Jos, a central Nigerian city engulfed by deadly violence in September 2001, offers a unique case study for exploring what happens when a modern metropolis lacks the institutional capacity to regulate its competing groups, and latent rivalries ignite into widespread, systematic brutality. Emerging from combined political and cultural dynamics radically different fro...

Scholars of ethnic riots disagree on which are more susceptible to collective violence between ethnically segregated and diverse socio-spatial settings. Studies of riot-prone cities have produced contradictory conclusions. This article proposes that the ambivalence stems in part from disregarding the mobile nature of armed mobs and conflating their origins with the...