Michael Pollak:
> So there's no such thing as tribal warfare?
It depends what you mean by "tribal". The civil war in Rwanda was referred to by some as tribal warfare, but actually there were state apparatuses on both (or all) sides. If you mean the kind of raiding that goes on, or used to go on, in New Guinea or the back woods of Amazonia, I think "war" is something of a metaphor. The State grows out of the development of the social structures necessary to wage war and maintain slavery and other related forms of order. Hence war as practiced by states, and desultory conflicts between informal armed gangs, are somewhat different. To me, anyway.
-- Gordon