Culture and Conflict in Global Perspective

Political scientist Samuel Huntington famously posited that most postcold war conflicts would be caused by cultural differences. Has his predicted "clash of civilizations" actually happened in the years since 1945? Events such as September 11 and the recent uproar over publication of caricatures of Mohammed may suggest that it has.

The topic of culture and conflict has been the subject of fierce debate over the last two decades. This volume provides a theoretically informed definition of cultural conflicts and a worldwide mapping of such conflicts between 1945 and 2007. It is the result of extensive collaboration between the Institute for Political Science at the University of Heidelberg and Bertelsmann. The publication is based on an empirical study that explores conflicts in which cultural factors played a role--and the extent to which those factors influenced the intensity of violence in the respective conflicts.