Terror and violence : imagination and the unimaginable / edited by Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart and Neil L. Whitehead.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : terror, the imagination and cosmology / Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart -- 'Terror against terror' : 9/11 or 'Kano War' in the Nigerian electronic press? / Misty L. Bastian -- Unspeakable crimes : Athenian Greek perceptions of local and international terrorism / Elisabeth Kirtsoglou -- The Indian state, its Sikh citizens, and terror / Joyce Pettigrew -- Between victims and assailants, victims and friends : sociality and the imagination in Indo-Fijian narratives of rural violence during the May 2000 Fiji Coup / Susanna Trinka -- Narratives of violence and perils of peace-making in North-South cross-border contexts, Ireland / Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart -- The sign of Kanaimà, the space of Guayana, and the demonology of development / Neil L. Whitehead -- Imaginary violence and the terrible mother : the imagery of Balinese witchcraft / Michele Stephen.

What is terror? What are its roots and its results -- and what part does it play in human experience and history? This volume offers a number of timely and original anthropological insights into the ways in which acts of terror -- and reactions to those acts -- impact on the lives of virtually everyone in the world today, as perpetrators, victims or witnesses. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, what we have come to regard as acts of terror -- whether politically motivated, or state-sanctioned -- have assumed many different forms and provoked widely differing responses throughout the world.At a deeper level, the contributors explore the work of the imagination in extreme contexts of danger, such as those of terror and terrorism. By stressing the role of the imagination, and its role in amplifying the effects of experience, this collection brings together a coherent set of analyses that offer innovative and unexpected ways of understanding a major global problem of contemporary life.