Identity and Political Violence

St. Anthony's International Review 10/2 (2015)

A familiar narrative in International Relations scholarship suggests that a fundamental shift in the dynamics of global political violence has taken place in recent times, involving a decline in ‘ideological’ conflicts, and a rise in conflicts of ‘identity’. But the contrast this argument relies on, between ideology and identity, is untenable and unproductive, implausibly denying that ideologies and identity are inextricably interrelated, and exaggerating the novelty and causal centrality of identity’s role in conflict. But this is not to say that identity plays no such role. This article explains the failings of the familiar narrative about identity, by demonstrating its fundamentally ideological nature and its nuanced causal role in political violence. It then proceeds to offer a better theoretical framework for thinking about the multiple links between identity and violence. Centrally, I identify six specific causal mechanisms through which identities encourage violence by providing: (i) mobilising coordinates, (ii) targeting categories, (iii) virtue-systems, (iv) obligation hierarchies, (v) victimhood, and (vi) group hatred. Finally, the article considers how this framework permits a more plausible reformulation of some of the kernels of truth in the familiar narrative about identity’s importance in contemporary conflict.

International Organization, 2000

The Sociological Review, 2014

Violence is a force for creating integrities as well as one that violates, pollutes and destroys already existing entities. In this paper I address the role of what Ariella Azoulay terms the 'political imagination' in constituting social aggregates committed to the defence of a community itself brought into being by the imagining of a force dedicated to its destruction. Such a group's perception of what Laclau and Mouffe call an 'antagonism' spurs it to mark out and defend its boundaries with violence-a violence often manifested aggressively (pre-emptively). Collective perceptions of an other's antagonism are often overdetermined, either by historical memory or political manipulation, and it is often the case that an enemy is sited and a programme of 'defensive' violence inaugurated without any 'real' justification. Here I demonstrate, using events drawn from the formation of the State of Israel and the collapse of what is now 'Former Yugoslavia', that it is in designating an other against which destructive violence must be mobilized that an entity realizes-through the negation of that it would negate-what it is it fights to defend.

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.

Journal of Applied Psychology, 2009

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.