Events

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

Live on Zoom on December 8, 2022
10:00 Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore
11:00 Tokyo | 13:00 Sydney
Previous Day 18:00 Los Angeles | 21:00 New York

The Quantitative History Webinar Series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The Series, now in its third year, is co-organized by the International Society for Quantitative History, HKU Business School, and Hong Kong Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. 量化歷史網上講座系列由香港大學陳志武和馬馳騁教授聯合發起並舉辦，旨在介紹前沿量化歷史研究成果、促進同仁交流，推廣量化方法在歷史研究中的應用。本系列講座由國際量化歷史學會、香港大學經管學院和香港人文社會研究所全力支持和承辦。

Conveners:
Professor Zhiwu Chen
Dr. Chicheng Ma