Thanks for your comment. Sure, I would agree that the type of “structural violence” based on an exploitative economic system can contribute to aggressive behavior. In the article from which you quote (called “Respect for the Rights of Others Is Peace”: Learning Aggression versus Nonaggression among the Zapotec—“American Anthropologist,” 94:621-639), I strongly advocate a multi-causal approach to understanding aggression and peacefulness wherein “various conditions (i.e., social learning, economics, history, and social structure, etc.) are seen as existing and operating in combination.”

Likewise, I would not propose that there is any single cause of warfare. In “Beyond War,” I discuss studies that demonstrate that the likelihood of a society going to war increases with the complexity of its social organization. The simplest and oldest kind of society, the nomadic hunter-gatherer band, tends to be unwarlike, whereas states tend to engage in periodic wars. However, this does not mean than all states are warlike. And certainly other factors come into play in determining the likelihood of war besides social organization alone. Again it pays to think in terms of multiple causes for war and peace rather than to advocate a unicausal outlook. I agree with you that social and economic inequalities must be considered, along with other factors, if we wish to understand the roots of violence and war.