A Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia

This book discusses the link between religion and genocide in Bosnia.

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A God of One's Own: Religion's Capacity for Peace and Potential for Violence

This book analyzes the shifting functions of religion in a globalized world. In addition to providing some general information about inter-religious contact, conflict, and potential for peace, the author also addresses new research like globalized religion, new forms of coexistence and conflict among world religions, the decline of secularization, shifting boundaries, etc.

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Assesing Risks of Genocide and Politicide

"In 1998, in response to President's Clinton's policy initiative on genocide early warning and prevention, the author, a senior consultant with the Task Force, was asked to design and carry out a study that would use her own and other data sources to establish an empirically and theoretically grounded, data- based system for risk assessment and early warning of genocidal violence." -- from Website

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Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

"Waller begins the daunting task of explaining hate by focusing on the conditions under which many of us could be transformed into killing machines. His focus remains locked on ordinary people. By sifting through thousands of research and theory articles from multiple sources, he creates a synthesis not previously known." -- from Website

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Book Review of "Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty" by Roy F. Baumeister

"Roy Baumeister’s book explores the roots of evil, offering an examination of the subject apart from moralistic musings. When evil acts are encountered, moral outrage is a natural response. Identification and empathy with the victim’s point of view are automatic. Baumeister urges the reader beyond this vantage point, seeking to discern the essential nature of evil. To accomplish his task, Baumeister incorporates historical, political, and psychological factors into the analysis as well as examining the perpetrator's point of view." -- From Book Review

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Conflict Emergence Stage

It is common for significant tensions or grievances to persist over long periods of time without resulting in a noticeable conflict. This essay explores the factors that transform such tensions into an active conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Culture and Conflict

People from different cultures often have such radically different worldviews that what seems like common sense to one side, is anything but sensible to the other. Different cultures and worldviews can lead to completely different understandings or frames of a conflict, making resolution a challenge.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror

"Death squad is the first work to focus specifically on the anthropology of state terror. It brings together an international group of anthropologists who have done extensive research in areas marked by extreme forms of state violence and who have studied state terror from the perspective of victims and survivors." -- from Website

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Deciphering Disorder in Africa: Is Identity the Key?

Noted Africa-watcher Crawford Young reviews five books that examine the role of identity in recent conflicts in Liberia, Rwanda, Algeria, and elsewhere. While competing identities certainly can influence conflict, they are just one factor among many that cause and perpetuate them.

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Dehumanization

Dehumanization has the power to justify society's most violent and terrible impulses. If outsiders such as the Jews in Germany or the Tutsis in Rwanda are seen as less than human, then this clears the way to commit atrocities against them.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Delegitimization

Delegitimization refers to the negative stereotypes used to describe an adversary. Delegitimization is one of the major forces that feeds violence and prevents a peaceful resolution.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Effects of Colonization

Many of today's ethnic conflicts were caused, at least to some degree, by artificial boundaries, identities, and role relationships that were established by colonizing powers decades or even centuries before. Though the colonial power has most often left the scene, the social and political landscape that was left behind is fraught with tensions, often leading to intractable violent conflicts. This essay explores the link between colonization and later ethnic tension and violence.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Enemy Images

In Rwanda, the Tutsis were referred to as the enemy, cockroaches and rats. These extreme enemy images paved the way for the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Ethos of Conflict

A community's ethos is its shared beliefs, goals and identity. Communities in an intractable conflict expand that ethos to explain their approach to the conflict. A community's ethos strongly affects how destructive the conflict becomes.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Factors Shaping the Course of Intractable Conflict

The parties, issues, setting, and history are among the factors that shape the course of conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Frames, Framing and Reframing

Frames are the way we see things and define what we see. Similar to the way a new frame can entirely change the way we view a photograph, reframing can change the way disputing parties understand and pursue their conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Historical Facts

The saying, "history is written by the victor," refers to the fact that historical facts are often biased or inaccurate. Yet long-running conflicts are often based on these controversial "facts." This essay explores the impact of history on current conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Human Rights Violations

Abuse of human rights often leads to conflict, and conflict typically results in human rights violations. Thus, human rights abuses are often at the center of wars and protection of human rights is central to conflict resolution.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Humiliation

Humiliation is reducing to lowliness or submission. It is theorized to be a major cause of violent and intractable conflicts. The humiliation of the German people after World War I, for example, is frequently seen as a cause of World War II.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Identity Frames

Identity frames include ideas about who one is, what characteristics they share with their group(s) and how they do and should related to others. These frames are frequently sources of conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Image, Identity and Conflict Resolution

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Into-the-Sea Framing

When a conflict becomes intractable, many people hope that their enemy will simply disappear. They pursue overwhelming victory without ever really considering the fact that they will still have to live with their enemies after the conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Justice Conflicts

Perceived injustice is a frequent source of conflict. It is usually characterized by the denial of fundamental rights. This is an introductory essay to the justice section of the website.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Large-Scale Communication

This essay discusses ways to communicate to large groups and even whole societies. While the media is the most traditional way of doing this, other approaches are also sometimes utilized, such as community dialogues or even "national conversations."

Beyond Intractability Essay

Limits of Rationality

Negotiation theory often assumes that people in conflict behave rationally, making their decisions on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. While rational assessment is sometimes one part of the disputants' decision making rubric, other factors usually play a significant role as well, often overriding what would be seen to be the "rational" response.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Maintaining Oppression

In this essay, the author considers factors that keep oppression in place including power, the social production of meaning, self-fulfilling prophecies and distorted relationships.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Moral or Value Conflicts

Intractable moral conflicts tend to arise when one group views the beliefs and actions of another group as being so fundamentally evil that they exceed the bounds of tolerance. The abortion debate in the United States is an example of a moral conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

More Than War

"The mass extermination of innocent civilians has become emblematic of the depravity of war. A deeper look into the dynamics of the Holocaust (and the many incidents of mass atrocities that preceded and followed), however, reveals a highly complex relationship between armed conflict and mass murder -- one that is neither fully bound nor fully distinct." -- from Website

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Nationalism

Nationalism is an extension of identity group conflicts in which feelings of identity coincide with loyalty to one's nation-state or national group, even when a formal nation-state does not exist (as with the Palestinians.)

Beyond Intractability Essay

NC Researchers Propose Health-based Approach to Identify Groups at High Risk of Genocide

"Researchers from North Carolina State University are proposing a health-based approach to identifying groups at high risk of genocide, in a first-of-its-kind attempt to target international efforts to stop these mass killings before they start...Some risk factors have already been identified, such as severe state oppression of a group or a regional history of genocide. Now researchers are offering a new risk factor for consideration: a population's health and its track record of prenatal care." -- from Website

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Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

"...[T]he most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even then the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority." -- from Website

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Oppression and Conflict: Introduction

Oppression is at the root of many of the most serious, enduring conflicts in the world today. This very short essay introduces the concept of oppression.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Power Inequities

Plutarch wrote, "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." This essay deals with the power inequities that have existed in almost all human societies.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Prejudice

Harry Bridges wrote, "No man has ever been born a Negro hater, a Jew hater, or any other kind of hater. Nature refused to be involved in such suicidal practices." This essay discusses how prejudice develops, what its effects are, and what can be done to change it.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Propaganda

Propaganda involves the obscuring, manipulating, or misconstruing of information for political gain. It may involve efforts to garner support amongst followers or to dampen the spirits of one's opponents.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Psychological Dynamics of Intractable Conflicts

In intractable conflicts, it is possible for entire societies to get tangled up in negative psychological dynamics. If these dynamics are not recognized and addressed it will become difficult or impossible to resolve the conflict.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Religion and Conflict

Religion is both a cause and a solution to many intractable conflicts. This essay discusses the role that religion plays in the creation and support of intractable conflicts. The essay on Religion and Peace looks at the role that religious actors and religion per se has and can play in the transformation or resolution of such conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Religion, Violence, and Conflict Resolution

Religion has a dual legacy in human history regarding peace and violence. Conflict resolutions therefore must examine more systematically the decision-making of religious actors and leaders in order for strategies of peacemaking to be effective in the relevant contexts. It is the argument here that the study of religion and conflict resolution will yield and important new field of inquiry. A series of topics needs to be addressed, including the mixture of religious and pragmatic motivations in behavior, the struggle between intracommunal moral values and the other traditional values that generate conflict, multifaith dialogue and pluralism as conflict resolution strategies, the sociopolitical impact of religious ethics in regard to the rejection of nonbelievers and traditional outgroups, and the promising role of interpretation of sacred tradition in generating peacemaking strategies.

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Religiously Motivated Violence, Murder and Genocide

This is a "gateway" site that links to a variety of stories about religiously motivated violence - violence perpetrated upon "the other" because they are not seen as part of the human community, deserving of respect, care, and equal treatment.

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Revenge and the Backlash Effect

Most people hate to be forced to do things against their will. Using threats often produces such a large backlash that they cause more problems than they solve, as this essay explains.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Scapegoating

The term scapegoat refers to people who are forced to bear responsibility for the mistakes of others. Scapegoating can prolong conflict and lead to intense violence.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Small Arms Trade

During the Cold War, nuclear disarmament was a focus; now many policy makers are focusing on weapons of mass destruction. But small arms are actually doing much more harm in current conflicts, and efforts to control the small arms trade deserve priority attention as well.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Social Psychological Dimensions of Conflict

These dimensions include emotions (fear, distrust, hostility) as well as processes such as framing, stereotyping, and scapegoating. These factors significantly influence the way a conflict is perceived and responded to.

Beyond Intractability Essay

Stereotypes / Characterization Frames

Stereotypes are simplified, and often highly inaccurate, images of the motivations and behaviors of others. When in error, they can lead to and escalate conflicts.

Beyond Intractability Essay

The Media and the Rwanda Genocide

"The news media played a crucial role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide: local media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued what was happening. This is the first book to explore both sides of that media equation. The book examines how local radio and print media were used as a tool of hate by encouraging neighbors to turn against each other. It also presents a critique of international media coverage of the cataclysmic events in Rwanda."

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The Nature and Origins of Oppression

The beginning of oppression can be traced back to the invention of agriculture. This essay outlines the history of oppression.

Beyond Intractability Essay

The Power of Lists During Genocide

"Scholars have identified list-making as one of the initial steps in genocide planning. People in power use lists to categorize people, track them and ultimately identify who should be killed, according to Gregory Stanton, the founder and president of the advocacy organization Genocide Watch. Today, it's what activists look out for in hopes of preventing genocide." -- from Website

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Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust

The primary focus of this volume is on the Holocaust, but the conclusions reached have relevance for attempts to understand any episode of mass killing. Among the topics covered are how crises and difficult life conditions might set the stage for violent intergroup conflict; why some groups are more likely than others to be selected as scapegoats; how certain cultural values and beliefs could facilitate the initiation of genocide; the roles of conformity and obedience to authority in shaping behavior; how engaging in violent behavior makes it easier to for one to aggress again; the evidence for a "genocide-prone" personality; and how perpetrators deceive themselves about what they have done.

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Unmet Human Needs

Human essentials go beyond just food, water, and shelter. They include all those things humans are innately driven to attain, such as love, dignity and safety. Some theorists argue that most intractable conflicts are caused by the drive to satisfy unmet needs.

Beyond Intractability Essay

War and Genocide: Organized Killing in Modern Society

"This comprehensive introduction to the study of war and genocide presents a disturbing case that the potential for slaughter is deeply rooted in the political, economic, social and ideological relations of the modern world." -- from Website

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World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

"Amy Chua contends that when injudiciously introduced, as most often happens, wide open markets and hot-housed majoritarianism form 'a principal, aggravating cause of group hatred and ethnic violence throughout the non-Western world'. On regional and global planes, too, the dynamic of World on Fire augurs ill for stability, not to mention peace." -- from Website

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