Dynamics of Identification and Conflict

Dealing with the dynamics of identification and conflict, this book uses theoretical orientations ranging from political ecology to rational choice theory, interpretive approaches, Marxism and multiscalar analysis. Case studies set in Africa, Europe and Central Asia are grouped in three sections devoted to pastoralism, identity and migration. What connects all of these anthropological explorations is a close focus on processes of identification and conflict at the level of particular actors in relation to the behaviour of large aggregates of people and to systemic conditions.

Markus Virgil Hoehne is Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. He published Between Somaliland and Puntland: Marginalization, Militarization and Conflicting Political Visions (Rift Valley Institute, 2015) and is co-editor of The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa (Routledge, 2018).

Echi Christina Gabbert is Lecturer at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Göttingen University. She is co-editor of the volume Lands of the Future. Anthropological Perspectives on Pastoralism, Land Use and Tropes of Modernity in Eastern Africa (Berghahn, 2021).

John R. Eidson is a social anthropologist who retired in 2020 after teaching at the University of Maryland, the University of Leipzig and the University of New Hampshire and serving as Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He continues with his research as an independent scholar.

“This is a comprehensive and substantial anthropological volume that successfully combines empirical research and theoretical debate.” • Magnus Treiber, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München