Identity, Conflict and Politics in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan

Description

Ethnic and religious identity-markers compete with class and gender as principles shaping the organization and classification of everyday life. But how are an individual's identity-based conflicts transformed and redefined? Identity is a specific form of social capital, hence contexts where multiple identities obtain necessarily come with a hierarchy, with differences, and hence with a certain degree of hostility. The contributors to this book examine the rapid transformation of identity hierarchies affecting Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, a symptom of political fractures, social-economic transformation, and new regimes of subjectification. They focus on the state's role in organizing access to resources, with its institutions often being the main target of demands, rather than competing social groups. Such con- texts enable entrepreneurs of collective action to exploit identity differences, which in turn help them to expand the scale of their mobilization and to align local and national conflicts. The authors also examine how identity-based violence may be autonomous in certain contexts, and serve to prime collective action and transform the relations between communities. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents List of Acronyms Editors and Contributors Introduction: Identity, Hierarchy, and Mobilization Part One: The Formation of Identities 1. “The Narcissism of the Minor Difference” and Religious Violence: The Case of the Alevis and Sunnis of Central Anatolia 2. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Hierarchy: The Use of Categories in the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey 3. Ethnic and Regional Ferment in Iran: The Gilan Example Part Two: The Emergence Of Mobilizations 4. The Management of Identities in and by Turkey’s Political Parties 5. The Transformation of a Conflict in the Diaspora: Sikhs, Muslims and the British State 6. The Origins of the Protest Movement Against Ethnic Hierarchy: The Azerbaijani Cause in Iran 7. Violence and War in the Middle East in the 1980s Part Three: Transitions to Violence 8. Self-Radicalisation of a Young Indian Jihadist in Great Britain: The Quest for Ethics and Long-Distance Suffering 9. Conflicting Emotions: The 2006 Anti-“Danish Cartoons” Riot in Lahore (Pakistan) 10. Quetta City and the Baluch Guerrilla: Issues at Stake in Politically Motivated Urban Violence 11. Graduating to Violence: The Escalation of Student Strife at Karachi University, 1979–1989 12. The Instrumentalization of Ethnic Conflict by the State: The Azeri- Kurdish Conflict in Iran Notes Bibliography