The Heart of the Matter Valerie M. Hudson, - MIT Press Journals

strongest evolutionary driver of human social arrangements. 10 Concurring
with these insights from psychological and evolutionary research, French philosopher
Sylviane Agacinski reºects, “It is always the difference of the sexes
that serves as a model for all other differences, and the male/female hierarchy
that is taken as a metaphor for all inter-ethnic hierarchies.” 11 Societal-based
differences in gender status beliefs, reºected in practices, customs, and law,
have important political consequences, including consequences for nation-state
security policy and conºict and cooperation within and between nation-states.
After outlining our theoretical framework, we survey the existing empirical
literature linking the situation of women to the situation of states. We then
present an initial empirical investigation of the framework’s propositions.
The “Women and Peace” Thesis
International Security 33:3 12
To establish the theoretical linkage between the security of women and the security
of states, we synthesize insights from several disciplines, including evolutionary
biology and psychology, which provide an account of ultimate
causes of human behavior in terms of natural selection; political sociology,
which offers an account of the social diffusion of both naturally selected and
culturally selected traits; and psychology, which provides an account of more
proximate causal mechanisms of diffusion in terms of cultural selection
through social learning.
evolutionary biology and psychology
Evolutionary biology and psychology have been underutilized by social scientists,
leading Bradley Thayer to comment that “this leads to an artiªcially limited
social science” using assumptions about human behavior that may be
“problematic, or fundamentally ºawed.” 12 Evolutionary theory provides explanations
in terms of ultimate cause, not proximate cause, framing the context
within which individual creatures strive to increase their ªtness (i.e., survival
and reproductive success). Differential ªtness levels, then, drive natural selection:
if one survives to reproduce (or if one can facilitate the reproduction of
close kin, a concept termed “inclusive ªtness”), natural selection will move in
10. Joseph Lopreato, Human Nature and Biocultural Evolution (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984); and
Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
(New York: Mariner, 1996).
11. Sylviane Agacinski, Parity of the Sexes (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 14.
12. Bradley Thayer, Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic
Conºict (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), pp. 8–9.