"War and Aggression" – 2004                           

 

CONTENT

            Welcome to my last year of teaching before retirement.  Despite its title, this is a course on the social origins of interpersonal aggression, not war.  The lectures begin with a critical review of the major biological, psychological, and sociological theories on human aggression.  The theories are then applied to a very broad range of international empirical data (although concentrating overwhelmingly on homicide) - from simple verbal aggression, through physical assault, homicide, feuds and genocide.

 

EVALUATION

            You have been (and will continue to be) bombarded all your life by bogus experts -   by obese dieticians, divorced marriage counselors, and suicidal psychiatrists; by 'investigative journalists' who read aloud from government press releases while standing on the White House lawn; and 'professors' who give you movies and multiple choice examinations.  As a prescribed antidote to this, 2260 is designed both to enhance and test your ability to examine critically the pseudo-scientific ravings of 'experts', to develop and express your ideas clearly, to apply theoretical explanations to bodies of data, and to reach tentative conclusions which are supported by evidence, not emotions or current political fashions.

            There will be two written essay examinations, each worth 50% of the final grade, in which you will be given the opportunity to display these qualities.  Students who are unable to write literate and coherent formal academic essays should not register for the course. Neither should those who do not find it convenient to write the midterm & final examinations on the designated dates due to weddings and family reunions, exotic diseases, or 'urgent' sporting events.            

           

TEXTS:  REQUIRED READING: (a total of four)

 

            ANY TWO OF (for the midterm examination)

            R. Silverman & Leslie Kennedy.  Deadly Deeds:  Murder in Canada

            Wm. O'Grady, E. Leyton, & J. Overton.  Violence & Public Anxiety

            E. Leyton.  Men of Blood:  Murder in Everyday Life

            Willard Gaylin.  The Killing of Bonnie Garland

           

           

            AND ANY TWO OF (for the final examination):

            Mikal Gilmore.  Shot in the Heart (plus Ratner’s “Ideological Homicide”)

            E. Leyton.  Sole Survivor

            Fox Butterfield.  All God's Children:  The American Tradition of Violence

            E. Leyton.  Hunting Humans

            D. Archer & R. Gartner.  Violence & Crime in Cross-National Perspective

            L. Kuper.  Genocide

                       

INSTRUCTOR

            Dr. Elliott Leyton, Arts Extension A2061

            Tel: 737-8870/8857 (o) or E-mail:  eleyton@mun.ca  Office Hours:  8 a.m. till noon, 5 pm till 6:30 pm, and 9:30 pm till 10:30 pm Wednesdays.  I am available to you for questions on e-mail seven days a week:  leave a message and I will get back to you quickly. 

N.B.:  No matter how vile the weather might be, I do not cancel a class unless the university officially closes:  listen to your radio in the event of a snowstorm.

 

SYLLABUS

 

ONE (Jan 14 )   Theory & data.  Biological & psychological approaches.  The social forces - structure and culture, inhibition and repression.  Hickey (ed) essay. Culture as the great provocateur and controller: Middle Eastern “Honour Killings”. 'Peaceable' Primitive Societies:  Semai, Kung & Fore from Montagu's LEARNING NON-AGGRESSION.

 

TWO  (Jan 21)  Peaceable Modern Societies I:  Lawrence Stone's thousand-year overview of declining violence.  Then ideological hype surrounding the study of violence and VIOLENCE & PUBLIC ANXIETY on violence in Nfld.

 

THREE (Jan 28)  Peaceable Modern Societies II:  MEN OF BLOOD:  MURDER IN MODERN ENGLAND

 

FOUR (Feb ) Comparative Homicide in Canada & the USA.  DEADLY DEEDS (Canada) compared with anecdotal material from SPACE CITY (USA).

 

FIVE (Feb ) Issues in law & insanity:   THE KILLING OF BONNIE GARLAND contrasted with the puzzling case of child killer Mary Bell.

 

SIX (Feb )  MIDTERM EXAMINATION

 

SEVEN  (Feb) - MIDTERM BREAK

 

EIGHT (Mar)  The Origins of Individual Aggressivity I:  Mikal Gilmore's SHOT IN THE HEART & Ratner's  theoretical essay, "Ideological Homicide"

 

NINE (Mar)   The Origins of Individual Aggressivity II:   The ultimate family violence – Steimetz & Straus, & SOLE SURVIVOR

 

TEN (Mar) The Origins of Individual Aggressivity III:  Culture of Violence.  HUNTING HUMANS and review of post-1986 literature on serial & mass murder.

 

ELEVEN (Mar)  The Origins of Individual Aggressivity IV:  Culture of Violence.  CULTURE OF VIOLENCE, and Butterfield's ALL GOD'S CHILDREN:  THE AMERICAN TRADITION OF VIOLENCE.

 

TWELVE (Apr)  Homicide and Other Social Variables.  International comparisons in VIOLENCE & CRIME IN CROSS-NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE, and chronological perspective in  Lawrence Stone)

 

THIRTEEN (Apr)  The Unthinkable:  Genocide.  Rwanda, Amnesty International's POLITICAL KILLINGS BY GOVERNMENTS, Kuper's GENOCIDE, and Kogon's THEORY AND PRACTISE OF HELL (see also the five videotapes on the Rwandan genocide at MUN Library, LARC)

 

***

 

SELECTED GEMS FROM RECENT 2260 EXAMINATIONS - WILL YOU QUALIFY?

       

            As time passes by, history is made...

 

            Gilmore was subject to fragrant abuse and neglect.

           

            The modern serial killer preys on aspiring models, university students, and pedestrians...

           

The book Deadly Deads shows us how, through the passage of time, attitudes change and how we consider life to be so precious.

 

            The pioneering attempt to define multiple murderer as a social phenomenon was compiled by Elliott Leyton in his book entitled HUMAN HEARTS...

 

            Literature Pieces.

 

            Aaron was of Scotch-Irish decent, but he became a black slave working for the white folks of South Carolina.

 

            His mother was of course no angle.

 

            No more mention of the girl he hacked to death with a butter knife from KFC…What was his childhood like.  Was there any warning signs, does he watch the Bold & the Beautiful or the Y & R?

 

            The majority of mass murders before the 20th Century were more of a beneficial nature.

 

            Mass and serial murder have become common-place, and rightly so.

 

            How was the public supposed to accept that 2 month's after the death of Bonnie Garland, her murderer would be working & living under the roof of an assumed name while Bonnie lay dead.

 

            Bonnie Garland was made to like a whore in court, someone who sexually teased Rick and lead him on.

 

            In earlier years cops didn't write reports for everything and had different names for things.  In 1982 the name mister meaner was changed to assualt (a more sevire name).

 

***

 

TO AVOID APPEARING ON THIS HONOUR LIST, FOLLOW THESE SIMPLE GRAMMATICAL RULES:

 

"STUDENTS COME BACK

 

>> You never past me in grammer because you was prejudiced but the other day I finely got to writing the rule's down:

 

>> 1.  Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

 

>> 2.  Just between you and i, case is important.

 

>> 3.  Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

 

>> 4.  Don't use no double negatives.

 

>> 5.  Watch out for irregulars verbs which has crope into our language.

 

>> 6.  A writer mustn't shift your point of view.

 

>> 7.  When dangling, don't use participles.

 

>> 8.  Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

 

>> 9.  About sentence fragments.

 

>> 10. Don't write a run-on sentence you got to punctuate it.

 

>> 11. Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.

 

>> 12. Don't abbrev.

 

>> 13. It's important to use apostrophe's right.

 

>> 14. Check to see if any words out.

 

>> 15. Be carefull about misspelling commen words used in the coarse like homocide, aggreshun, warefare, arguement, aristocrates and pheasants.

 

>> 16. In my opinion, I think that an author when he is writing shouldn't get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that he really does not need in order to make his point and put his message across.

 

>>17. As far as incomplet instrctions, they are wrong.

 

>> 18. About repitition, the repition of a word might be real effective - take for instance Abraham Lincoln.

 

>> 19. Last but not least, lay off cliches."

 

RATNER'S SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE FORMATION OF PSYCHOPATHS

            (SAVE THIS FOR THE FINAL EXAMINATION)

 

            In "Ideological Homicide," R.S. Ratner offers an interpretation of serial murder that brings us closer to an understanding of the social origins of psychopathy, suggesting psychopaths aren't "born that way", but are made by dysfunctional and abusive families.  Ratner notes that historical periods of economic instability - either rising or declining affluence - are also usually times when cultural controls begin to crumble; and he observes that the two waves of multiple murder in the U.S. (1910-1930, and 1970-1996) were also periods of "massive economic destabilization".    During such periods of social upheaval, of sudden hardship or affluence, "cultural codes harmonizing class goals and individual aspirations are no longer efficiently transmitted through weakened family units."  Vulnerable individuals then become more likely to seek solutions to their predicaments through a vindictive "individual fantasy" that is "bereft of scruples."  In summary form, Ratner's hypothesized socio-economic path for the formation of serial killers is as follows:

1.            Economic destabilization and cultural collapse increase the tension that results from social inequality;

2.         This tends to destabilize all interpersonal relations, especially for the children of "dysfunctioning families, who suffer flagrant abuse and neglect."

3.         This abuse "is partially eroticized by the child who will become a sadistic sexual killer (and internalized as pure rage by the child, such as Gary Gilmore, whose murders will not be sexualized) as the only available means of rationalizing maltreatment and maintaining some form of necessary emotional contact."

4.            Because the abuse and pain cannot be comprehended by the victim, they must be "anaesthetized" if the pain is to be reduced: but the resulting "deadening of emotion" is precisely what produces sociopathy in the child.

5.         Even when the pain is deadened and compartmentalized, inevitably it will later be expressed:  "Scripted eroticized violence" becomes the means for fulfilling these fantasies, in the course of which the powerlessness of the child is "symbolically neutralized and avenged."  In an orgy of serial murder, Ratner concludes, victims are ritually captured, possessed, defiled, and disposed of, affording the killer "brief vengeance against the rejecting family/society" (1996:  125-127).   

            If Ratner's assumption is correct and these serial killers do indeed come from savagely abusive families (and this assumption is shared by other specialists, including Ressler et al 1988), then it still leaves unresolved the question of why some victims of abuse react by committing their own atrocities while others resolve their rage in alternative ways - such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or the excesses of religious or political fundamentalism.