ABSTRACT

In this book, a collection of experts investigate the varied forces - from global systems to local beliefs - that lead to civil violence, chaos and, perhaps, a new political order.
The State, Identity and Violence explores acts of mass violence occurring within national borders and examines the links such acts have to personal identities and how they challenge the character or very existence of the state. Building upon the anthropological premises of holism and cross-cultural comparison, this volume shows how violent challenges to existing states should be conceptualized as layered problems, with multiple kinds of causes. It not only goes beyond the "ancient hatreds" explanation, but shows the inadequacy of the concept of "ethnic violence" and of theories which treat interests and identities as separate, sometimes opposed variables

chapter |58 pages

Introduction

Violent conflict and control of the state

part |203 pages

Cases

chapter |32 pages

Civil war in Peru

Culture and violence in historical perspective 1

chapter |28 pages

“Religious” violence in India

Ayodhya and the Hindu right

chapter |22 pages

The specter of superfluity

Genesis of schism in the dismantling of Yugoslavia

chapter |18 pages

From the margins to the center

The Macedonian controversy in contemporary Greece

chapter |26 pages

Liberia

Civil war and the “collapse” of the settler state 1

chapter |24 pages

A Cold War story

The barbarization of Chad (1966–91)

chapter |15 pages

The Cold War and chaos in Somalia

A view from the ground 1

chapter |18 pages

Conflicts versus contracts

Political flows and blockages in Papua New Guinea