Routledge Identity Conflicts: Can Violence be Regulated?

Social conflicts are ubiquitous and inherent in organized social life. This volume examines the origins and regulation of violent identity conflicts. It focuses on the regulation of conflict: the constraining, directing, and repression of violence through institutional rules and understandings. The core question the authors address is how violence is regulated and the social and political consequences of such regulation. The contributors provide a multidisciplinary multi-regional analysis of identity conflicts and their regulation. The chapters focus on the forging and suppression of religious and ethnic identities, problematic national identities, the recreation of identity in post-conflict peace-building efforts, and the forging of collective identities in the process of democratic state building. The instances of violent conflict treated here range across the globe from Central and South America, to Asia, to the Balkans, and to the Islamic world. One of the key findings is that conflicts involving religious, ethnic, or national identity are inherently more violence prone and require distinctive methods of regulation. Identity is a question both of power and of integrity. This means that both material and symbolic needs must be addressed in order to constrain or regulate these conflicts. Accordingly, some chapters draw on a political-economy approach that places primary emphasis on resources, organization, and interests, while others develop a cultural approach focusing on how identities are constructed, grievances defined, blame attributed, and redress articulated. This volume offers new ideas about the regulation of identity conflicts, at both the global and local level, that engage both tradition and modernization. It will be of interest to policymakers, political scientists, human rights activists, historians, and anthropologists. Review -This timely volume starts with the premise that identity conflict isn't new, but it also isn't unmanageable. Drawing from numerous cases of conflicts based on ethnicity, religion, and history, the book shows how insurgents can find reasons to direct their efforts to state and nation-building. Offering both academic and practical contributions, and never glossing over the real difficulties, Identity Conflicts tackles the essential issues for building peace. This is an important book.- --David S. Meyer, University of California, Irvine -This is an important book, bringing together excellent analyses of diverse conflicts associated with exclusive identities. The analyses vividly reveal the multiplicity and fluidity of identities. The conflicts are examined in global, regional, and local settings and from various perspectives. Yet, the cases are so presented that the findings mesh together to demonstrate how cultural and institutional regulation sometimes fail to avert violence, but also how they often succeed. This exciting book, with its sophisticated treatment of a subject often treated too simplistically, should be widely read.- --Louis Kriesberg, Syracuse University -The volume consists of a dozen case studies from around the world on the theme of managing identity conflicts. The editors and contributors examine the formation and suppression of group identities, and the creation of new, overarching identities...a contribution to the burgeoning literature on identity conflicts.- --Tony Oberschall, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill -Each essay is rich in the detail about the complexity of the issue being presented. . . . [This] is an interesting, informative and useful book.- --Harris Chaiklin, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease "This timely volume starts with the premise that identity conflict isn't new, but it also isn't unmanageable. Drawing from numerous cases of conflicts based on ethnicity, religion, and history, the book shows how insurgents can find reasons to direct their efforts to state and nation-building. Offering both academic a