Full Description
Often considered peculiarly American, lynching in fact takes place around the world. In the first book of a two-volume study, Michael J. Pfeifer collects essays that look at lynching and related forms of collective violence in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Understanding lynching as a transnational phenomenon rooted in political and cultural flux, the writers probe important issues from Indonesia--where a long history of public violence now twines with the Internet--to South Africa, with its notorious history of necklacing. Other scholars examine lynching in medieval Nepal, the epidemic of summary executions in late Qing-era China, the merging of state-sponsored and local collective violence during the Nanking Massacre, and the ways public anger and lynching in India relate to identity, autonomy, and territory. Contributors: Laurens Bakker, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, Nandana Dutta, Weiting Guo, Or Honig, Frank Jacob, Michael J. Pfeifer, Yogesh Raj, and Nicholas Rush Smith.
Contents
Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 Michael J. Pfeifer Lynching, Public Violence, and the Internet in Indonesia Laurens Bakker A Different Kind of War: Summary Execution and the Politics of Men of Force in Late-Qing China, 1864-1911 Weiting Guo Banzai! And the Others Die-Collective Violence in the Rape of Nanking 78 Frank Jacob Making Sense of Lynching in Medieval Nepal 103 Yogesh Raj Public Anger, Violence, and the Legacy of Decolonization in India 126 Nandana Dutta New Situations Demand Old Magic: Necklacing in South Africa, Past and Present 156 Nicholas Rush Smith 7 Sitting on the Volcano: Mob Violence and Lynching in the Zionist-Palestinian Conflict 185 Shaiel Ben-Ephraim and Or Honig Contributors 223 Index 227