Killing Others

Matthew Lange

Description

In Killing Others, Matthew Lange explores why humans ruthlessly attack and kill people from other ethnic communities. Drawing on an array of cases from around the world and insight from a variety of disciplines, Lange provides a simple yet powerful explanation that pinpoints the influential role of modernity in the growing global prevalence of ethnic violence over the past two hundred years. He offers evidence that a modern ethnic mind-set is the ultimate and most influential cause of ethnic violence.Throughout most of human history, people perceived and valued small sets of known acquaintances and did not identify with ethnicities. Through education, state policy, and other means, modernity ultimately created broad ethnic consciousnesses that led to emotional prejudice, whereby people focus negative emotions on entire ethnic categories, and ethnic obligation, which pushes people to attack Others for the sake of their ethnicity. Modern social transformations also provided a variety of organizational resources that put these motives into action, thereby allowing ethnic violence to emerge as a modern menace. Yet modernity takes many forms and is not constant, and past trends in ethnic violence are presently transforming. Over the past seventy years, the earliest modernizers have transformed from champions of ethnic violence into leaders of intercommunal peace, and Killing Others offers evidence that the emergence of robust rights-based democracy-in combination with effective states and economic development-weakened the motives and resources that commonly promote ethnic violence.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Ethnic studies
• War crime

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501707773
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

KILLING OTHERS

KILLING OTHERS A Natural History of Ethnic Violence

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Matthew Lange

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2017 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2017 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2017

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Lange, Matthew, author. Title: Killing others : a natural history of ethnic violence / Matthew Lange. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016030015 (print) | LCCN 2016031136 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501704871 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501704888 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501707766 (Reflowable formats) | ISBN 9781501707773 (PDF ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Ethnic conflict. | Ethnic conflict—History. Classification: LCC HM1121 .L37 2017 (print) | LCC HM1121 (ebook) |  DDC 305.8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030015

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cover art: Untitled collage (2009) by Mwilambwe Bondo Vitshois, drawing and acrylic on canvas, 200 x 200 cm. Courtesy of the artist, represented by Kin ArtStudio, Kinshasa, DRCongo.

To Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, Isaac McGhie, and all victims of ethnic violence

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

Introduction: Killing Others  1.  The Nature and Nurture of Ethnic Violence  2.  Modernity and Ethnic Violence  3.  Teaching Peace or Violence?  4.  The Origins of Ethnic Consciousness  5.  The Origins of Ethnic Pluralism  6.  Emotional Prejudice and Ethnic Obligations: Motives of Ethnic Violence  7.  States and Ethnic Violence: Containing Violence or Instigating Unrest?  8.  From Worst to First: Declining Ethnic Violence in Early Modernizers  9.  Modernity and Ethnic Violence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America 10.  The Future of Ethnic Violence

References Index

vii

ix xi

1

16

37

61

82

101

122

143

156

169

195

213 233

Illustrations

 i.1. TehhcnilnyfElgsoClayiasno,ackserJElmton, and Isaac McGhie  i.2. The impact of modernity on ethnic violence  2.1. Types of warfare by decade, 1816–1999  2.2. Number of ethnic wars per decade, 1816–1999  2.3. Episodes of ethnic violence by decade, 1950–2009  2.4. iceatthDnep00,0001erphsybdesuacelpoe violence, 1950–2009  2.5. The frontispiece of Hobbes’Leviathan(1651)  3.1. Klan membership by class  3.2. ofitnoembmKKKandersthecaduE general public in Denver by age, 1920s  3.3. Teaching antiSemitism in German schools  4.1. Thomas Moore before and after residential school  8.1. Ethnic civil wars by region and type per decade 10.1. Democracy by region, 1960–2012 10.2. World Bank governance indicators by region, 2010 10.3. PDGatipacreP$)USoc(atsn2tn500 by region, 1970–2012

ix

2

11

50

50

51

52

56

67

69

75

96

157

203

204

206