The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,52

vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases.

. . . Though no other nation [but Holland] has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter.... These laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne’s farthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they.

I. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.

II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.

Informal norms of this kind have emerged among fishers, farmers, and herders in many parts of the world.46 In Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes, the legal scholar Robert Ellickson studied a modern American version of the ancient (and frequently violent) confrontation between pastoralists and farmers. In northern California’s Shasta County, traditional ranchers are essentially cowboys, grazing their cattle in open country, while modern ranchers raise cattle in irrigated, fenced ranches. Both kinds of ranchers coexist with farmers who grow hay, alfalfa, and other crops. Straying cattle occasionally knock down fences, eat crops, foul streams, and wander onto roads where vehicles can hit them. The county is carved into “open ranges,” in which an owner is not legally liable for most kinds of accidental damage his cattle may cause, and “closed ranges,” in which he is strictly liable, whether he was negligent or not. Ellickson discovered that victims of harm by cattle were loath to invoke the legal system to settle the damages. In fact, most of the residents—ranchers, farmers, insurance adjustors, even lawyers and judges—held beliefs about the applicable laws that were flat wrong. But the residents got along by adhering to a few tacit norms. Cattle owners were always responsible for the damage their animals caused, whether a range was open or closed; but if the damage was minor and sporadic, property owners were expected to “lump it.” People kept rough long-term mental accounts of who owed what, and the debts were settled in kind rather than in cash. (For example, a cattleman whose cow damaged a rancher’s fence might at a later time board one of the rancher’s stray cattle at no charge.) Deadbeats and violators were punished with gossip and with occasional veiled threats or minor vandalism. In chapter 9 we’ll take a closer look at the moral psychology behind such norms, which fall into a category called equality matching.47

As important as tacit norms are, it would be a mistake to think that they obviate a role for government. The Shasta County ranchers may not have called in Leviathan when a cow knocked over a fence, but they were living in its shadow and knew it would step in if their informal sanctions escalated or if something bigger were at stake, such as a fight, a killing, or a dispute over women. And as we shall see, their current level of peaceful coexistence is itself the legacy of a local version of the Civilizing Process. In the 1850s, the annual homicide rate of northern California ranchers was around 45 per 100,000, comparable to those of medieval Europe.48

I think the theory of the Civilizing Process provides a large part of the explanation for the modern decline of violence not only because it predicted the remarkable plunge in European homicide but because it makes correct predictions about the times and places in the modern era that do not enjoy the blessed 1-per-100,000-per-year rate of modern Europe. Two of these rule-proving exceptions are zones that the Civilizing Process never fully penetrated : the lower strata of the socioeconomic scale, and the inaccessible or inhospitable territories of the globe. And two are zones in which the Civilizing Process went into reverse: the developing world, and the 1960s. Let’s visit them in turn.

VIOLENCE AND CLASS

Other than the drop in numbers, the most striking feature of the decline in European homicide is the change in the socioeconomic profile of killing. Centuries ago rich people were as violent as poor people, if not more so.49 Gentlemen would carry swords and would not hesitate to use them to avenge insults. They often traveled with retainers who doubled as bodyguards, so an affront or a retaliation for an affront could escalate into a bloody street fight between gangs of aristocrats (as in the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet). The economist Gregory Clark examined records of deaths of English aristocrats from late medieval times to the