Social Sciences - General & Miscellaneous, Political Activism & Participation, Ethnic & Race Relations, Media & Communications, Ethnic & Minority Studies, Social Problems

The Warrior's Honor : Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience

Name: The Warrior's Honor : Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience
Author: Michael Ignatieff
ISBN: 9780805055191

by Michael Ignatieff

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Overview

Since the early 1990s, Michael Ignatieff has traveled the world's war zones, from Bosnia to the West Bank, from Afghanistan to central Africa. The Warrior's Honor is a report and a reflection on what he has seen in the places where ethnic war has become a way of life. Ignatieff charts the rise of the new moral interventionists—the relief workers, reporters, delegates, and diplomats who believe that other people's misery is of concern to us all. And he brings us face-to-face with the new ethnic warriors—the warlords, gunmen, and paramilitaries—who have escalated postmodern war to an unprecedented level of savagery. Hard-hitting and passionate, The Warrior's Honor is a profound and searching exploration of the perils and obligations of moral citizenship in a world scarred by war and genocide.

About the Author, Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, among other publications and the author of many acclaimed books including Blood and Belonging, Isaiah Berlin, The Warrior's Honor, The Russian Album, The Needs of Strangers, and Virtual War. He lives in London and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Editorials

Alan Ryan

The structure of Ignatieff's argument is simpleand to my mind irresistible. —New York Times Book Review

Library Journal

This collection of Ignatieff's previously published essays conveys through meticulous reporting the moral enigmas of current warfare. Each of the five essays poses a core dilemma: How has television's 'promiscuous' gaze promoted both moral universalism and 'generalized misanthropy?' How does Freud's idea of the 'narcissism of minor difference' play itself out among the perpetrators of Bosnia's ethnic cleansing? Why does 'moral disgust' in our reaction to Africa's killing fields deflect Western states from an effective response? The book's title comes from an essay about the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross to blunt the slaughter of Afghan innocents in appeals to 'warrior's honor.' Ignatieff (Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism) calls for the creation of a 'saving distance' between myths of historical violence and the imperatives of present life. He is not optimistic, but serious readers will not flinch from these durable and troubling essays. -- Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Erie, Pennsylvania

Library Journal

Booknews

A journalist's firsthand account of travels in ethnic war zones around the world, offering vivid portraits of aid workers, diplomats, warlords, and paramilitary forces and discussing the ambiguous ethics of engagement, the limited force of moral justice in a world of war, and the clash between those who defend tribal and national loyalties and those who champion human rights.

Peter Maas

If you are trying to understand the role of ethnic conflicts in our world today, Ignatieff is one of the best guides...Ignatieff's insights are acute and profound. -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Alan Ryan

The structure of Ignatieff's argument is simple, and to my mind irresistible. -- New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

"A prominent commentator on nationalism and ethnic violence reflects on the destructive power of ethnic warfare and the redemptive potential of modern universal human-rights culture. A Joycean call for awakening. "-Kirkus Reviews