Mapping Ethnic Violence

Abstract

The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity, Interests, and the Indivisibility of Territory. By Monica Duffy Toft. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 256 pp., $45.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-691-11354-8), $18.95 paper (ISBN: 0-691-12383-7). Ethnic conflict is a lethal and increasingly problematic international challenge. According to Monica Duffy Toft in The Geography of Ethnic Violence , two-thirds or more of all contemporary armed conflicts involve an ethnic dimension (p. 3). Indeed, since World War II, intrastate conflicts have become more common than interstate conflicts, and ethnicity and nationalism are often important components of these struggles. Many scholars agree that these conflicts have important implications—not just for the groups and regions directly involved but also for the international system as a whole. What causes ethnic conflict? This question has generated considerable debate and research in international relations over the years, including work by Michael Brown (1993), Ted Gurr (1993, 2000), K. J. Holsti (1991), John Vasquez (1993), David Lake and Donald Rothschild (1998), Donald Horowitz (2001), and many others. Toft reviews a number of these answers (pp. 4–10), which include explanations based on material factors (such as uneven development, relative deprivation, and modernization—all of which create conditions conducive for the development of a strong ethnically oriented political movement), nonmaterial …