and counters the view that attitudes and values prevailing in "cultures of violence" make change impossible.

Economic Inequality and Homicide

Killing the Competition

This book is an exercise in "evolutionary psychology": the attempt to understand normal social motives as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. There is simply no question that this is the process that created the human psyche, and yet psychologists seldom ask what implications this fact might have for their discipline. We think that the implications are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparisons and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and that phenomenology of the self.

The human race spends a disproportionate amount of attention, money, and expertise in solving, trying, and reporting homicides, as compared to other social problems. The public avidly consumes accounts of real-life homicide cases, and murder fiction is more popular still. Nevertheless, we have only the most rudimentary scientific understanding of who is likely to kill whom and why. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson apply contemporary evolutionary theory to analysis of human motives and perceptions of self-interest, considering where and why individual interests conflict, using well-documented murder cases. This book attempts to understand normal social motives in murder as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. They note that the implications for psychology are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparison and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and the phenomenology of the self. This is the first volume of its kind to analyze homicides in the light of a theory of interpersonal conflict. Before this study, no one had compared an observed distribution of victim-killer relationships to "expected" distribution, nor asked about the patterns of killer-victim age disparities in familial killings. This evolutionary psychological approach affords a deeper view and understanding of homicidal violence.

Martin Daly

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