Amartya Sen argues that most of the conflicts in the contemporary world arise from individuals' notions of who they are, and which groups they belong to - local, national, religious - which define themselves in opposition to others.

The World May Be More Riven By Murderous Violence Than Ever Before, Yet Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen Argues In This Sweeping Philosophical Work That Its Brutalities Are Driven As Much By Confusion As By Inescapable Hatred. Sen Argues In His New Book That Conflict And Violence Are Sustained Today, No Less Than The Past, By The Illusion Of A Unique Identity. Indeed, The World Is Increasingly Taken To Be Divided Between Religions (Or 'Cultures' Or 'Civilizations'), Ignoring The Relevance Of Other Ways In Which People See Themselves Through Class, Gender, Profession, Language, Literature, Science, Music, Morals Or Politics, And Denying The Real Possibilities Of Reasoned Choices. In Identity And Violence&Nbsp;He Overturns Such Stereotypes As The 'The Monolithic Middle East' Or 'The Western Mind'. Through His Penetrating Investigation Of Such Subjects As Multiculturalism, Fundamentalism, Terrorism And Globalization, He Brings Out The Need For A Clear-Headed Understanding Of Human Freedom And A Constructive Public Voice In Global Civil Society. The World, Sen Shows, Can Be Made To Move Towards Peace As Firmly As It Has Recently Spiralled Towards War.

The violence of illusion -- Making sense of identity -- Civilizational confinement -- Religious affiliations and Muslim history -- West and anti-west -- Culture and captivity -- Globalization and voice -- Multiculturalism and freedom -- Freedom to think.

The missing girls in India are not a new phenomenon. The British passed an Act to check female infanticide more than 100 years ago. Since 1960, India’s birth sex ratios have progressively declined from 994 to 910, implicating life-affecting gender violence. Backed by extensive field research, data and interviews, this book explores girl child deselection through cultural neglect, female infanticide and foeticide, and the role of caste and religion. The book spans critical socio-historical contexts and examines the practice of selective right to life. It views the effects of militancy and khaap panchayats, and studies women’s rights discourses and protective legal reforms. The gender imbalance is mapped globally and analysed in the specific conditions of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. The book examines the inter-linkages of gender hierarchies with male child preference and warns that theoretical analyses limited to female foeticide alone cannot address gender inequalities or change the cycle of violence. This will be valuable to scholars and researchers of gender and women studies, sociology, politics, and population and demographic studies. It will also be indispensable for women’s rights activists, NGOs, policy makers, government bodies, and those studying health and family planning.

With the collapse of the bipolar system of global rivalry that dominated world politics after the Second World War, and in an age that is seeing the return of “ethnic cleansing” and “identity politics,” the question of violence, in all of its multiple ramifications, imposes itself with renewed urgency. Rather than concentrating on the socioeconomic or political backgrounds of these historical changes, the contributors to this volume rethink the concept of violence, both in itself and in relation to the formation and transformation of identities, whether individual or collective, political or cultural, religious or secular. In particular, they subject the notion of self-determination to stringent scrutiny: is it to be understood as a value that excludes violence, in principle if not always in practice? Or is its relation to violence more complex and, perhaps, more sinister? Reconsideration of the concepts, the practice, and even the critique of violence requires an exploration of the implications and limitations of the more familiar interpretations of the terms that have dominated in the history of Western thought. To this end, the nineteen contributors address the concept of violence from a variety of perspectives in relation to different forms of cultural representation, and not in Western culture alone; in literature and the arts, as well as in society and politics; in philosophical discourse, psychoanalytic theory, and so-called juridical ideology, as well as in colonial and post-colonial practices and power relations. The contributors are Giorgio Agamben, Ali Behdad, Cathy Caruth, Jacques Derrida, Michael Dillon, Peter Fenves, Stathis Gourgouris, Werner Hamacher, Beatrice Hanssen, Anselm Haverkamp, Marian Hobson, Peggy Kamuf, M. B. Pranger, Susan M. Shell, Peter van der Veer, Hent de Vries, Cornelia Vismann, and Samuel Weber.

In the Name of Identity is as close to summer reading as philosophy gets. It is a personal, sometimes even intimate, account of identity-in-the-world, not a treatise on the thorny metaphysics of identity. A novelist by trade, Amin Maalouf is a fluid writer, and he is aided by Barbara Bray's award-winning translation. His aim is to illuminate the roots of violence and hatred, which he sees in tribalistic forms of identity. He argues that our convictions and notions of identity--whether cultural, religious, national, or ethnic--are socially habituated and frequently dangerous. We'd give them up, he argues, if we thought more closely about them.Though the book has been heralded as radical and surprising, Maalouf essentially espouses an Enlightenment sensibility, a faith in the brotherhood of man. He is a believer in progress, arguing that "the wind of globalisation, while it could lead us to disaster, could also lead us to success." In fact, he envisions a globalized world in which our local identities are subordinated to a broader "allegiance to the human community itself." Maalouf wants us to retain our distinctiveness, but he wants it subsumed under the nave of common understanding. --Eric de Place

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The sense of identity can be a source of strength and confidence, but it can also be a source of exclusion and even violence. It can help us warmly welcome others, but it can also lead to the exclusion of others. #2 The world is full of examples of how identity conflicts can lead to violence. For example, the Sudanese Islamic identity combined with exploitation of racial divisions to lead to the raping and killing of unarmed victims in the south of that militarized polity. #3 We must recognize the power of competing identities to challenge the force of a bellicose identity. We must also understand that none of our identities is supreme, and that we can choose which ones we want to be a part of and which ones we want to ignore. #4 The existence of choice does not mean that there are no constraints restricting choice. Every choice in any field is made within particular limits. The freedom to determine our loyalties and priorities between the different groups to which we may belong is a particularly important liberty that we should recognize, value, and defend.