Riots and Pogroms / Edition 1

by Paul R. Brass

Overview

During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, many Korean-American businesses were looted and burned to the ground. Although nearly half of the looters arrested were Latinos, the media portrayed this aspect of the riots more in terms of the on- going conflicts between Korean-Americans and African- Americans. In another part of the world in 1984, the violence which ensued after the assassination of India's Indira Gandhi was portrayed by officials and state leaders as a spilling over of mass sentiments of grief and anger, a conflict between ethnic groups instead of a pogrom against the Sikhs.
Riots and Pogroms presents comparative studies of public violence in the twentieth-century in the United States, Russia, Germany, Israel, and India with a comparative, historical, and analytical introduction by the editor. The focus of the book is on the interpretive process which follows riots and pogroms, rather than on the search for their causes. Its emphasis is on the struggle for control over the meaning of riotous events, for the right to represent them properly. How do political and social forces seek to assign causes and attach labels to riots, attribute motives to rioters and pogromists, and explain why particular groups are selected for violent assaults? To what extent are the state and its agents implicated in those assaults? To what degree does organization and/or spontaneity play a role in these incidents?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814712825
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	10/01/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

"Paul R. Brass is Professor of Political Science and South Asian Studies at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors - Preface - Acknowledgements - Introduction: Discourses of Ethnicity, Communalism, and Violence; P.R.Brass - Anti-Jewish Violence and Revolution in Late Imperial Russia: Odessa, 1905; R.Weinberg - The Pogrom of 9-10 November 1938 in Germany; L.E.Hill - Divisions at the Center: The Organization of Political Violence at Jerusalem's Temple Mount/Al-Haram Al-Sharif: 1929 and 1990; R.Friedland & R.D.Hecht - Riots and Rituals: The Construction of Violence and Public Space in Hindu Nationalism ; P.van der Veer - Dharma Yudh: Communal Violence, Riots and Public Space in Ayodhya and Agra City: 1990 and 1992; J.Chaturvedi & G.Chaturvedi - The Anti-Sikh Riots of 1984 in Delhi: Politicians, Criminals, and the Discourse of Communalism; V.Van Dyke - Racial Killing or Bar Room Brawl: Multiple Explanations of the Killing of Vincent Chin; Y.Le Espiritu - African American Boycotts of Korean-Owned Stores in New York and Los Angeles; E.T.Chang - Index