Amid the steady stream of quantitative and game-theoretical studies of conflict published in recent years, Marc Howard Ross's Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict comes as a welcome reminder of the ineffably human dimensions of conflict and violence around the world. His panoramic account of ethnic conflict goes beyond the establishment of statistical correlations and the modeling of “iterated games” to trace the complex processes by which conflicts emerge, escalate, and unravel, as well as the role of culture and identity in these processes. Making sense of ethnic conflict, Ross shows, requires an understanding of meaning—of how symbols, rituals, places, and events evoke emotions, inspire narratives, and inform identities in diverse settings around the world. The research agenda he pursues and promotes is thus in no small measure ethnographic and interpretivist, focusing on the (inter)subjective (self-)understandings of participants in ethnic conflicts, rather than the ostensibly objective conditions under which conflicts unfold.