Violence and Belonging: Land, Love and Lethal Conflict in the North-west Frontier Province of Pakistan

by Are Knudsen

Most studies of violence in the Middle East and South Asia come from the perspective of honour or political violence. By contrast, this important study offers a new perspective on its causes in Pakistan's unruly North-West Frontier Province, challenging stereotyped images of a region and people miscast as extremist and militant.

Based on an in-depth study of local conflicts, the book sheds light on the complexities of violence, not only at the structural or systemic 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. 'We should make the best possible use of this analysis: for its daring perspectives, extreme empirical findings, and wide relevance. It deserves a very careful reading for its contributions to so many aspects of our understanding of honour, politics and human society' - Fredrik Barth.

"…this is an outstanding update of Barth’s work because it is a multiplex analysis of the processes of change…"- Mary Elaine Hegland, American Ethnologist, Vol. 41 (1): 209-10, 2014

Are Knudsen is a social anthropologist, and researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway. Knudsen specializes in forced displacement, camp-based and urban refugees in the Middle East, particularly Lebanon.

Publication year: 2009
256 pp / 229mm x 152mm
12 figures, 3 tables
ISBN: 978-87-7694-045-4, Paperback
ISBN: 978-87-7694-044-7, Hardback

NIAS Press