Includes bibliographical references (pages [160]-185) and index.

"Departing from the mainstream practice and conventional wisdom of materialist and rationalist accounts of internal and intrastate conflicts, the book demonstrates how and why emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions are just as powerful and useful in understanding and explaining these phenomena. By uncovering the invisible albeit concrete emotive, symbolic, and perceptual causal mechanisms underpinning ethnoreligious otherings and the resulting protracted violent conflicts, the book aims to help address the incongruence between how the actual actors operating within these contexts think and act and the existing theories and models of how they are expected to behave"-- Provided by publisher.