Violence and vengeance: Religious conflict and its aftermath in eastern Indonesia

摘要

Violence and vengeance joins a large literature on the violent communal conflicts which exploded in Indonesia fifteen years ago. Christopher R. Duncan aims to bring to the fore the voices and understandings of the ordinary people involved. He asserts that for most, the defining feature of the violence was religious difference. Having written a book on the same conflict, this is a difficult review for me to write. I will therefore focus on the analytical approach taken by Duncan, only referring to specifics on which we disagree when necessary to illustrate my concerns.