Throughout the world there are efforts both large and small to address ethnic conflicts-identity based disputes between groups who are unable to live side-by-side in the same state. This book brings together a collection of case studies on interventions in ethnic conflicts throughout the world in which the nature of the state is a core concern (Turkey, Russia, Macedonia, Guatemala, Israel, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, South Africa, US) and asks how the projects themselves understand success and failure in ethnic conflict resolution. It emphasises the complexity and importance of better understanding ways in which small-scale interventions can sometimes have a large impact on large-scale ethnic conflict, and how the goals of the intervenors shift as the participants redefine the identities and interest at stake.

Ethnic conflict often focuses on culturally charged symbols and rituals that evoke strong emotions from all sides. Marc Howard Ross examines battles over diverse cultural expressions, including Islamic headscarves in France, parades in Northern Ireland, holy sites in Jerusalem and Confederate flags in the American South to propose a psychocultural framework for understanding ethnic conflict, as well as barriers to, and opportunities for, its mitigation. His analysis explores how culture frames interests, structures demand-making and shapes how opponents can find common ground to produce constructive outcomes to long-term disputes. He focuses on participants' accounts of conflict to identify emotionally significant issues, and the power of cultural expressions to link individuals to larger identities and shape action. Ross shows that, contrary to popular belief, culture does not necessarily exacerbate conflict; rather, the constructed nature of psychocultural narratives can facilitate successful conflict mitigation through the development of more inclusive narratives and identities.

In this timely book Milton J. Esman surveys a recurrent and seemingly intractable factor in the politics of nations: ethnicity. As the author notes, virtually no contemporary nation-state is ethnically homogeneous. Most address the political effects of domestic ethnic difference, and many fail in the attempt—with devastatingly violent results.Esman focuses on ethnic mobilization and the management of conflict, on the ways ethnic groups prepare for political combat, and on measures that can moderate or control ethnic disputes, whether peaceful or violent.Opening with a broad synopsis of current understandings of ethnicity and its varying political salience, he illustrates his theories by analyzing experiences in South Africa, Israel-Palestine, Canada-Quebec, and Malaysia. He also outlines the political issues and dilemmas, transnational as well as domestic, caused by the vast labor migrations of Mexicans to the United States, North Africans to France, Turks to Germany, and Koreans to Japan.Can economic growth and prosperity ease ethnic conflicts? Esman addresses this question and draws conclusions based on the empirical chapters. In his view, ethnic pluralism and ethnic politics are not collective psychoses or aberrations, to be deplored and exorcised, but rather pervasive realities that observers can confront and politicians can manage.

Donald L. Horowitz's comprehensive consideration of the structure and dynamics of ethnic violence is the first full-scale, comparative study of what the author terms the deadly ethnic riot—an intense, sudden, lethal attack by civilian members of one ethnic group on civilian members of another ethnic group. Serious, frequent, and destabilizing, these events result in large numbers of casualties. Horowitz examines approximately 150 such riots in about fifty countries, mainly in Asia, Africa, and the former Soviet Union, as well as fifty control cases. With its deep and thorough scholarship, incisive analysis, and profound insights, The Deadly Ethnic Riot will become the definitive work on its subject. Furious and sadistic, the riot is nevertheless directed against a precisely specified class of targets and conducted with considerable circumspection. Horowitz scrutinizes target choices, participants and organization, the timing and supporting conditions for the violence, the nature of the events that precede the riot, the prevalence of atrocities during the violence, the location and diffusion of riots, and the aims and effects of riot behavior. He finds that the deadly ethnic riot is a highly patterned but emotional event that tends to occur during times of political uncertainty. He also discusses the crucial role of rumor in triggering riots, the surprisingly limited role of deliberate organization, and the striking lack of remorse exhibited by participants. Horowitz writes clearly and eloquently without compromising the complexity of his subject. With impressive analytical skill, he takes up the important challenge of explaining phenomena that are at once passionate and calculative.

This revised and updated second edition introduces students of violent conflict to a variety of prominent theoretical approaches, and examines the ontological stances and epistemological traditions underlying these approaches. Theories of Violent Conflict takes the centrality of the ‘group’ as an actor in contemporary conflict as a point of departure, leaving us with three main questions: • What makes a group? • Why and how does a group resort to violence? • Why and how do or don’t they stop? The book examines and compares the ways by which these questions are addressed from a number of perspectives: primordialism/constructivism, social identity theory, critical political economy, human needs theory, relative deprivation theory, collective action theory and rational choice theory. The final chapter aims to synthesize structure and agency-based theories by proposing a critical discourse analysis of violent conflict. With new material on violence, religion, extremism and military urbanism, this book will be essential reading for students of war and conflict studies, peace studies, conflict analysis and conflict resolution, and ethnic conflict, as well as security studies and IR in general.

Although group conflict is hardly new, the last decade has seen a proliferation of conflicts engaging intrastate ethnic groups. It is estimated that two-thirds of violent conflicts being fought each year in every part of the globe including North America are ethnic conflicts. Unlike traditional warfare, civilians comprise more than 80 percent of the casualties, and the economic and psychological impact on survivors is often so devastating that some experts believe that ethnic conflict is the most destabilizing force in the post-Cold War world. Although these conflicts also have political, economic, and other causes, the purpose of this volume is to develop a psychological understanding of ethnic warfare. More specifically, Handbook of Ethnopolitical Conflict explores the function of ethnic, religious, and national identities in intergroup conflict. In addition, it features recommendations for policy makers with the intention to reduce or ameliorate the occurrences and consequences of these conflicts worldwide.