Even though violence seems like an ever-present part of life on Earth, that isn’t always the case, says Kane Agan, a senior majoring in public health. At the UAB Spring Expo, Agan will present his research on “peace systems,” which his mentor, Douglas Fry, PhD, defines as “clusters of neighboring societies that do not make war with one another.”

The current European Union is one example; so are the Upper Xingu River Basin system in Brazil and the Iroquois Confederacy in North America in the 16th to 18th centuries.

Working with Fry, chair of the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Anthropology, Agan is helping to analyze the common attributes of peace system cultures across the centuries and around the globe. Ethnographic accounts of these cultures vary, and the timing is crucial; the researchers seek out the earliest and most accurate data. “We try to parse out what was there before European or Western contact,” Agan explains.