Identity and Political Violence

2014

The thesis examines how social identity processes influence individuals’ experience of political violence. It argues that individual experience is shaped by the groups the individual belongs to. In particular it examines the importance of social identity to understanding prejudice and conflict. The thesis explores extant experimental research which illustrates the importance of social settings in mediating attitudes and behaviour. This includes empirical evidence of the relationships between social identity and social influence, social identity and social support, and the importance of experience of political violence in shaping social identity. The thesis then outlines a brief history of the conflict in Northern Ireland and reviews extant social identity research specific to Northern Ireland. A qualitative methodology was used to extend the literature of quantitative studies carried out within psychology on the conflict in Northern Ireland. In effect, the predominant use of student...

Various theorists have agreed that a basic assumption about conflict is that it is a natural part of life. Conflict among groups usually pertains to differences or incompatibilities over issues related to ―interests, opinions, beliefs, values, or needs; or ―goals, scarce rewards, or resources. It has been widely recognized, however, that some of the most recalcitrant of deep-rooted, fundamental conflicts involve identity groups and identity-based disputes. One common thread that runs through Fisher‘s Eclectic Model of Intergroup Conflict, Azar‘s model of Protracted Social Conflict,and Gurr's model of Ethnopolitical Conflict is the causative factor of ―identity in intergroup conflicts. This includes concerns for existing needs, social esteem, group dignity, recognition, participation, security, access to resources, and justice. When these aspects of identities are perceived to be denied, threatened, or frustrated, tensions between different identity groups intensify and the threat of conflict escalation increases. In such cases, existing tensions might potentially evolve into deep-rooted conflicts that rest on underlying needs that cannot be compromised, and where interests and positions are deemed non-negotiable. In sum, ―when a conflict between or among parties involves a core sense of identity, the conflict tends to be intractable. In some cases, such conflicts may even escalate to genocidal proportions. Many social psychologists have attempted to examine how identity contributes toward intractability and violence when societies degenerate into identity-based disputes. In her article on identity in former Yugoslavia, Wilmer raised questions for which many still seek to find answers: ―How are individuals persuaded to abandon civility in favor of brutality? How are ordinary people transformed into monsters? These questions form the premise of this paper as it seeks to examine the link between identity and mobilized action in identity-based conflicts.

2015

Security Imaginary. Security Identity. From Security Identity to Theories of Ethnic Conflict.

Sociology International Journal, 2018

This paper is aimed at depicting the interface between citizenship, violence and identity politics. Further, it also inquires conceiving collective violence as a social fact which means that it has to be analysed within the context of a specific action environment, i.e. a social milieu that consists of a series of possible actions emerging from a particular group way of life as well as the relational dynamics of these group-making social processes. In the light of this social resistance has often been analysed for its ability to mobilise collective action and to bring about structural changes to social order.1 However, the sociological significance of resistance should not be restricted to forms of resistance that are successful in terms of collective mobilisation and social change, because this approach tends to separate social order and power relations from the resistant practices that oppose them, obscuring the close con¬nection between the persistence of power relations and the openings for everyday resistant practices emerging directly from these relationships: 'The openings for resistance derive from the regular exercise of power',2 or, as Foucault notes, 'Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power'.3 In a similar vein, Goffman stresses the connection between power relations, its social organisation, and resistant practices he charac¬terises as secondary adjustments: From a sociological point of view, the initial question to be asked of a second¬ary adjustment is not what this practice brings to the practitioner but rather the character of the social relationship that its acquisition and maintenance require. That constitutes a structural as opposed to a consummatory or social psychological point of view.4 From this perspective, resistant practices are neither random nor idiosyncratic but an integral part of power relations. Hence, if we are to understand what motivates people to act violently on behalf of groups and how they come to identify with these groups to begin with, if we are to comprehend whether and how the violent acts of a given group of actors might emerge from the regular exercise of social power, we should pay particular attention to the sociocultural resources which generally mobilise actors to exercise physical violence. We should focus on the relational dimension or character of the cultural, cognitive and affective resources actors mobilise in order to sustain violent interaction and on the character of the social relationships that the acquisition, diffusion and practical use of these resources require. Furthermore, if we are to understand the relational character of these resources, we have to concede that as social subjects these actors are able to grasp the nature of their position in society, albeit in a partial and somewhat blurred way. Social facts do exist as a result of social relations; they emerge as an ensemble of possible actions within the context of social group life and not as products of individual minds or macro-cultural systems. However, they are char¬acterised by two modes of empirical existence that are mutually related:5 one has to be located in the mind-body complex of individuals (affects, emotions, or cognitions such as motifs) while the other has to be situated on a collective level (shared representations, social practices, forms of social control, etc.).

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

The role of identity and collective conscious is crucial for the understanding of social mobilization and orientation in any nation confronted with terrorism and political violence. Identity plays a crucial role in the lives of citizens may it be ethnic, cultural, religious or social aspects of a group or community as it can be an effective instrument for mass manipulation and propagation of ideology and conduct of a society. A challenged, deprived or marginalized group identity can be a precursor for politicization and violent manifestation in form of aggression and political violence by the challenged group or community. The paper intended to discuss the interplay and manifestation of identity and sense of deprivation at societal levels in modern nation states. It analyzed identity crisis as a catalyst for turning a deprived and vulnerable and insecure segment of the society, into a violent group, performing terror activities inflicted upon state as evident in case study of Kurds vs. Turkish state in the contemporary scenario.

Journal of Hate Studies, 2004

The increase in identity-based violence both domestically and internationally is focusing attention on the need for proactive approaches to reconciliation. The rise of militia movements, and the associated phenomenon of malicious racial harassment in the Pacific Northwest, demonstrates the dangers arising from identity-driven violence. The broad scale success of an anti-affirmative action initiative illustrates the wider significance of discriminatory attitudes. This article addresses those dangers by illustrating the convergence of two kinds of theories about identity-based violence. We will demonstrate how individual-level explanation taken from empirical work in the field of developmental psychology fits with social movement theory to provide a powerful analysis of the causes, and the cure, for identity-based violence and racial discrimination. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between identity formation and political violence, on the one hand, and residual racism among economically and culturally dispossessed whites on the other. Social movement theory tells us that there are dispossessed whites who are likely to seek status by targeting minorities. Identity theory tells us that it is the disjunction between the certainties of identity socialization for this group, and their present sense of dispossession, that transforms group "interest" into authoritarianism and potential violence. The key empirical link is between identity "foreclosure" and forms of authoritarianism that rationalize violence. In using the analysis as a guide to solutions to racial violence, we highlight the actions that can be taken to pre-empt violent behavior through a political emphasis on developing constructive developmental choices. We examine the requirements for the development of democratic personalities that avoid the pathologies of violence associated with interpersonal domination and authoritarianism. The direction given by social movement theory points toward solutions based on democratic discourse around objectives derived from identity theory: namely, the recognition and validation of community worth, the improvement and affirmation of participatory competence, and practical steps toward sustaining commitments on an interpersonal basis. These kinds of communication have to be worked out at the non-elite level, and in practical steps that build confidence between communities.

I examine three main topics. The first is organized violence in the name of religion. I focus on collective violence by groups whose members share a religious affiliation. Having a taxonomy that distinguishes collective violence in the name of religion from other cases (e.g. an abortion clinic bomber) is important, because the causes of violence in the name of religion vary by type and by context. The second topic is how to frame collective violence in the name of religion. Should we focus on theology, religious convictions, or religious doctrine? Should we discount religious doctrine as a variable altogether? Or should we characterize religion as about identity, a source of community allegiances, and group affiliation? I argue that when we adopt the label 'religious violence' and apply it to organized violence, one of our central focuses should be on ways that religion is an identity. Thirdly, I present a short case study that considers collective violence by Uighur Muslims in northwest China, Xinjiang province. This example is helpful because it illustrates that the identity approach is well suited to navigate some hard questions about how to classify (i.e., as religious, as ethnic, as a response to political domination, etc.) organized violence in the name of religion.

The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, 2019

This chapter offers a perspective on the relationship between ethnic politics and violence that applies lessons from discourse theory and the recent findings on the role of emotions in human cognition. It proceeds by discussing the intersection between discourse theory and the literature on affective cognition, outlining a discursive-affective analytical framework, and applying it toward an understanding of ethnic politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first part of the chapter analyzes the processes that led to the Bosnian War by exposing the role of nationalist parties in producing emotional polarization that culminated into armed mobilization. It then argues that the War's emotional legacy decisively shaped contemporary politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina, maintaining deep ethnic cleavages and potential for future violence. By emphasizing the role of nationalist agents and discursively mobilized emotions in producing homogenized ethnic groups primed for armed mobilization, the discussion challenges groupist and rationalist approaches to ethnically framed conflicts.

CRPD Working Paper No. 15, 2013

In a recent article, researcher Steve Gillard (2001) cites contradictions between conflict resolution theory about identity and inter-group conflict as related to his own empirical research with youth in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This conflict resolution theory is based on a theory of social identity, which states that a social category, like nationality in Gillard’s case, shapes the characteristics of an individual’s self-definition. Each social category is “represented in …[her] mind as a social identity that both describes and prescribes [her] attributes as a member of that group” (Hogg et al. 1995, 259-260). For conflict resolution theory it is significant that these social identities are not value-neutral, but are socially compared, which can lead to conflict. The individual judges her ‘in-group’ favourably (and, by extension, herself), whereas she judges the ‘out-group’ negatively (Stets & Burke 2000). Conflict is a natural next step because the negative judgement of the other can lead to stereotyping, dehumanisation, and hostility, particularly in a situation of resource depletion or another unforeseen circumstance. Gillard found that his subjects’ identifications did not accord with the assumed in-groups (Serb, Croat, Muslim) but rather, the persons interviewed “negotiat[ed] their identifications of self and others, on a case-by-case basis, in terms of meaningful interaction with those others – i.e. intersubjectively – rather than responding to objectified, national categories” (2001, 91).1 In addition to reporting a contextual inaccuracy, Gillard also laments a theoretical lacuna: “while all these [identity] theories have much to say about the way in which intercommunal relationships break down during conflict, they have relatively little to offer on the processes whereby those relationships might be rebuilt” (2001, 83). Since the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, much new conflict resolution theory has been advanced regarding the processes of rebuilding relationships. Specifically, we will see below Kelman’s and Lederach’s work on identity-related aspects of reconciliation. However, the tie between identity theory and reconciliation, an aspect of peacebuilding theory, remains underdeveloped. Therefore, I will make some connections between conflict and peace theory and the identity theories, using the case of post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina and religious identity more specifically, which has complex links to national and ethnic identity. As such, I am continuing the existent interdisciplinary discourse between social psychology and conflict resolution, touching upon sociology of religion and a sub-discipline of peace studies, religious peacebuilding.