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The Logic of Ethnic and Religious Conflict in Africa. By John F. McCauley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xix+233 pp. $99.99 cloth, $34.99 paper.
With the increase in intra-state violence since the 1990s, the study of ethnic and religious conflict has become an area of increasing interest and an important literature. Despite this growing literature, McCauley's book addresses questions of considerable importance that have not been rigorously analyzed: do individuals’ associations with their ethnic identity (i.e., ethno-tribal or kinship ties) and religious identity inspire distinct policy preferences? In contexts where religion and ethnicity are overlapping, salient cleavages, why does political violence sometimes take on an ethnic as opposed to a religious dimension? Does it matter? Grounding his research in extant theory and employing an array of methodological tools and compelling case studies, McCauley makes a persuasive case for the disaggregation of ethnicity in the study of ethnic conflict. To the extent that scholars treat ethnicity as merely an umbrella category for various group identities, The Logic of Ethnic and Religious Conflict in Africa demonstrates that our understanding of the relationship between political preferences or mobilization and ethnic identities is short-changed.
To make the case for disaggregating ethnicity, McCauley focuses his analysis on African cases where religion and ethnicity are highly salient, overlapping cleavages. Through this analysis, the book finds that ethnic and religious identities inspire distinct policy preferences. Individuals who more strongly associate with their ethnic ties are more likely to hold stronger...