ETHNIC VIOLENCE: WHY NEIGHBORS KILLS NEIGHBORS

For a copy of the course syllabus, please click here.

The purpose of this short course is to consider the causes of inter-communal violence. Our approach will be both empirical and theoretical.  Students are expected to attend classes, do the reading, and come to class prepared to discuss it. In addition, a 10–15 page paper addressing the literature in one of the week’s readings will be due two weeks after the end of the course.

Violence in the Classical World:

1. Thucydides, “The Civil War in Corcyra”
2. Pieter van der Horst, “The First Pogrom: Alexandra 38CE” in European Review, vol.10, no.4, 2002, pp.469-484.
3. Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, pp. 34-54.

Ethnicity and Modernity:

1. Rogers Brubaker. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups, in Facing Ethnic Conflicts: Toward a New Realism, ed. Wimmer et al, 34-52. Lanham: Roman and Littlefield.
2. Mann, Michael. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch.1, pp.1-33.
3. Hale, Henry. 2004. Explaining Ethnicity. Comparative Political Studies 37(4): 458-85.

Electoral Incentives to Violence: India:

1. Steven Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India, chapters 1 and 5.

Perpetrators: Rwanda:

1. Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide, pp.1-14, 96-152.

The Rise and Demise of Lynching: The USA:

1. Stewart Tolnay and E.M. Beck: A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Lynchings, 1882-1930, pp.1-15, 55-85, 202-238.

The Holocaust: The Communal Context:

1. Andrzej Zbikowski, “Pogroms in Northeastern Poland—Spontaneous Reactions and German Instigations,” in Shared History—Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet Occupied Poland, 1939-1941, pp.315-354.
2. Jeffrey Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, “Deadly Communities: Local Political Milieus and the Persecution of Jews in Occupied Poland,” in Comparative Political Studies, vol.44, no.3, 2011.