Psychological dynamics of intractable ethnonational conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian case (original) (raw)
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Sociopsychological Foundations of Intractable Conflicts
American Behavioral Scientist, 2007
The article presents a conceptual framework that concerns the sociopsychological foundation and dynamics of intractable conflict. First, it defines and characterizes the nature of intractable conflict, and then it describes how societies involved in this reality adapt to the conditions of intractable conflict. This adaptation meets three fundamental challenges: satisfying the needs of the society members, coping with stress, and withstanding the rival. In trying to confront them successfully, societies develop appropriate sociopsychological infrastructure, which includes collective memory, ethos of conflict, and collective emotional orientations. This infrastructure fulfills important individual and collective level functions, including the important role of formation, maintenance, and strengthening of a social identity that reflects this conflict. Special attempts are made to disseminate this infrastructure via societal channels of communication and institutionalize it. The evolved...
Review of Daniel Bar-Tal's "Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics".
Political Psychology, 2016
Intractable conflicts are of special interest to political psychology, due to their very capacity to persist in a mutually destructive cycle of violence that blocks the institution of alternative social and political relations. They resist political negotiation as they generate and, thereafter, reiterate the intense political identifications upon which they rely. They become the scene of a zero-sum, vicious cycle. Hence, a crucial question for political psychology is the following: What psychic and cultural processes generate and entrench such intractable conflicts, and how might these be displaced, eventually, by other psychic and cultural formations that support peace and the emergent possibilities that a peaceful coexistence, whether fraught or fulsome, releases? In his recent book, Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics, Daniel Bar-Tal addresses these complex issues in an extremely detailed and comprehensive manner.
That identity is a central aspect of the psychology of social violence is well-supported in the scholarly literature. The theoretical exploration that other psychological motivations can play a role in enduring social conflicts has been under-examined in the theoretical literature, however. Of specific interest to this project, therefore, is how the theory of protracted social conflict (PSC) addresses the role of psychological motivation. From a theoretical perspective, we assess and find support for the categorical inclusion of the psychological components of emotion, perception, and group-identification as jointly necessary components of the theoretical structure of PSC. The historical-comparative and case-study methods lay the foundation for confirmatory factor analyses. Using critical PSC cases of the Israeli-Palestinian and Northern Ireland conflicts, we find support for the expansion of the role of psychological motivation inclusion of psychological motivation as a categorically necessary component of the PSC theoretic frame. Psychological Motivation in Protracted Social Conflict
Addressing Protracted Ethnopolitical Conflicts: Moving Beyond Description to Basic Dynamics
Protracted ethnopolitical conflicts continue to undermine the security, stability and well being of societies worldwide. Today, there are over 30 wars and armed conflicts being waged around the globe, with approximately 40% of intra-state armed conflicts lasting for 10 years or more and 25% of wars lasting for more than 25 years. In these settings, generations of youth are socialized into conflict, a condition we know to perpetuate violence in many forms. In fact, scholars have linked the attacks of September 11 th to the sociopolitical conditions that were festering in hot zones of protracted conflict.
2007 intractable conflict ABS 2007.pdf
The article presents a conceptual framework that concerns the sociopsychological foundation and dynamics of intractable conflict. First, it defines and characterizes the nature of intractable conflict, and then it describes how societies involved in this reality adapt to the conditions of intractable conflict. This adaptation meets three fundamental challenges: satisfying the needs of the society members, coping with stress, and withstanding the rival. In trying to confront them successfully, societies develop appropriate sociopsychological infrastructure, which includes collective memory, ethos of conflict, and collective emotional orientations. This infrastructure fulfills important individual and collective level functions, including the important role of formation, maintenance, and strengthening of a social identity that reflects this conflict. Special attempts are made to disseminate this infrastructure via societal channels of communication and institutionalize it. The evolved sociopsychological infrastructure becomes a prism through which society members construe their reality, collect new information, interpret their experiences, and make decisions about their course of action. This infrastructure becomes hegemonic, rigid, and resistant to change as long as the intractable conflict continues. It ends up serving as a major factor fueling the continuation of the conflict, thus becoming part of a vicious cycle of intractable conflict.
Intractable Conflict and Peacemaking from a Socio-Psychological Approach
Intractable conflicts are demanding, stressful, painful, exhausting, and costly both in human and material terms. In order to adapt to these conditions, societies engaged in such protracted, violent conflict develop an appropriate socio-psychological infrastructure that eventually becomes the foundation for the development of culture of conflict. The infrastructure fulfills important functions for the societies involved, yet stands also as a major socio-psychological barrier to peaceful resolution of the conflict. Transforming the nature of the relations between two societies that were in hostile and violent rivalry requires a dramatic societal change of replacing the socio-psychological repertoire among society members and establishing a new culture of peace. This process of peacemaking is very long and extremely challenging; however, if successful, the past rival sides may establish stable and lasting peaceful relations.
2013 Conflict & Communication Barriers.pdf
The nature of socio-psychological barriers to peaceful conflict resolution and ways to overcome them 1 Kurzfassung: Die vielen verheerenden Gewaltkonflikte, die in verschiedenen Teilen der Welt wüten, stellen ein dringliches Problem dar.