Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

THEORIES OF HOSTILITY 123
elson's and Steiner's interpretive method, that it would have been entirely
appropriate within the framework of their book to describe obvious
forms of behaviour related to envy, hypothetical and incapable of proof
though they might be. But nowhere does this occur in all the seven
hundred pages of an inventory dated 1964 that purports to convey our
present state of knowledge about man, especially man in his social
context. Were an imaginary inhabitant of another planet to seek information
from this book about Homo sapiens, the idea would never occur to
him that anything like envy existed on this planet.
Theories of hostility
Though exponents of modern social sciences (sociology, social psychology,
cultural anthropology) have concerned themselves exhaustively
with the phenomenon of hostility, they have managed to write whole
chapters about this subject, even in recent works, without ever asking
what it is that underlies hostility.
Neil J. Smelser, a sociologist, in 1962 put forward a comprehensive
theory of collective behaviour, by which he means group behaviour such
as panic, mob action, riot, fanatical sects, etc. There is a detailed
discussion of hostility, with references to literature on the subject, but
not a single mention of such phenomena as envy, resentment and
malevolence; 'hostility' is the only term. Even when he is investigating
'hostile belief' and 'hostile outbursts,' the envy which can only too
easily be shown to underlie it never comes into view. It is vain to look in
Smelser's index for envy, resentment, jealousy, egalitarianism or the
sense of justice. Perhaps unconsciously, he carefully evades every phenomenon
and every concept that could lead him even indirectly towards
anything to do with these aspects of human nature. We find little here
even about aggression, which, as we have seen elsewhere, is a favourite
form of evasion for those refusing to face the fact of envy.
In Smelser's analysis of 'hostility' we do in fact discover why modern
social science is so apt to overlook envy. There is repeated discussion of
theories of hostile behaviour according to which such behaviour is the
consequence of a perceived threat to a person's real economic, sexual,
professional or social position. The authors admit, of course, that the
possessor of these hostile feelings incorrectly assesses, exaggerates or