Affect, Interest, and Political Entrepreneurs in Ethnic and Religious Conflicts. Edited by Arthur A. Stein & Ayelet Harel-Shalev. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Reprint of Special issue: Ethnic and Racial Studies 40, 12 (October 2017).
In the current environment, most political violence occurs between internal communities, such as ethnic and religious groups, rather than between states. Such inter-communal conflict threatens both internal political stability and interstate relations. In this edited volume, a multidisciplinary and multinational group of scholars analyze the bases of inter-communal conflict and its domestic and international consequences.
The authors focus on inter-communal conflict through the lenses of political struggles in the Middle East and Asia, which provide fertile grounds for assessing the viability of new social constructions and the continuing impact of ancestral ties. Containing theoretical, regional, and country studies, the chapters tackle such issues as: the implications of changes in the institutional rules for political competition; how explanatory narratives for conflict are selected when multiple attributions are possible; the bases of ideological conflict that have arisen within Islam; the problems of ethnic competition that remain unresolved in powersharing arrangements; the consequences for international relations when national boundaries do not circumscribe ethnic and religious communities; and the subordination of women’s interests to religious conflict and its resolution. Since identities are shaped by multiple qualities, the contributions examine the role of ideologies, institutions, and politicians in shaping political cleavages, communities, and conflicts.
Introduction
Ancestral and Instrumental in the Politics of Ethnic and Religious Conflict
Arthur A. Stein and Ayelet Harel-Shalev
Part I: Domestic and International Sources of Political Competition and Conflict
When and Why Do Some Social Cleavages Become Politically Salient
Rather Than Others?
Daniel N. Posner
Ethnicity, Extraterritoriality, and International Conflict
Arthur A. Stein
Part II: Ethnic and Religious Conflict in the Middle East
Representation, Minorities and Electoral Reform: The Case of the
Palestinian Minority in Israel
Rebecca Kook
The Paradox of Power-sharing: Stability and Fragility in Postwar Lebanon
Amanda Rizkallah
Changing Islam, Changing the World: Contrasting Visions Within
Political Islam
Nimrod Hurvitz and Eli Alshech
Part III: Ethnic and Religious Conflict in Asia
The “Ethnic” in Indonesia’s Communal Conflicts: Violence in Ambon,
Poso and Sambas
Kirsten E. Schulze
Gendering Ethnic Conflicts: Minority Women in Divided Societies == the
Case of Muslim Women in India
Ayelet Harel-Shalev