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The study of the various forms of mass collective violence has been blighted by methodological deficiences and ideological premises that are as endemic to the contemporary social sciences as are riots in many of the societies we study. Indeed, it often seems that, as with so much other social science work, our purpose is to display our theoretical skills rather than to expose to view the dynamic processes that produce the phenomena we study. Our work then becomes entangled—even through the very theories we articulate—in the diversionary tactics that are essential to the production and reproduction of violence.