Some Trouble with Cows: Making Sense of Social Conflict

Combining the author’s personal stories and analytical insights, this study helps readers to understand how a seemingly irrational and archaic riot becomes a means for renegotiating the distribution of power and rights in a small community. Using first-person accounts of Hindus and Muslims in a remote Bangladeshi village, the author analyzes a large-scale riot that profoundly altered life in the area in the 1950s. She provides a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the participants and their families, while touching on a range of broader issues that are vital to the sociology of communities in conflict: the changing meaning of community; the impact of the state on local society; the nature of memory; and the force of neighbourly enmity in reshaping power relationships during periods of change.