David Turton

War and Ethnicity: Global Connections and Local Violence - Studies on the Nature of War David Turton

Marc Notes: Originally published: Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 1997.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; The demise of Western colonial empires after WW2, and of the Soviet Empire in 1991, has both brought about and highlighted the phenomenon of ethnic wars in Africa, Asia and Europe. This book provides an examination of the problem. Publisher Marketing: The great majority of today's wars take place within rather than between states and are often explained and justified by participants as the result of deep and ineradicable differences between 'them' and 'us'. The contributors to this book, whose disciplinary backgrounds include history, political science, international relations and anthropology, explore the growing importance of such 'ethnic' differences in a world that is also becoming more unified, politically, economically and culturally. They discuss the causes of internal war, the techniques used by nationalist politicians and intellectuals to turn ethnicity into a powerful political resource, the response of the UN and of non-governmental agencies to such 'complex' political emergencies as those in former Yugoslavia and Somalia and the constitutional strategies that can be used to acknowledge and accommodate ethnic diversity. Taken together, the papers demonstrate that the relationship between ethnicity and war is not a simple matter of cause and effect. Ethnic differences are not given in nature, ethnicity does not arise suddenly andspontaneously but only in specific historical circumstances and it is unlikely to become a lethal force in human affairs except through the deliberate calculation of political elites. DAVID TURTON is Director of the Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford. CONTRIBUTORS: TOM GALLAGHER, STEFAN TROEBST, THOMAS ZITELMANN, KLAUS JURGEN GANTZEL, JAKOB ROSEL, HARRY GOULBOURNE, IOAN LEWIS, MARK DUFFIELD.

Contributor Bio:  Turton, David Jenny Robinson is based in the Geography Discipline of the Social Sciences Discipline at the Open University. David Turton was formerly director of the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre. Giles Mohan is a geographer, currently at Portsmouth University. Helen Yanacopulos is in the Development Problems andPrivacy Unit at the Open University.