As collective violence erupts in many regions throughout the
world, we often hear media reports that link the outbreaks to
age-old ethnic or religious hostilities, thereby freeing the state,
its agents, and its political elites from responsibility. Paul
Brass encourages us to look more closely at the issues of violence,
ethnicity, and the state by focusing on specific instances of
violence in their local contexts and questioning the prevailing
interpretations of them. Through five case studies of both rural
and urban public violence, including police-public confrontations
and Hindu-Muslim riots, Brass shows how, out of many possible
interpretations applicable to these incidents, government and the
media select those that support existing relations of power in
state and society.
Adopting different modes--narrator, detective, and social
scientist--Brass treats incidents of collective violence arising
initially out of common occurrences such as a drunken brawl, the
rape of a girl, and the theft of an idol, and demonstrates how some
incidents remain localized while others are fit into broader
frameworks of meaning, thereby becoming useful for upholders of
dominant ideologies. Incessant talk about violence and its
implications in these circumstances contributes to its persistence
rather than its reduction. Such treatment serves in fact to mask
the causes of violence, displace the victims from the center of
attention, and divert society's gaze from those responsible for its
endemic character. Brass explains how this process ultimately
implicates everyone in the perpetuation of systems of violence.
General
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