Comparative Perspectives on Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts
The second half of the 20th century has been marked by widespread conflict within states, tensions erupting into violence & civil war. For example, in Rwanda almost 800,000 Tutsis were brutally killed by their neighboring Hutus. Other examples include Indonesia, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, & Yugoslavia. In response, a multidisciplinary team of scholars drawn from twenty-one countries were selected as Fulbright Scholars to collaborate on a project entitled, "Addressing Sectarian, Ethnic, and Cultural Conflict within and across National Borders." During three conferences, the team identified three components that are interrelated in times of violence: factors creating severe ethnic conflict; factors & mechanisms involved in the peace processes; & the dynamics of collective identity. This article serves as an introduction to the subsequent papers in which the fellows' findings are described. 8 References. R. Prince