The Deadly Ethnic Riot (review)

Horowitz intensively explores the dynamics of the most savage form of ethnic conflict—the numerous extremely vicious and bloody riots directed by one group against an "other" that dot the historical record. He has a large database on which to draw. As he notes, "reports of ethnic riots are abundant, because ethnic riots are frequent" (28). He has also read widely in a range of theoretical and cross-disciplinary literature on human behavior in all of its beastliness, and he deploys that learning to great effect.

The bulk of his evidence is from Asia and Africa although he incorporates other examples when he can, including a range of disturbances in the United States—from the anti-Catholic and anti-black outbursts of the nineteenth century to the urban racial assaults of the twentieth. The book is a detailed examination of the elements who, what, when,where, and how that he draws from these occurrences to create the taxonomy necessary to explain the recurring phenomenon. There is a didactic tone throughout, or, alternatively, a sense of much clearing of the underbrush of unsupported theories and explanations that dominate a literature that he considers misleading and incomplete. He is particularly skeptical of instrumentalist explanations, manipulative, cynical, and otherwise. "Outside the most organized ethnic riots, none of the instrumentalist aims sometimes imputed to rioters (policy changes, expropriation of property ...) is verifiable." Rather, "the deadly ethnic riot partakes of violence mixed with little else" (425).

He does not entirely dismiss what has gone before. He opts for a mix of reasons, actions, and attitudes in his revised explanation, incorporating aspects of what is already in the literature with new insights in a more eclectic and, he believes, more systematic mix. Deadly ethnic riots do have a pattern, structure, and "temporal and spacial rhythms" to them, regardless of location, time, victims, and source (2). They are not random melees but organized assaults containing spontaneous elements—a mixture of precise specification and uncontrolled emotion.

In his long final chapter, "The Calculus of Passion," Horowitz delineates all that is involved in these occurrences and what is necessary to understand them—from the pre-existence of hostile relations to the events that arouse rage at a particular point, the presence of a keenly felt sense of justification for killing, and the rise of factors that reduce inhibitions against taking lives. It is a thorough and persuasive presentation of insight and detail.

In short, though often reading like a classification manual, Horowitz's book provides a rich vein of evidence and theory that others will undoubtedly challenge, refine, and recast. Alas, it is likely that more evidence will be available to them to use in doing so, drawn from future examples of the ongoing reality of such hatreds.