Ethno-Religious Unrest in India: Emergent Phenomenon or Evolving Performance?

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Rethinking Social Movement Theories

Abstract

What happens when the unstoppable current of cultural change hits the immovable wall of an emergent phenomenon? Political contention usually appears as familiar performances that evolve continuously as they are employed. Yet recent micro-sociological research on violence finds that it is a highly situationally emergent. This study asks whether the emergent nature of violence prevents violent forms of contention from evolving as quickly as other forms of contention. This study begins with a heavily-studied dataset of ethno-religious violence in India. Matching entries in the database with source articles from the archive of the Times of India permits us to examine the component actions of these episodes of unrest, and consider developments of these actions over the course of half a century. Examining changes in word frequency reveals a remarkably stable core phenomenon exhibiting much less change than other forms of collective action, more deadly violence emerging in the latter part of the half-century,
and signs suggesting that the process of demanding accountability has shifted away from the courts and toward the less thorough court of public opinion.

Author

• David C. Sorge, Bryn Mawr College