Teaching Peace or Violence?

This chapter argues that education contributes to ethnic violence, in contrast to popular beliefs and the literature suggesting that it promotes peace and tolerance rather than hatred and violence. The chapter first considers a variety of grounds to debunk universal claims that education promotes peaceful social relations before discussing the educational backgrounds of intolerant, hateful, and violent people by focusing on two notorious hate groups of all time: the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). It also shows that terrorists have relatively high levels of education and cites mounting evidence that education commonly contributes to violence against Others. Again using the Nazis and their doctors as examples, the chapter shows that education might strengthen ethnic consciousness, intensify emotional prejudice, create ethnic obligations, and provide mobilizational resources.

Modernity and Ethnic Violence

This chapter examines the link between modernity and ethnic violence. It begins with an overview of the origins and forms of modernity as well as the factors that caused the processes constituting modernity to develop in different ways. It then considers opposing arguments about the impact of modernity on ethnic violence, focusing on the classic modernist view, which contends that modernity promotes peace, and the revised modernist view, which counters that modernity increases violence. Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness offers a clear example of the classic position that equates modernity with peace. In particular, Conrad linked ruthless violence to primitivism and peaceful social order to modernity. The revised modernist position is exemplified by the works of Hannah Arendt, Michael Mann, James Scott, and Andreas Wimmer. The chapter concludes with a discussion of quantitative and qualitative evidence that lends support to the revised modernist view.

The Origins of Ethnic Consciousness

This chapter examines the origins of ethnic consciousness, with particular emphasis on the rise of powerful ethnic consciousnesses shared by large numbers of strangers. It first considers the propensity to categorize people into ingroups and outgroups as well as factors that contributed to the rise of new and abstract conceptualizations of community, including citizenship. It then explores the role of the states, education, and religion in creating imagined communities of strangers and in molding and popularizing ethnic consciousness. It also discusses the micro-dynamics and context of ethnic frameworks and concludes with the argument that ethnic consciousness is a necessary condition for ethnic violence because it divides the world into ethnic categories and fosters strong attachment to ethnicity.

The Nature and Nurture of Ethnic Violence

This chapter examines the nature and nurture of ethnic violence. It begins with a discussion of the behavioral problems of border collies and how they are related to ethnic violence, noting that both are promoted by the combination of group-wide genetic traits and changing social environments. It then considers the biology of ethnic violence by focusing on the propensity to divide people into ingroups and outgroups and how that propensity is linked to human emotions. It also offers a biological explanation for gender differences in ethnic violence and explores the social determinants of ethnic violence such as ethnicity, emotional prejudice, ethnic obligations, mobilizational resources, and political opportunities. Finally, it advances the notion that ethnic violence is caused by modernity.

The Origins of Ethnic Pluralism

This chapter examines the origins of ethnic pluralism. Most countries have populations with multiple and opposing ethnic consciousness, and such ethnic pluralism is a necessary condition for ethnic violence. In order to explain ethnic violence, one must therefore consider why only some places turned out like France—a country that has been successful at popularizing a common national consciousness. To help explain the French case, the chapter compares the nation-building processes in France, Spain, and the UK in the context of unity and disunity. It also discusses the interrelationships among path dependence, situationalism, and ethnic consciousness before assessing ethnic pluralism in large empires such as the Ottoman Empire and the former Soviet Union. Finally, it explores the role of overseas colonialism and missionaries in promoting ethnic diversity by focusing on Rwanda, Burundi, and Burma.

The Future of Ethnic Violence

This chapter summarizes the book's major findings regarding ethnic violence before considering the future of ethnic violence and potential policy prescriptions that might help to limit the prevalence of ethnic violence. The book has presented strong and consistent evidence that modernity promoted ethnic violence by strengthening and proliferating ethnic consciousness. It has also identified two motives that commonly trigger ethnic violence: emotional prejudice and ethnic obligations. Furthermore, modernity enhanced diverse resources that facilitated the mobilization of ethnic violence. The chapter concludes the book by discussing the risk of ethnic violence among early and late modernizers, with a focus on Western Europe and North America. It also considers three policy options for limiting ethnic violence: multiculturalism, federalism, and consociationalism. Finally, it predicts that ethnic violence will continue near present levels over the next decade but should decline slightly due to lower levels of violence among late modernizers.

Modernity and Ethnic Violence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America

This chapter examines the link between modernity and ethnic violence by focusing on Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Modernity interacts with and depends on the local social environment, and the social environments present at the onset of modernity varied by region. Two of modernity's most influential social carriers were colonialism and missionaries, whose biases and ulterior motives often promoted forms of modernity that fostered environments conducive to ethnic violence. The chapter first considers how colonialism promotes ethnic violence, with emphasis on how different combinations of insulation, competition, and stratification made possible “a remarkably stable system of [colonial] rule.” This is followed by a discussion of how missionaries contributed to ethnic violence by promoting ethnic consciousness, using Burma, Assam, and Vietnam as examples. The chapter concludes with an analysis of ethnic violence in the Americas.

States and Ethnic Violence

This chapter examines the role of the state in promoting or deterring ethnic violence. It begins with a discussion of the ways states can promote ethnic violence by using a number of examples, including the Rwandan genocide and statelessness/near-statelessness during World War II. It then considers how both the ethnicization of states and state effectiveness help explain why some states contribute to ethnic violence more than others through a comparative analysis of ethnic violence in two Indian regions: Assam and Kerala. It also explores how states affect whether mobilizational resources can be effectively employed to organize ethnic violence. Finally, it shows how modernity promotes some states that are willing and able to prevent ethnic violence and others that are willing and able to incite it.

Emotional Prejudice and Ethnic Obligations

This chapter examines two underlying motives of ethnic violence: emotional prejudice and ethnic obligations. It first considers how instrumental interests motivate ethnic violence before discussing arguments against this notion. It then turns to emotional prejudice, a motive that seems the polar opposite of instrumental-rational action. In particular, it looks at communally oriented emotions and explains how modernity promotes emotional prejudice. It also presents evidence showing that emotions and obligations are very influential motives for ethnic violence. More specifically, emotions and obligations are most likely to motivate ethnic violence when people possess an ethnic consciousness, a typical outcome of modernity. The chapter concludes with two examples that illustrate the impact of emotions and obligations on ethnic violence: genocide in Germany and Rwanda.

Killing Others

This book examines the origins, causes, transformations, and future of ethnic violence by focusing on its natural history. Drawing on insight from numerous disciplines combined with a theoretical approach that it calls “cognitive modernism,” the book explores all types of ethnic violence across the world and transformations in ethnic violence over time in order to understand what caused seemingly normal people to kill Others. It argues that modernity is the most common and influential cause of ethnic violence and that communal perceptions and concerns must be analyzed in terms of ethnic consciousness, emotional prejudice, and obligations. This introduction defines key concepts such as ethnic violence, ethnicity, ethnic consciousness, ethnic frameworks, and ethnic structures. It also discusses three cultural and historical factors that delineate ethnic communities and are commonly used interchangeably with ethnicity: nation, race, and religious community.