Identity Issues

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

In his BI Knowledge Base Essay on Identity Issues, Lou Kriesberg wrote:

Developing a sense of self is an essential part of every individual becoming a mature person. Each person's self-conception is a unique combination of many identifications, identifications as broad as woman or man, Catholic or Muslim, or as narrow as being a member of one particular family. Although self-identity may seem to coincide with a particular human being, identities are actually much wider than that. They are also collective -- identities extend to countries and ethnic communities, so that people feel injured when other persons sharing their identity are injured or killed. Sometimes people are even willing to sacrifice their individual lives to preserve their identity group(s).

Since one's identity is a particularly important human need, if that identity is demeaned, questioned, denied, or threatened, an intractable conflict is likely to result. In the same essay, Lou listed types of identities that were likely to lead to intractable conflict. These included:

Persistent Identities: The protracted nature of many ethnic conflicts depends on the persistence of the ethnic groups, deriving from socialization within the group and from suffering resulting from discrimination and exclusion by other ethnic groups.

Primary Identities: Conflicts related to highly significant identities have a tendency to persist, since threats to those identities are not easily put aside.

Non-Compromising Identities: Members of groups that place a high priority on being honored and being treated with deference may have difficulty making compromises for or respecting other groups.

Views of the "Other:" If "the other" is seen as subhuman, even denigrated as vermin, they are more easily subjected to gross human rights violations and even genocide. If enemy people are regarded as evil, then extreme methods are justified to destroy them. Obviously, the targets of such characterizations will reject them and may subsequently reciprocate such hate.

Inclusivity: Inclusive identities (ones that welcome others to join them) are less prone to foster intractable conflict.

Nationalism: Nationalism as an ideology asserts that nations or groups of people who share a common history and destiny have the right to have a territory or state of their own. Furthermore, nationalist sentiments often are a variant of ethnocentrism, the tendency to see one's own group as superior and more deserving of respect than all others. Both ideologies can lead to intractability.

Victimhood: People who see themselves as victims of oppression and domination by others tend to make people feel threatened and mistrustful. Fearing attacks, they may act to prevent them, but in ways that the other side likewise experiences as threats. The result can be self-perpetuating destructive struggles.

To the extent one's identity falls into one or more of these categories, and particularly when all adversaries' identities feel threatened, destructive intractable conflict is likely to occur.