Comments on: Last Best Gifts: Retaliation and the market for human blood and organs

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:45:49 +0000

“Latin pecus (cattle), yielding our pecuniary
And somewhat more directly, latin pecunia.”

The AS reflex is ‘feoh’, of which the Modern English form is ‘fee’.

By: richard

richard — Sun, 18 May 2008 01:28:10 +0000

re 7: pirates’ charters offering compensation for lost body parts may come from ‘institutional’ precedents: medieval English and Byzantine legal codes both contain similar lists and prices, always for a destroyed body part… So sacrifice seems to be part of the operation. In any event, I think I divine an appeal here to pirate ships as a kind of ‘primitive society;’ I’d argue, rather, that their seemingly novel social organisations are pretty much always derivative of some structure elsewhere.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:59:42 +0000

Diamond is very special. He’s brought a lot of interesting stuff from biology and genetics into history and anthropology, and I actually like his enormous scope and his willingness to conjecture and moralize. But he often seems to be winging it, perhaps inevitably so.

Black-Michaud’s “Cohesive Force”, a comparative study of feud, vendetta, and endemic violence in non-state societies, illuminates the kind of thing Diamond was talking about.

Diamond seems to be saying that the desire for revenge is natural, whereas the repression of the desire for revenge is artificial and repressive (though good in a utilitarian sense). But in societies organized around revenge, taking revenge is an enforced social obligation. There’s presumably some instinctive emotional substrate (per sociobiology), but feud and vendetta are no more natural and pre-cultural than the state is. In societies organized around feud, individuals are often obligated to kill people they do not hate (and who were not directly guilty of any offense) in order to avenge people they had not loved and perhaps had never known.

You can hardly blame Diamond for telling a story from his own family history, but his grandfather’s story is an extreme case involving both wartime chaos and a miscarriage of justice.

By: Marcus Pivato

Marcus Pivato — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:02:06 +0000

Of possible interest is the following recent article in `The New Yorker' by Jared Diamond, entitled Veangeance is Ours.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 17 May 2008 12:34:36 +0000

The best was standardized, though, like US Prime beef. No spots, even if they were really cute spots.

By: Doctor Slack

Doctor Slack — Sat, 17 May 2008 11:02:15 +0000

31: Hence the (or a) rationale for human sacrifice. What finer and more precious animal than your fellow man?

By: johnf

johnf — Sat, 17 May 2008 10:05:26 +0000

I thought it was always the finest animal which was selected for slaughter – on the principal that you gave the best to God – as opposed to the most standard.

By: magistra

magistra — Sat, 17 May 2008 06:22:33 +0000

William Miller is based at the University of Michigan Law School. He started off studying Norse literature/history and has developed this into wider interests in topics of both legal and cultural history (which makes a lot of sense when you look at the themes in the sagas).

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:06:33 +0000

#22: Staggering bob.

By: bernard Yomtov

bernard Yomtov — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:51:51 +0000

an oddity of english is that most of the words for domestic animals are anglo-saxon, but most of the words for the food that comes from these animals are from the Normans. So, Cow, Pig, Sheep, Deer; but Beef, Pork, Mutton, Venison.

I thought that was because the Anglo-Saxon peasants cared for the animals, while the Norman nobles ate them (animals, that is).

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:00:22 +0000

most of the words for the food that comes from these animals are from the Normans.

The French have been better at food for 1000 years?

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:49:38 +0000

Kind of OT but an oddity of english is that most of the words for domestic animals are anglo-saxon, but most of the words for the food that comes from these animals are from the Normans. So, Cow, Pig, Sheep, Deer; but Beef, Pork, Mutton, Venison.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:04:27 +0000

I am here to provide John Emerson with a bottle of water. May it refresh him for further posting.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:56:16 +0000

I’m sure that whole daughters, not parted out, were accepted by creditors.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:52:42 +0000

American industry has standard contracts fixing the value of body parts. The thumb is more valuable than any other finger, and the thumb and forefinger together are more valuable than the combined price of the two of them.

When I saw the pricelist at a mining job in 1972, the prices were shockingly low.