The Book
Violence and Belonging examines the meanings of lethal conflict in a little-studied tribal society in Pakistan’s unruly North-West Frontier Province and offers a new perspective on its causes. Based on an in-depth study of local conflicts, the book challenges stereotyped images of a region and people miscast as extremist and militant.
Being grounded in local ethnography enables the book to shed light on the complexities of violence, not only at the structural or systematic level, but also as experienced by the men involved in lethal conflict. In this way, the book provides a subjective and experiential approach to violence that is applicable beyond the field locality and relevant for advancing the study of violence in the Middle East and South Asia. The book is the first ethnographic study of this region since renowned anthropologist Fredrik Barth’s pioneering study in 1954.
The Author(s)
are knudsen is Research Director at the Chr. Michelson Institute in Bergen, Norway
Experts Say
“The material itself is extremely interesting, dealing as it does with an exotic locale, and with an intractable problem of endemic violence. . . . Dr Knudsen draws this conflictual situation very well, and adds a great deal to the present-day study of violence, putting what is often seen as primordial in the context of modern conditions.”
- Professor Charles Lindholm, Boston University
“We should make the best possible use of this analysis: for its daring perspectives, extreme empirical findings, and wide relevance.”
- Professor Emeritus Fredrik Barth, Boston University and University of Oslo