Social Domination and Identity-Based Violence

• In Event: The Politics of Identity in South Asia: Ethnicity and Caste

Abstract

A significant body of research on the causes of identity-based social violence has emphasized how clientelistic relationships can be constructed through conflict among identity groups. Ethnic entrepreneurs deploy violence strategically around elections, in order to consolidate a following, win power and then provide key goods and services to the newly polarized electorate. There is, however, a significant amount of ethnic political violence that does not accord to the characteristics of this model. This type of ethnic violence in India, and indeed historically in the United States, has occurred within the context of “ranked” systems of continued social domination, in which elites systematically deploy violence or the threat of violence against subaltern communities, in contexts far removed from electoral competition. We argue that explicit, symbolically charged acts of violence against subalterns tend to occur when subaltern communities face greater opportunities for exit, and have greater scope for challenging the nature of their dependence. We explore these questions and test our arguments through a comparison of violence against Blacks in the United States during the Jim Crow era and violence against Dalits in post-Independence India. We use both case studies of large-scale massacres and spatial-temporal data on lynchings and social violence to explore the theoretical relationships among subaltern violence, political economy and electoral competition.

Authors

• Amit Ahuja, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Adnan Naseemullah, King's College London