ABSTRACT
This chapter compares violent and peaceful cities, taking into consideration two kinds of cleavages, Christian versus Islam and ethnic Chinese versus Pribumi or indigenous ethnic groups, the most salient cleavages in the history of collective violence in Indonesia. It tries to avoid bias in selecting the cases by paying attention to both violent and peaceful cases. The chapter discusses how to explain the spatial variation of ethnic violence. It also discusses the cases: Ambon and Manado, and Surakarta and Yogyakarta respectively. It employs the research scheme of Varshney and Berenschot, namely paired comparison between peaceful and violent cases to explain the spatial variation in communal peace and violence. The chapter concurs with Panggabean and Smith in suggesting that local and national state actors are central to the emergence of communal violence. It uses additional interviews with community elite and leaders, with a sample size of 50 from each city, 25 respondents from each community.
