Violence and Vengeance: Religious Conflict and Its Aftermath in Eastern Indonesia

Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. Christopher R. Duncan spent several years conducting fieldwork in North Maluku, and in Violence and Vengeance, he examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict. Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, Duncan explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. He examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. Duncan's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations A Note on Translation and Pseudonyms 1. Religious Violence? 2. Historical Preludes to the 1999-2000 Conflict 3. From Ethnic Conflict to Holy War 4. Massacres, Militias, and Forced Conversions 5. Peace and Reconciliation? From Violence to Coexistence 6. Managing Memories: Competing Notions of Victimhood in North Maluku 7. Memorializing the Dead in Postconflict North Maluku Conclusion Appendix A: The Bloody Sosol Letter Appendix B: Peace Declaration of the Tobelo Adat Community

About the Author :
Christopher R. Duncan is Associate Professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies and in the School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University. He is the author of Violence and Vengeance and editor of Civilizing the Margins, both from Cornell.

Review :
"Duncan ... has extensive experience in this understudied part of Indonesia, including local language ability, and so is able to penetrate down to a very fundamental level in telling the story of what happened and what it means. Unlike many analysts, he is most interested in the specifically religious cast of the confrontation as voiced by local people."-Choice (March 2014) "...Violence and Vengeance makes an immense contribution to our understands of the ways in which religion shapes local understandings of violence...Violence and Vengeance succeeds brilliantly in accomplishing this important task."- Shane J. Barter, SOJOURN (July 2014) "Violence and Vengeanceis the best description we have of the post-New Order communal wars from the viewpoint of the participants ... In aiming thus to "go beyond causation" (p.7), Chris Duncan has done the field a service."-Gerry van Klinken,Contemporary Southeast Asia(August 2014) "The depth of knowledge and understanding of local dynamics displayed here, both pre- and post-conflict, sets this book aside from other works addressing the communal violence that ensued from the fall of the Suharto regime. ... Violence and Vengeance should become core reading material for anyone concerned with religiously informed violence (in Indonesia, Asia or elsewhere) as much as for scholars and students interested in methodological issues, whether as historians, political scientists or anthropologists."-Chiara Formichi, South East Asia Research (March 2015) "By focusing on narratives and perspectives of 'those who did the killing or witnessed the dying', and not the 'objective academic analysis based on media reports and interviews with regional and national elites' (8), Duncan makes a compelling argument of how religion influences people's violent actions in the North Maluku conflict... the book is no doubt a welcome edition for the studies of religious conflict and conciliation, not only in North Maluku or Indonesia but also in other parts of the world that are plagued by interreligious tensions."-Sumanto Al Qurtuby,Anthropological Forum(Vol. 25, No. 1) "In Violence and Vengeance, Christopher R. Duncan adds a new dimension to the analysis of communal conflict in Indonesia and beyond, showing how the way in which participants come to understand a violent conflict, given biases and limited information, is likely to reflect long-standing tensions or divisions in a society. However, Duncan does not reduce the conflict in North Maluku to a primordial religious antagonism. Instead, he shows under what conditions this conflict came to be seen as religious despite its origins as a conflict between indigenous people and migrants over the way in which redistricting affected their claims to power. He shows how the religious understanding of the conflict blossomed and became a self-fulfilling prophecy. This book is a must-read for scholars interested in ethnic and religious conflict and NGO activists who work in the field of conflict resolution."-Elizabeth Fuller Collins, Ohio University, author of Indonesia Betrayed: How Development Fails "Violence and Vengeance is a wonderful book, grounded in fine-tuned, careful, and empathetic ethnography that foregrounds the experience and concerns of ordinary people in the unfolding of religious violence in North Maluku. This book will be most welcome in a field dominated by studies that privilege elite interests in violence's production and proliferation and for its acute attention to how the religious terms in which the conflict was played out became memorialized postconflict in monuments made to commemorate its perceived victims and heroes."-Patricia Spyer, Leiden Universit "Violence and Vengeance is an important and unsettling book. Uncompromising in its analysis but deeply humane, it presents an account of one of the bloodiest conflicts that accompanied Indonesia's democratic transition. Challenging interpretations that emphasize elites and their machinations, it views violence from the perspective of ordinary people and shows how religion was central to the ways in which violence was manufactured, understood, and remembered. Christopher R. Duncan has produced a book of great significance for all who seek to understand the dynamics and meanings of communal conflict."-Edward Aspinall, Australian National University