This book discusses relationships among religion, literature and ethnicity in Northern Ireland since 1967. The introduction provides a theoretical account of how literature engages sectarian prejudices, allowing these to be played out in ways that can help to dissolve or mitigate the alienating effects of traditional enmities. Subsequent chapters deal with identity, endogamy, education, gender, and imprisonment. Each chapter combines an analysis of specific cultural issues with a critical assessment of relevant works by key authors. A conclusion offers an assessment of relationships between Northern Ireland and other modern societies facing analogous problems in a post-modern world marked by rapid globalisation.

Acknowledging that religion can motivate both violence and compassion, this book looks at how a variety of world religions can and do build peace.

A 2001 volume of essays about the relationship between past and present in Irish society.

Political developments in Georgia have always been baffling to those who did not live there. This work picks up the story of the evolution of Georgia political parties where the author left it in his first book, Politics on the Periphery: Factions and Parties in Georgia, 1783-1806 (1986), carrying the story through 1845, by which date parties in Georgia actually mirrored those at the national level.It is a complicated story, involving, among other things, the legacy of the Yazoo Land Fraud; the development of political parties on the national level; and, especially, the presence of the Creek and Cherokee tribes in Georgia during a period when white Georgians were bent on expanding the culture of cotton. It is an unlovely story, but, by the mid-1840s, parties in Georgia finally resembled those in other parts of the nation, though, if one looked closely at their principles, questions remained.

Enmity between individuals was an ubiquitious phenomenon in the ancient world. Using the method of legal anthropology this book examines patterns of hate-driven feuding in kinship-based and segmentary societies and applies these insights to biblical law. It defines the fundamental categories of enmity, love, revenge, honor and shame in the context of feuding and it illustrates certain legal actions, such giving false witness, and shows how they are expressions of hateful relationships. Adam proposes that we should understand hate between individuals as a legal construct that becomes visible when lived out as private enmity, a social status that exhibits distinct hallmarks. In kinship-based societies, private hate/enmity was publicly declared and, consequently, was publicly known in one's own kin and beyond. Private enmity was acted out in feud-like patterns, with a flexibility that allowed opponents to choose between various measures to hurt their opponent. Acting out hate was reciprocal, and it typically escalated and swiftly expanded into one party's attempt to kill the other and to trigger a blood feud. Finally, private enmity was “transitive” in the sense that opponents at enmity naturally expected solidarity from kin and friends. Adam uses textual analysis to illustrate how the legal construct of hate informs biblical law from the Covenant Code, to Deuteronomic and Priestly Legislation, including the Holiness Code. He also demonstrates how hate forms the backdrop of conflict settlement. Ultimately, by ways of tracing back through the category of private hate and enmity, this book unpacks the meaning of the quintessential command to “Love your neighbor!”

In this original study Stuart Carroll transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 and 1800 by exploring how ordinary people felt about their enemies and the violence it engendered. Enmity, a state or feeling of mutual opposition or hostility, became a major social problem during the transition to modernity. He examines how people used the law, and how they characterised their enmities and expressed their sense of justice or injustice. Through the examples of early modern Italy, Germany, France and England, we see when and why everyday animosities escalated and the attempts of the state to control and even exploit the violence that ensued. This book also examines the communal and religious pressures for peace, and how notions of good neighbourliness and civil order finally worked to underpin trust in the state. Ultimately, enmity is not a relic of the past; it remains one of the greatest challenges to contemporary liberal democracy.

Shows that contrary to much scholarly opinion, the New Testament is not inherently violent or supportive of violence; instead, it rejects and overcomes violence.