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Article: Beyond ethnicity: the global comparative analysis of ethnic conflict.
- Article from:
- International Journal of Comparative Sociology
- Article date:
- July 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 E.J. Brill. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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An Argument about Conflict
The difficulty in understanding ethnic conflict lies in treating it as primarily ethnic in its cause and nature. A first look at ethnic conflict does indeed suggest the self-explanatory formula--that the boundaries of difference are simultaneously boundaries of hostility. Where conflicts with an ethnic profile are historically deep-set and presently acted out with violence, the starkness of the ethnic opposition seems to offer us the explanation of conflict. Here, we would include Serb-Croat, Hutu-Tutsi, American White-Black, and Palestinian-Jew. In truth, however, boundaries of (ethnic) difference are not simultaneously boundaries of ...