Mark Anspach abstract

Reciprocity is mimetic: each party mirrors the other's actions. If you give me a present, I may want to give you one; if you hit me, I may want to hit you back. There is a clear parallel between vengeance and gift exchange, and both forms of reciprocity, negative and positive, tend to keep going on their own mimetic momentum.

But there is also a difference. It is relatively easy for positive reciprocity to break down and turn into its opposite. If you give me a present and I fail to reciprocate for whatever reason, or even for no particular reason, you may interpret that as a slight, and we may soon find ourselves exchanging insults instead of presents. But if we begin by exchanging insults, we are unlikely to start exchanging presents for no particular reason. Negative reciprocity tends to take on a life of its own.

If it is discord itself that sets the stakes, as Roberto Farneti puts it, an entirely new level of reality is created. In the first part of my talk, I will examine how pre-modern religions address this autonomous level of reality that seems to transcend the individuals involved. What ritual procedures are used to end a vendetta and initiate peaceful exchange between warring parties?

In the second part of my talk, I will turn to the analogous dilemmas of modern conflicts. Once a spiral of revenge is underway, it is hard to reverse course without making oneself vulnerable. A peace overture risks being seen as a sign of weakness by the enemy, while peace advocates lay themselves open to accusations of treason from their own side.

Is it possible to go beyond the rather unappealing choice between taking a "soft" or a "hard" line? An alternative approach has been championed by the Harvard Negotiation Project, which developed the mediation technique used in the Camp David peace talks between Egypt and Israel. The anthropological model outlined in the first part of the talk is not without relevance to this alternative approach.