The book is aimed at students and scholars of conflict, Africa, ethnic politics, and religion. It may also appeal to religious and political leaders. It proposes a new perspective on how ethnicity and religion shape political outcomes and violence in Africa, adding psychological elements to standard political science arguments.

This book looks at conflict zones in the Asia Pacific with a special focus on secessionist groups/movements in the Indian Northeast, Tibet, Chinese Xinjiang, the Burmese borderlands, Kashmir in South Asia, CHT in Bangladesh, South Thailand, and Aceh in Indonesia. These conflict zones are predominantly ethnic minority provinces, which by and large do not share a sense of one-ness with the country that they are currently a part of; most of these insurgencies have had strong linkages with separatist nationalist groups in the region. Methodologically, the author uses extensive fieldwork, interview data, and participant observation from these conflict zones to take a bottom-up approach, giving importance to the voices of ordinary people and/or the residents of these conflict zones whose voices have generally been ignored. Although the book looks at both the historical background and contemporary dimensions of these conflicts, the author focuses on exploring how the role of race, ethnicity and religion in these conflicts can be both direct and indirect. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conflict and security in contemporary Asia with a background in politics, history, IR, security studies, religion, and sociology.

Patrick Grant explores the relationship between Buddhism and violent ethnic conflict in modern Sri Lanka using the concept of "regressive inversion." Regressive inversion occurs when universal teaching, such as that of the Buddha, is redeployed to supercharge passions associated with the kinds of group loyalty that the universal teaching itself intends to transcend. The book begins with an account of the main teachings of Theravada Buddhism and looks at how these inform, or fail to inform, modern interpreters. Grant considers the writings of three key figures—Anagarika Dharmapala, Walpola Rahula, and J. R. Jayewardene—who addressed Buddhism and politics in the years leading up to Sri Lanka's political independence from Britain, and subsequently, in postcolonial Sri Lanka. This book makes the Sri Lankan conflict accessible to readers interested in the modern global phenomenon of ethnic violence involving religion and also illuminates similar conflicts around the world.

In popular perception cultural differences or ethnic affiliation are factors that cause conflict or political fragmentation although this is not borne out by historical evidence. This book puts forward an alternative conflict theory. The author develops a decision theory which explains the conditions under which differing types of identification are preferred. Group identification is linked to competition for resources like water, territory, oil, political charges, or other advantages. Rivalry for resources can cause conflicts but it does not explain who takes whose side in a conflict situation. This book explores possibilities of reducing violent conflicts and ends with a case study, based on personal experience of the author, of conflict resolution.

Since 1998, which marked the end of the thirty-three-year New Order regime under President Suharto, there has been a dramatic increase in ethnic conflict and violence in Indonesia. In his innovative and persuasive account, Jacques Bertrand argues that conflicts in Maluku, Kalimantan, Aceh, Papua, and East Timur were a result of the New Order's narrow and constraining reinterpretation of Indonesia's 'national model'. The author shows how, at the end of the 1990s, this national model came under intense pressure at the prospect of institutional transformation, a reconfiguration of ethnic relations, and an increase in the role of Islam in Indonesia's political institutions. It was within the context of these challenges, that the very definition of the Indonesian nation and what it meant to be Indonesian came under scrutiny. The book sheds light on the roots of religious and ethnic conflict at a turning point in Indonesia's history.

Provides the first systematic, empirical study of the role that religion plays in ethnic violence.

What kinds of civic ties between different ethnic communities can contain, or even prevent, ethnic violence? This book draws on new research on Hindu-Muslim conflict in India to address this important question. Ashutosh Varshney examines three pairs of Indian cities—one city in each pair with a history of communal violence, the other with a history of relative communal harmony—to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs in some situations but not others. His findings will be of strong interest to scholars, politicians, and policymakers of South Asia, but the implications of his study have theoretical and practical relevance for a broad range of multiethnic societies in other areas of the world as well. The book focuses on the networks of civic engagement that bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. Strong associational forms of civic engagement, such as integrated business organizations, trade unions, political parties, and professional associations, are able to control outbreaks of ethnic violence, Varshney shows. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including powerful politicians, who would polarize Hindus and Muslims along communal lines.