Palestine, Israel and the crisis of the nation state. Stellan Vinthagen, UMass-Amherst

A few weeks ago, Hamas murdered hundreds of unarmed people in Israel, including many children and elderly. The sadism and depravity of this killing spree was remarkable even by the standards of the long history of violence against Jews. Israel has responded with characteristic savagery, killing more than 10,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children. This orgy of collective punishment has also reduced much of Gaza to rubble and dust.

My conversation with Stellan Vinthagen offers one sociological perspective on the war based on his work on resistance and social movements. We also reflect on the origins and limits of nation states generally.

Stellan Vinthagen is the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance, and Director of the Resistance Studies Initiative at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also my colleague in the Sociology department at UMass Amherst. His resume is an unusual mix of scholarship and activism: he has written or edited eight books--most recently, Constructive Resistance--and numerous articles, and was an organizer of the Swedish contingent of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2010.

The views we express here are ours alone.

Feel free to write to me at sangupta@umass.edu.