The Global Dynamics of Racial and Ethnic Mobilization

Extract

The Global Dynamics of Racial and Ethnic Mobilization. By Susan Olzak. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 288p. $55.00.

Susan Olzak's new monograph is a milestone in comparative research on ethnic mobilization and conflict. Not only does it chart new theoretical and methodological territory. It also offers the most rigorous proof yet that globalization promotes collective action by ethnic groups. The book's main claim is that transnational networks diffuse “ideologies, strategies, tactics and leaders” rapidly across national borders, enabling ethnic mobilization and “leaving political regimes more vulnerable to internal challenges” (pp. 32, 152). Global processes, in other words, interact with forces at the group and state level to promote violent and nonviolent activism by communal groups.