Ethnic Conflict: An Overview of Analysing and Framing Communal Conflicts in Comparative Perspectives

This article examines developments in the analysis of communal conflict over the past twenty-years, exploring insights regarding the relationships of economic structure, conceptions of deprivation and the constructions of narratives making sense of civil strife. The piece compares analyses from differing paradigms and disciplines, including terrorism studies, the sociology of violence and war, and the anthropology of violence. The article explores how shifting emphases from both participants and analysts cast incidents of violence in different light, proscribing differing potential intervention strategies and interpretations of outcomes. Highlighting these shifts in turn, provides new space for analyses and greater understanding of the potential costs and consequences of intervention.