Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia / Edition 1

by Stanley J. Tambiah

Overview

Ethno-nationalist conflicts are rampant today, causing immense human loss. Stanley J. Tambiah is concerned with the nature of the ethno-nationalist explosions that have disfigured so many regions of the world in recent years. He focuses primarily on collective violence in the form of civilian "riots" in South Asia, using selected instances in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India. He situates these riots in the larger political, economic, and religious contexts in which they took place and also examines the strategic actions and motivations of their principal agents. In applying a wide range of social theory to the problems of ethnic and religious violence, Tambiah pays close attention to the history and culture of the region.

On one level this provocative book is a scrupulously detailed anthropological and historical study, but on another it is an attempt to understand the social and political changes needed for a more humane order, not just in South Asia, but throughout the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520206427
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/03/1997
Series:	Comparative Studies in Religion and Society , #10
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	417
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Stanley J. Tambiah is Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. Among his several books is Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (1991).

Table of Contents

List of Figures, Maps, and Tables
Preface

PART ONE: SELECTED SITES OF CONFLICT IN SOUTH ASIA

1. The Wider Context
2. Orientation and Objectives
3· The 1915 Sinhala Buddhist-Muslim Riots
in Ceylon
4. Two Postindependence Ethnic Riots in Sri Lanka
5· Sikh Identity, Separation, and Ethnic Conflict
6. Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan

PART TWO: RETHINKING THE NATURE OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE
7· Some General Features of Ethnic Riots and Riot Crowds
8. The Routinization and Ritualization of Violence
9· Hindu Nationalism, the Ayodhya Campaign, and the Babri Masjid
10. Entering a Dark Continent: The Political Psychology of Crowds
11. Reconfiguring LeBon and Durkheim on Crowds as Collectives
12. The Moral Economy of Collective Violence

Notes
Bibliography
Index