Table of Contents

List of Figures, Maps, and Tables
Preface

PART ONE: SELECTED SITES OF CONFLICT IN SOUTH ASIA

1. The Wider Context
2. Orientation and Objectives
3· The 1915 Sinhala Buddhist-Muslim Riots
in Ceylon
4. Two Postindependence Ethnic Riots in Sri Lanka
5· Sikh Identity, Separation, and Ethnic Conflict
6. Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan

PART TWO: RETHINKING THE NATURE OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE
7· Some General Features of Ethnic Riots and Riot Crowds
8. The Routinization and Ritualization of Violence
9· Hindu Nationalism, the Ayodhya Campaign, and the Babri Masjid
10. Entering a Dark Continent: The Political Psychology of Crowds
11. Reconfiguring LeBon and Durkheim on Crowds as Collectives
12. The Moral Economy of Collective Violence

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Stanley J. Tambiah is Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. Among his several books is Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (1991).

Reviews

"[Levelling Crowds] is a judicious synthesis of Tambiah's wide reading of recent scholarship with his own theoretical commentary. . . .[The book provides] scrupulous analysis of the political and intellectual difficulties we face in coming to terms with collective violence."--"Asian Affairs