Global Lynching and Collective Violence : Volume 1

"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"-- "This project, the first of two on global collective violence, focuses on Asia, Africa and the Middle East. While the term "lynching" signifies an American concept, the practice of lynching is a global phenomenon. Edited by Michael Pfeifer, the project looks at the global practice of lynching and related varieties of collective violence, such as rioting, vigilantism, and terrorism, across world cultures. The included essays highlight both the universality of mob violence across cultures and eras and the particularity of its occurrence in certain cultural and historical contexts. With essays investigating collective violence in Indonesia, Nanking, India, South Africa, among other countries, this project exhibits a transnational approach that reconsiders lynching outside of a strictly American context, thereby upending the notion of lynching as an exceptional American experience. With a roster of contributing scholars from a variety of academic disciplines and nations, this volume situates American mob violence as one significant variety of global collective violence among many"--