Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
"Kaufman begins by surveying the stories various reporters and analysts have told about the conflict in Yugoslavia. . . He writes clearly of the complexities, teasing out relationships among the factors of history, symbols, attitudes, leadership, and the economy."—Book News, November 2001"While providing excellent background of ethnic wars, Modern Hatreds is not simply a historical text. It offers a modern interpretation of the many recent individual conflicts, and helps knit together the broader themes that are relevant to them all."—Ryan Connors, National Journal, August 2001"Kaufman is convincing when he argues that ethnic violence is not the result of 'ancient hatreds,' and that contemporary politics and the struggle for power among individuals and elite groups largely determine who will engage in violence and who, ultimately, will get killed."—Istvan Deak, The New York Review of Books, September 26, 2002"Modern Hatreds is an excellent and timely contribution to scholarship on ethnic war. . . Kaufman manages to combine a thoroughly researched and detailed analysis of the case studies and the construction of a hypothesis that may explain, to some extent, the emergence of ethnic war."—Bronwyn Evans-Kent, University of Queensland. Journal of International Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3"Kaufman teases out the roots of hatred and violence from myths and stories, finding symbolic connections to counter the purely rationalist explanation of ethnic violence. He finds that appeals to emotion by use of symbols are more persuasive than such rational incentives as money could ever be."—Perspectives #23-24, December-January 2002"The events of September 11, when collective hatred left its indelible calling card on U.S. soil, heightened people's need to make sense of the catastrophe. Although this detailed work on the history of hatred did not directly involve the incidents that suddenly placed the comfortably cocooned country into the cauldron of ethnic conflicts, it provides a thoughtful perspective of events and motivations that should fascinate any serious reader."—Dipak K. Gupta, San Diego State University. Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2002"In Modern Hatreds, Stuart Kaufman provides a solid, cohesive argument in favor of paying more attention to the myths and symbols underlying ethnic conflict. The systematic treatment of ethnic conflict across comparable case studies distinguishes this study from most other recently published works on this topic. This is not only a sound piece of scholarship, but also an accessibly written book that should be read in and beyond academe."—Robert J. Kaiser, University of Wisconsin