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Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a
nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a
"Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed
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science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable,
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lchic
- 04:01am Feb 15, 2003 EST (#
8915 of 8916) ~~~~ It got understood and exposed
~~~~
childhood, but when I started working on it these childhood
memories did start to come back.
So what is the key to predicting which communities will
turn violent and which will remain peaceful in times of ethnic
unrest?
It comes down to how the cities or villages are structured,
and the networks that people form across religious or ethnic
divides. In India I have identified two types of civic
network, which I call the associational and the everyday. The
everyday type covers things such as Hindu and Muslim children
playing together and their families and friends visiting each
other or eating with each other, or taking part in festivals
together. The associational type involves the two groups being
members of the same trade unions, sports clubs, student
unions, reading clubs, political parties or business
organisations. Associational structures go beyond
neighbourhood warmth, and in times of unrest they are much
more robust. They can be a serious constraint on the
polarising strategies of political elites. Places with strong
networks of this kind are very likely to remain peaceful.
Why are trade unions, political parties or business
associations more likely to result in a stable community?
Because they bring together a solid common interest or
ideology, rather than being simply social. They are more than
just a way for people to entertain themselves or understand
each other. Everyday interactions can easily be ruptured by
criminals and gangs, but associations represent shared
interests, and there is more incentive to preserve them.
It is partly to do with self-interest, but it is more than
that. Sometimes it has to do with a shared ideology. When a
trade union or a political party fights for its cause, they
are not always fighting for electoral dividends, they are
fighting for a vision of the kind of India they want to build.
People will go to great lengths, and will sometimes sacrifice
their own lives, to protect a certain vision that they have
built for their organisation or their society. Those shared
ideologies are important enough for the people to fight to
preserve them, whatever ethnic group they belong to. And that
is what keeps the peace.
Some researchers have suggested that a mixed community is
more likely to stay peaceful if the people from the different
ethnic groups know each other well. Does your work back this
up?
Yes, but it is not the whole truth, because sometimes it
goes the other way. Although I have not properly tested that
hypothesis, I found that in the three most unstable, highly
segregated towns I studied in India, the children have such
awful views about the other communities. Muslim boys in those
towns never interacted with Hindu boys and they believed the
worst about each other. But I also found that interaction
itself can lead to enmity. For example, where there is
intermarriage between Sikhs and Hindus or Muslims and
Christians some people see it as threatening the ethnic or
religious purity of the community and have hit back. That
would be a very interesting question to ask: under what
conditions does knowing each other actually promote
bitterness?
How can strong community networks prevent politicians from
exploiting ethnic differences to further their own ends, in
the way Slobodan Milosevic did in the Balkans?
There is no doubt that large-scale ethnic violence cannot
take place unless politicians protect criminal gangs. The
gangs need political support so that the police don't arrest
them. When a politician finds not only that the neighbourhoods
are integrated but also that whole organisations are, he knows
it is a lost cause to try to exploit the differences. Violence
is always sparked by something, and the key with integrated
organisations is that they prevent the spark from becoming a
fire. They work together to kill rumours, cooperate with the
state, or identify those making mischief. It is in their
interests to maintain the peace because th
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