Alan Page Fiske is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has also served as Director of the Behavior Evolution and Culture Center, and Director of the Culture, Brain, and Development Center. He has worked abroad for eight years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, WHO consultant and Peace Corps Country Director as well as conducting ethnographic fieldwork. He is widely known for his Relational Models Theory, the only comprehensive, integrated theory of human sociality, which has been tested and applied in numerous studies by hundreds of researchers.

The point; 1. Why are people violent?; 2. Violence is morally motivated to regulate social relationships; 3. Defense, punishment, and vengeance; 4. The right and obligation of parents, police, kings, and gods to violently enforce their authority; 5. Contests of violence: fighting for respect and solidarity; 6. Honor and shame; 7. War; 8. Violence to obey, honor, and connect with the gods; 9. On relational morality: what are its boundaries, what guides it, and how is it computed?; 10. The prevailing wisdom; 11. Intimate partner violence; 12. Rape; 13. Making them one with us: initiation, clitoridectomy, infibulation, circumcision, and castration; 14. Torture; 15. Homicide: he had it coming; 16. Ethnic violence and genocide; 17. Self-harm and suicide; 18. Violent bereavement; 19. Non-bodily violence: robbery; 20. The specific form of violence for constituting each relational model; 21. Why do people use violence to constitute their social relationships, rather than using some other medium?; 22. Metarelational models that inhibit or provide alternatives to violence; 23. How do we end violence?; 24. Evolutionary, philosophical, legal, psychological, and research implications; The dénouement.

A radical study, arguing that violence does not result from a breakdown of morality, but is morally motivated. It contrasts with prevailing theories on violence, offering a thought-provoking counterpoint.