Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life
Title | Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life PDF eBook |
Author | Ashutosh Varshney |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 516 |
Release | 2008-10-01 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0300127944 |
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.
Ethnic Conflict And Civic Life
Title | Ethnic Conflict And Civic Life PDF eBook |
Author | Ashutosh Varshney |
Publisher | |
Pages | 382 |
Release | 2004-11-25 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780195672428 |
Civil Society and the State in Africa
Title | Civil Society and the State in Africa PDF eBook |
Author | John Willis Harbeson |
Publisher | Lynne Rienner Publishers |
Pages | 324 |
Release | 1994 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 9781555876418 |
This text examines the potential value of the concept of civil society for enhancing the current understanding of state-society relations in Africa. The authors review the meanings of civil society in political philosophy, as well as alternative approaches to employing the concept in African settings. Considering both the patterns of emerging civil society in Africa and issues relating to its further development, they give particular emphasis to the cases of Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire.
Democracy, Development, and the Countryside
Title | Democracy, Development, and the Countryside PDF eBook |
Author | Ashutosh Varshney |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 232 |
Release | 1998-09-18 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 9780521646253 |
Several scholars have written about how authoritarian or democratic political systems affect industrialization in the developing countries. There is no literature, however, on whether democracy makes a difference to the power and well-being of the countryside. Using India as a case where the longest-surviving democracy of the developing world exists, this book investigates how the countryside uses the political system to advance its interests. It is first argued that India's countryside has become quite powerful in the political system, exerting remarkable pressure on economic policy. The countryside is typically weak in the early stages of development, becoming powerful when the size of the rural sector defies this historical trend. But an important constraint on rural power stems from the inability of economic interests to overpower the abiding, ascriptive identities, and until an economic construction of politics completely overpowers identities and non-economic interests, farmers' power, though greater than ever before, will remain self-limited.
Civic Wars
Title | Civic Wars PDF eBook |
Author | Mary P. Ryan |
Publisher | Univ of California Press |
Pages | 394 |
Release | 1997 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780520204416 |
Historian Mary P. Ryan traces the fate of public life and the emergence of ethnic, class, and gender conflict in the 19th-century city. Using as examples New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco, Ryan illustrates the way in which American cities of the 19th century were as full of cultural differences and as fractured by social and economic changes as any metropolis today. 41 photos.
Modern Hatreds
Title | Modern Hatreds PDF eBook |
Author | Stuart J. Kaufman |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Pages | 275 |
Release | 2015-05-26 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1501702009 |
Ethnic conflict has been the driving force of wars all over the world, yet it remains an enigma. What is it about ethnicity that breaks countries apart and drives people to acts of savage violence against their lifelong neighbors? Stuart Kaufman rejects the notion of permanent "ancient hatreds" as the answer. Dissatisfied as well with a purely rationalist explanation, he finds the roots of ethnic violence in myths and symbols, the stories ethnic groups tell about who they are. Ethnic wars, Kaufman argues, result from the politics of these myths and symbols—appeals to flags and faded glories that aim to stir emotions rather than to address interests. Popular hostility based on these myths impels groups to follow extremist leaders invoking such emotion-laden ethnic symbols. If ethnic domination becomes their goal, ethnic war is the likely result. Kaufman examines contemporary ethnic wars in the Caucasus and southeastern Europe. Drawing on information from a variety of sources, including visits to the regions and dozens of personal interviews, he demonstrates that diplomacy and economic incentives are not enough to prevent or end ethnic wars. The key to real conflict resolution is peacebuilding—the often-overlooked effort by nongovernmental organizations to change hostile attitudes at both the elite and the grassroots levels.
Ethnic Mobilization, Violence, and the Politics of Affect
Title | Ethnic Mobilization, Violence, and the Politics of Affect PDF eBook |
Author | Adis Maksić |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 301 |
Release | 2017-03-25 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 3319482939 |
This book offers an unprecedented account of the Serb Democratic Party’s origins and its political machinations that culminated in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II. Within the first two years of its existence, the nationalist movement led by the infamous genocide convict Radovan Karadzic, radically transformed Bosnian society. It politically homogenized Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, mobilized them for the Bosnian War, and violently carved out a new geopolitical unit, known today as Republika Srpska. Through innovative and in-depth analysis of the Party’s discourse that makes use of the recent literature on affective cognition, the book argues that the movement’s production of existential fears, nationalist pride, and animosities towards non-Serbs were crucial for creating Serbs as a palpable group primed for violence. By exposing this nationalist agency, the book challenges a commonplace image of ethnic conflicts as clashes of long-standing ethnic nations.