Co-edited with Karl Cordell and featuring contributions from leading scholars in the field, the Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict offers the definitive global survey of the interaction of race, ethnicity, nationalism and politics. It blends theoretically grounded, rigorous analysis with empirical illustrations and provides a state-of-the art overview of the contemporary debates on one of the most pervasive international security challenges today.
The contributors to this volume offer a 360-degree perspective on ethnic conflict: from the theoretical foundations of nationalism and ethnicity, to the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict, and to the various strategies adopted in response to it. Without privileging any specific explanation of why ethnic conflict happens at a specific place and time or why attempts at preventing or settling it might fail or succeed, the handbook enables readers to gain better insights into such defining moments in post-Cold War international history as the disintegrations of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and their respective consequences and the genocide in Rwanda, as well as the relative success of conflict settlement efforts in Northern Ireland, Macedonia, and Aceh.
By contributing to understanding the varied and multiple causes of ethnic conflicts and to learning from the successes and failures of its prevention and settlement, the Handbook makes a powerful case that ethnic conflicts are neither unavoidable nor unresolvable, but rather that they require careful analysis and thoughtful and measured responses.
The fully updated second edition, published originally in 2016 and available also in paperback since 2019, includes a new section which offers detailed analyses of contemporary cases of conflict such as in Ukraine, Kosovo, the African Great Lakes region and in the Kurdish areas across the Middle East, thus providing accessible examples that bridge the gap between theory and practice.