Ethnicity Kills?

EINAR BRAATHEN works for the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR). He was Research Fellow (Research Council of Norway) at the University of Bergen.. - MORTEN BXES is Research Fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo. - GJERMUND SAETHER is a political scientist and former University Lecturer at the Eurofaculty, University of Tartu. He joined the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomatic trainee and is currently posted in Vienna.

• List of Tables, Figures and Maps Preface Abbreviations Notes on the Contributors PART I: INTRODUCTION Ethnicity Kills? Social Struggles for Power, Resources and Identities in the Neopatrimonial State; E.Braathen, M.Boås & G.Saether The Politics of War: A Meditation; V.Y.Mudimbe PART 2: ETHNICITY AND CIVIL WAR The Somali Catastrophe: Explanation and Implications; A.I.Samatar Causes of Civil War in Rwanda: The Weight of History and Socio-Cultural Structures ; A.Lema The Struggle for Kingship: Moses or Messiah - Ethnic War and the Use of Ethnicity in the Process of Democratisation in Congo-Brazzaville; A.Sundberg The Political Economy of State Collapse in Somalia and Liberia; G.Saether PART 3: TRANSITIONS FROM WAR TO PEACE? Nigeria and West Africa: from a Regional Security Complex to a Regional Security Community?; M.Boås Nationalism and Ethnicities: Lessons from Mozambique; M.Cahen Conclusion - Transcending the Discourse on the Politics of War; E.Braathen, M.Boås & G.Saether Bibliography Index

'The authors show that ethnicity is a modern phenomenon related to contemporary issues of power and accumulation. Far from being a thing of the past, an expression of intemporal Africa, it is a social construct related to colonisation and, more generally, modernisation. Instead of reducing ethnicity to an illusion, an artificial creation, born in the sin of colonialism, the authors choose to take it seriously. In stressing the material basis of politics and ethnic conflicts, in replacing ethnicity in its social, economic and political context, the authors of this book propose a realistic approach of ethnicity, which avoids the opposite dangers of denial and objectivation.' - Professor Jean-Francois Medard, Centre d'Etude d'Afrique Niore, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux 'Ethnicity Kills? is the most ambitious and successful of the three collections. ...the work has much to offer, from rich case studies, to thoughtful meditation...' - African Studies Review