The thesis represents the first complete academic biography of a Jewish clockmaker, warrior poet and Anarchist named Sholem Schwarzbard. Schwarzbard's experience was both typical and unique for a Jewish man of his era. It included four immigrations, two revolutions, numerous pogroms, a world war and, far less commonly, an assassination. The latter gained him fleeting international fame in 1926, when he killed the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura in Paris in retribution for pogroms perpetrated during the Russian Civil War (1917-20). After a contentious trial, a French jury was sufficiently convinced both of Schwarzbard's sincerity as an avenger, and of Petliura's responsibility for the actions of his armies, to acquit him on all counts. Mostly forgotten by the rest of the world, the assassin has remained a divisive figure in Jewish-Ukrainian relations, leading to distorted and reductive descriptions his life. In contrast to these partial views, the thesis follows Schwarzbard's fate chronologically, from cradle to grave, emphasizing development and contradiction in his story. Special attention is paid the dynamic nature of Schwarzbard's Jewish, Anarchist, and French commitments. After a long struggle, it was the first of these that came to dominate Schwarzbard's life, as he called the Jews back into history and himself back to his people with a single, irrevocable deed. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The topic of the dissertation is the integration of Jewish citizens into the majority population between the years 1945-1948. It focuses primarily on three Jewish population groups in the Czech lands whose reintegration was fraught with difficulties. The groups in question were "German Jews", people who declared Jewish nationality, and Jewish optants from the former territory of Carpathian Ruthenia who decided to settle in Czechoslovakia after World War II. Their legal standing was unclear, in particular in the immediate post-war years. The most important issue for them was acquiring Czechoslovak citizenship, something that could help them become full-fledged citizens, and so had a significant impact on the future of these individuals. For this reason, the submitted work focuses on the bureaucratic actions that influenced the everyday lives of Jewish citizens. Many lower-level government clerks were unsure about how to proceed with the Jews' citizenship applications. The important criteria that often decided the outcome of the applications became the 1930 census, but especially the applicants' stated nationality or mother tongue. Furthermore, the dissertation focuses on the problems that the Jews faced when they were denied citizenship. For "German Jews", this meant being forcefully deported, while...

This thesis uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the different levels of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat (western India) in 2002 when at least a thousand Muslims were killed. An original dataset of killings is compiled to analyse macrospatial variation in the violence across towns and rural areas of Gujarat. Data collected from 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ahmedabad city is used to investigate microspatial variation across three neighbourhoods with varying levels of violence.Macrospatial analysis discusses the link between political authority and its capacity to instigate ethnic violence as a response to electoral calculations and identifies the mechanisms by which violence against Muslims was orchestrated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Ethnographic findings demonstrate the importance of ecological strategies adopted by attackers and targets during the course of attack and urge a re-examination of the intuitive association of spatial proximity with greater interethnic contact. Findings also reveal methods of enforcement used by legitimate and illegitimate institutions of a peaceful slum neighbourhood in resolving commitment problems of cooperation. Finally, the thesis examines the aftermath of the violence, more specifically a political phenomenon of Muslims of Gujarat supporting the BJP nine years after the brutal violence.Methodologically, the main contribution of this thesis is in bridging the quantitative and ethnographic traditions in the sociology of ethnic violence to make possible the linking, and disentangling, of macrolevel risk factors associated with violence from microlevel factors. Findings of the thesis hopefully provide a better understanding of ethnic violence in multi-ethnic democracies and a roadmap of policy-making for India as it continues to struggle with ethnic strife.

This dissertation explores the ethnic and religious dimensions of the northern Nigeria conflict in which gruesome killings have intermittently occurred, to determine whether there are genocidal inclinations to the episodic killings. The literature review provides the contextual framework for examining the conflict parties and causation factors to address the research questions: Are there genocidal inclinations to the ethno-religious conflict in northern Nigeria? To what extent does the interplay between ethnicity and religion help to foment and escalate the conflict in northern Nigeria? The study employs a mixed content analysis and grounded theory methodology based on the Strauss and Corbin (1990) approach. Data sourcing was from 197 newspaper articles on the conflict over the study period spanning from the 1966 northern Nigeria massacres of thousands of Ibos up to present, ongoing killings between Muslims and Christians or non-Muslims in the region. Available texts of the conflict cases over the research period were content-analyzed using Nvivo qualitative data analysis software involving processes of categorizing, coding and evaluation of the textual themes. The study structures a theoretical model for determining proclivity to genocide, and finds that there are genocidal inclinations to the northern Nigeria conflict, involving the specific intent to ‘cleanse’ the north through the exclusionary ideology of imposition of the Sharia law through enforced assimilation or extermination of Christians and other non-Muslims who do not assimilate or adopt the Muslim ideology. The study also suggests that there is latency in the recognition of these genocidal manifestations due to their episodic nature and intermittency of occurrence. he study provides further understanding of factors underlying and sustaining the violent conflict between Muslims and Christians in northern Nigeria. It contributes new perspectives and theoretical model for determining genocidal proclivity to the field of conflict analysis and resolution, and proffers alternative strategies for relationship building and peaceful coexistence among different religious groups. The findings will guide recommendations on policy formulations for eliminating religious intolerance in northern Nigeria. The study creates further awareness on the need for global intervention on the region’s sporadic killings to avert full blown Rwandan type genocide in Nigeria.