Violence in Society

The Resolution of African Conflicts
The Management of Conflict Resolution and Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Edited by Alfred Nhema and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

“These two volumes clearly demonstrate the efforts by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies. They offer sober and serious analyses, eschewing the sensationalism of the western media and the sophistry of some of the scholars in the global North for whom African conflicts are at worst a distraction and at best a confirmation of their pet racist and petty universalist theories.”

The Roots of African Conflicts
The Causes and Costs
Edited by Alfred Nhema and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

“Africa is no more prone to violent conflicts than other regions. Indeed, Africa’s share of the more than 180 million people who died from conflicts and atrocities in the twentieth century is relatively modest.… This is not to underestimate the immense impact of violent conflicts on Africa; it is merely to emphasize the need for more balanced debate and commentary.”

War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa
The Patterns and Meanings of State-Level Conflict in the 19th Century
By Richard Reid

War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa examines the nature and objectives of violence in the region in the nineteenth century. It is particularly concerned with highland Ethiopia and the Great Lakes. It will be of use to those interested in military history and to anyone involved in modern development and conflict resolution seeking to understand the deeper historical roots of African warfare.Contents:

Under the Heel of the Dragon
Islam, Racism, Crime, and the Uighur in China
By Blaine Kaltman

The Turkic Muslims known as the Uighur have long faced social and economic disadvantages in China because of their minority status.

Sorcery and Sovereignty
Taxation, Power, and Rebellion in South Africa, 1880–1963
By Sean Redding

Rebellions broke out in many areas of South Africa shortly after the institution of white rule in the late nineteenth century and continued into the next century. However, distrust of the colonial regime reached a new peak in the mid-twentieth century, when revolts erupted across a wide area of rural South Africa. All these uprisings were rooted in grievances over taxes.

Violence, Political Culture & Development in Africa
Edited by Preben Kaarsholm

Africa has witnessed a number of transitions to democracy in recent years. Coinciding with this upsurge in democratic transitions have been spectacular experiences of social disintegration.An alternative to discourses of the “failed” and “collapsed” state in Africa is an approach that takes seriously the complex historical processes underlying the political development of individual nation states.

The Unpast
Elite Violence and Social Control in Brazil, 1954–2000
By R. S. Rose

Portuguese and Brazilian slave-traders shipped at least four million slaves to Brazil—in contrast to the five hundred thousand slaves that English vessels brought to the Americas. Controlling the vast number of slaves in Brazil became of primary importance. The Unpast: Elite Violence and Social Control in Brazil, 1954–2000 documents the ways in which the brutal methods used on plantations led directly to the phenomenon of Brazilian death squads.The

Civil War, Civil Peace
Edited by Helen Yanacopulos and Joseph Hanlon

Aimed at practitioners and policy makers, and essential reading for students of war, humanitarian intervention, peace building, and development, Civil War, Civil Peace provides an examination of how interventions can be improved through a better understanding of the roots of war and of the grievances and interests that fueled the war.

Military Intervention after the Cold War
The Evolution of Theory and Practice
By Andrea Kathryn Talentino

For hundreds of years, military intervention in another country was considered taboo and prohibited by international law. Since 1992, intervention has often been described as an international responsibility, and efforts have been made to give it legal justification. This extraordinary change in perceptions has taken place in only the space of a decade.Military

We Are Fighting the World
A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999
By Gary Kynoch

Since the late 1940s, a violent African criminal society known as the Marashea has operated in and around South Africa’s gold mining areas. With thousands of members involved in drug smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping, the Marashea was more influential in the day-to-day lives of many black South Africans under apartheid than were agents of the state. These gangs remain active in South Africa.In

No Peace, No War
An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts
Edited by Paul Richards

A rash of small wars erupted after the Cold War ended in Africa, the Balkans, and other parts of the former communist world. The wars were in “inter-zones,” the spaces left where weak states had withdrawn or collapsed. Consequently the debate over what constitutes war has returned to basics. No Peace, No War departs from the usual analysis that considers the new wars mindless mass actions to offer the paradoxical idea that to understand war one must deny war special status.

Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
By Belinda Bozzoli

A compelling study of the origins and trajectory of one of the legendary black uprisings against apartheid, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid draws on insights gained from the literature on collective action and social movements. It delves into the Alexandra Rebellion of 1986 to reveal its inner workings.Belinda

Mau Mau and Nationhood
Arms, Authority, and Narration
Edited by E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale

Fifty years after the declaration of the state of emergency, Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself. Mau Mau and Nationhood is a collection of essays providing the most recent thinking on the uprising and its aftermath.The work of well-established scholars as well as of young researchers with fresh perspectives, Mau Mau and Nationhood achieves a multilayered analysis of a subject of enduring interest.

Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda
Economy, Society, and Warfare in the Nineteenth Century
By Richard Reid

Blessed with fertile and well-watered soil, East Africa’s kingdom of Buganda supported a relatively dense population and became a major regional power by the mid-nineteenth century. This complex and fascinating state has also long been in need of a thorough study that cuts through the image of autocracy and military might.Political

Writing a Wider War
Rethinking Gender, Race, and Identity in the South African War, 1899–1902
Edited by Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh, and Mary-Lynn Suttie

A century after the South African War (1899-1902), historians are beginning to reevaluate the accepted wisdom regarding the scope of the war, its participants, and its impact. Writing a Wider War charts some of the changing historical constructions of the memorialization of suffering during the war.Writing a Wider War presents a dramatically new interpretation of the role of Boer women in the conflict and profoundly changes how we look at the making of Afrikaner nationalism.

Ethnic Conflict
Religion, Identity, and Politics
Edited by S. A. Giannakos

The outbreak of numerous and simultaneous violent conflicts around the globe in the past decade resulted in immense human suffering and countless lost lives. In part, both results were aided by inactivity or by belated and often misplaced responses by the international community to the embattled groups.

From Guerrillas to Government
The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front
By David Pool

In 1991 the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years later after a referendum in May 1993. It was the climax of a thirty-year struggle, though the EPLF itself was formed only in the early 1970s.From the beginning, Eritrean nationalism was divided. Ethiopia’s appeal to a joint Christian imperial past alienated the Muslim pastoral lowland people in the areas where Eritrean nationalism first appeared.

Terror in the Countryside
Campesino Responses to Political Violence in Guatemala, 1954–1985
By Rachel A. May

The key to democratization lies within the experience of the popular movements. Those who engaged in the popular struggle in Guatemala have a deep understanding of substantive democratic behavior, and the experience of Guatemala’s civil society should be the cornerstone for building a meaningful formal democracy.In Terror in the Countryside Rachel May offers an in-depth examination of the relationship between political violence and civil society.

Empire State-Building
War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925–1952
By Joanna Lewis

This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change.It asks four questions: - Why was Kenya’s welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies? - Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor? - Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine?

Brothers at War
Making Sense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War
By Tekaste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll

The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment. Outside observers found it difficult to evaluate the highly polarized official statements and proclamations issued by the two governments in conflict.Brothers

Managing the Counterrevolution
The United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961
By Stephen M. Streeter

The Eisenhower administration’s intervention in Guatemala is one of the most closely studied covert operations in the history of the Cold War. Yet we know far more about the 1954 coup itself than its aftermath. This book uses the concept of “counterrevolution” to trace the Eisenhower administration’s efforts to restore U.S. hegemony in a nation whose reform governments had antagonized U.S. economic interests and the local elite.Comparing the Guatemalan case to U.S.-sponsored

Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits
War in Northern Uganda, 1985–97
By Heike Behrend

In August 1986, Alice Auma, a young Acholi woman in northern Uganda, proclaiming herself under the orders of a Christian spirit named Lakwena, raised an army called the “Holy Spirit Mobile Forces.” With it she waged a war against perceived evil, not only an external enemy represented by the National Resistance Army of the government, but internal enemies in the form of “impure” soldiers, witches, and sorcerers.

Herero Heroes
A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890–1923
By Jan-Bart Gewald

The Herero-German war led to the destruction of Herero society. Yet Herero society reemerged, reorganizing itself around the structures and beliefs of the German colonial army and Rhenish missionary activity. This book describes the manner in which the Herero of Namibia struggled to maintain control over their own freedom in the face of advancing German colonialism.

Peasants in Arms
War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–1994
By Lynn Horton

Drawing on testimonies from contra collaborators and ex-combatants, as well as pro-Sandinista peasants, this book presents a dynamic account of the growing divisions between peasants from the area of Quilalí who took up arms in defense of revolutionary programs and ideals such as land reform and equality and those who opposed the FSLN.Peasants

Controlling Anger
The Anthropology of Gisu Violence
By Suzette Heald

Controlling Anger examines the dilemmas facing rural people who live within the broader context of political instability. Following Uganda’s independence from Britain in 1962, the Bagisu men of Southeastern Uganda developed a reputation for extreme violence.Drawing

Conflict, Age and Power in North East Africa
Age Systems in Transition
Edited by Eisei Kurimoto and Simon Simonse

Age systems are involved in the competition for power. They are part of an institutional complex that makes societies fit to wage war. This book argues that in postcolonial North East Africa, with its recent history of national political conflict and civil and regional wars, the time has come to reemphasize the military and political relevance of age systems. Herein is new information about age systems in North East Africa, setting them firmly in a wider spatial and temporal context.

Gender Violence and the Press
The St. Kizito Story
By H. Leslie Steeves

On the night of Saturday, July 13, 1991, a mob of male students at the St. Kizito Mixed Secondary School in Meru, Kenya, attacked their female classmates in a dormitory. Nineteen schoolgirls were killed in the melee and more than 70 were raped or gang raped.The explanations in the press for the attack included a rebellion by male students over administrative mismanagement, academic stress, cultural norms for the Meru ethnic group, and victim characteristics (as assumed in rape myths).

Mau Mau from Below
By Greet Kershaw

John Lonsdale says in his introduction:“This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau ‘Emergency’ in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.Professor

Panamanian Militarism
A Historical Interpretation
By Carlos Guevara Mann

Carlos Guevara Mann argues that Panamanian militarism, a consequence of the breakdown of legitimacy that occurred in the early nineteenth century, is more a manifestation of a deeply-rooted political tradition than an isolated phenomenon of the late twentieth century. He examines the variable US policy approach to domestic stability with the overall context of US hegemony in the isthmus and its shaping of Panamanian militarism.Focusing

Violence and the Dream People
The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960
By John D. Leary

Violence and the Dream People is an account of a little-known struggle by the Malayan government and the communist guerrillas, during the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency, to win the allegiance of the Orang Asli, the indigenous people of the peninsular Malaya.