This volume examines political, ethnic, and personal trust and betrayals in modern times from Mozambique to the Taiwan Straits, from the former Eastern Bloc to the West Bank, revealing that treachery is a constant and essential part of the processes through which social and political order is reproduced.

Traitors
Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building

Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly, Editors

2009 | 312 pages | Cloth $45.00 | Paper $24.95
Anthropology | Political Science
View main book page

Table of Contents

Introduction: Specters of Treason
1 Xiconhoca: Mozambique's Ubiquitous Post-Independence Traitor
—Lars Buur
2 Denunciatory Practices and the Constitutive Role of Collaboration in the Bangladesh War
—Nayanika Mookherjee
3 Intimacy, Loyalty, and State Formation: The Specter of the ''Anti-National''
—Richard W. Whitecross
4 Traitors, Terror, and Regime Consolidation on the Two Sides of the Taiwan Straits: ''Revolutionaries'' and ''Reactionaries'' from 1949 to 1956
—Julia C. Strauss
5 Betraying Trust and the Elusive Nature of Ethnicity in Burundi
—Simon Turner
6 In Praise of Traitors: Intimacy, Betrayal, and the Sri Lankan Tamil Community
—Sharika Thiranagama
7 Treason and Contested Moralities in a Coloured Township, Cape Town
—Steffen Jensen
8 In a Treacherous State: The Fear of Collaboration Among West Bank Palestinians
—Tobias Kelly
9 The Glass Agency: Iranian War Veterans as Heroes or Traitors?
—Kamran Rastegar
10 The Man in the White Raincoat: Betrayal and the Historian's Task
—Istva«n Re«v
Afterword: Questions of Judgment
—Stephan Feuchtwang

Notes
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments