Identity Power And Conflict

Conflict can either destroy or create—depAnding on whether and how it is guided. This is the simple yet profound insight that underlies Jay Rothman's innovative new framework for understanding and transforming identity-based conflict in nations, organizations, and communities. Reading a newspaper, working in an organization, or sitting in on a town meeting can provide vivid examples of identity conflicts in action. Based in the national, organizational, and community groups that provide individuals with meaning, safety, and dignity, identity conflicts are passionate and volatile because they strike at our core: who we really are and what we care about most deeply. Though often impervious to traditional methods of conflict management, identity-based conflict also provides adversaries with dynamic opportunities for finding not only common ground, but higher ground than separate parties could have found on their own. Grounded in his grassroots conflict resolution work in the Middle East — work that earned him the honor of witnessing the historic White House handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO President Yasser Arafat — and brilliantly refined to address a wide range of organizational and community conflicts, Rothman's ARIA model is a versatile and innovative synthesis of the best contemporary ideas in conflict management, resolution, and transformation. Step by step, Resolving Identity-Based Conflict traces the ARIA journey through Antagonism, Resonance, Invention, and Action in a variety of environments. In straightforward, jargon-free language, Rothman conveys solid theoretical insights and practical how-to's that allow researchers and practitioners to: Recognize the crucial differences between identity- and resource-based conflicts Zero in on the needs and motivations shared by even the bitterest of adversaries Create joint agendas for groups in conflict Transform intragroup and intergroup conflicts in organizations of every k

Written by a distinguished scholar, this book explores themes of culture, identity, and power as they relate to conceptions of practice in conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Among the topics covered are ethnic and identity conflicts; culture, relativism and human rights; post-conflict trauma and reconciliation; and modeling varieties of conflict resolution practice. Context and Pretext in Conflict Resolution is the winner of the 2014 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize.

Through proper engagement, identity-based conflict enhances and develops identity as a vehicle to promote creative collaboration between individuals, the groups they constitute and the systems they forge. This handbook describes the specific model that has been developed as well as various approaches and applications to identity-conflict used throughout the world.

This book investigates cultural and social identity in contemporary complex societies, focusing especially on Eastern Europe. Mach explains the role of symbols and symbolic forms in he relations between groups and the protection and development of their identities, especially ethnic identity. He places his study within the context of social order and the structure of power, using case studies which deal especially with the significance of politics, state rituals and national identity (Great Britain, Israel, Russia, Poland); in the conflict and displacement of migrating groups (Polish and German); and in regional questions of identity and inter-ethnic relations (Poland, United States, Great Britain). Mach presents a clear conceptual framework for analyzing the symbolic construction of identity. He views cultural identity as a dynamic, creative process which clarifies issues that are particularly significant in contemporary society, such as nationalism, new ethnicity, minority culture, and the cultural dimension of political conflicts.

The relationship between ethnic identity and power has important consequences in a modern world that is changing rapidly through global immigration trends. Studies of ethnic/racial conflict of ethnic identity and power become necessarily studies of political power, social status, school achievement, and allocation of resources. The recognition of power by an ethnic group, however, creates a competition for control and a rivalry for power over public arenas, such as schools. In this context this book provides interesting and important insights into the dilemmas faced by immigrants and members of ethnic groups, by school personnel, and by policy makers. The first part of the book consists of comparative studies of ethnic identity. The second part focuses directly on some of the lessons learned from social science research on ethnic identification and the critical study of equity, with its implications for pedagogy. An interdisciplinary group of scholars offers profoundly honest and stimulating accounts of their struggles to decipher self-identification processes in various political contexts, as well as their personal reflections on the study of ethnicity. A powerful message emerges that invites reflection about self-identification processes, and that allows a deeper understanding of the empowering consequences of a clear and strong personal, cultural, ethnic, and social identity. These pages offer a keen grasp of the undeniable political contexts of education.

What is the purpose of Paul's letter to the Romans? Esler provides an illuminating analysis of this epistle, employing social-scientific methods along with epigraphy and archaeology. His conclusion is that the apostle Paul was attempting to facilitate the resolution of intergroup conflict among the Christ-followers of Rome, especially between Judeans and non-Judeans, and to establish a new identity for them by developing a form of group categorization that subsumes the various groups into a new entity.

This book offers an intellectual history of an emerging technology of peace and explains how the liberal state has come to endorse illiberal subjects and practices. The idea that conflicts are problems that have causes and therefore solutions rather than winners and losers has gained momentum since the end of the Cold War, and it has become more common for third party mediators acting in the name of liberal internationalism to promote the resolution of intra-state conflicts. These third-party peace makers appear to share lessons and expertise so that it is possible to speak of an emergent common technology of peace based around a controversial form of power-sharing known as consociation. In this common technology of peace, the cause of conflict is understood to be competing ethno-national identities and the solution is to recognize these identities, and make them useful to government through power-sharing. Drawing on an analysis of the peace process in Ireland and the Dayton Accords in Bosnia Herzegovina, the book argues that the problem with consociational arrangements is not simply that they institutionalise ethnic division and privilege particular identities or groups, but, more importantly, that they close down the space for other ways of being. By specifying identity categories, consociational regimes create a residual, sink category, designated 'other'. These 'others' not only offer a challenge to prevailing ideas about identity but also stand in reproach to conventional wisdom regarding the management of conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, ethnic conflict, identity, and war and conflict studies in general. Andrew Finlay is Lecturer in Sociology at Trinity College Dublin.

This engaging volume reveals how politics permeates all facets of museum practice, particularly in regions of political conflict. In these settings, museums can be extraordinarily influential for shaping identity and collective memory and for peace building. Using key Cypriote archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and art museums as examples, this book: provides a multifaceted and deeper understanding of how politics, conflict, national agendas, and individual initiatives can shape museums and their narratives; discusses how these forces contribute to the creation of, and conflict over, national, community and personal identities; examines how museums use inclusion and exclusion in their collections, exhibitions, objects and interpretive material as a way of selectively constructing collective memories. This book will be an important resource for museum professionals, as well as scholars interested in the effects of politics on museums and interpretations of the past.

This book argues that a sense of affinity for land and space constitutes the foundation of human agency and underlies all social activity of human beings from a personal level to family, nation, region, and the world. Identities, to which the process of regionalism is intimately tied, have a close connection to ancestral land. Land, or space, is protected by social laws, formal and informal instruments of power against an intrusion by another identity. The author argues that human society is divided into two identity groups, namely, a conservative and a liberal identity. Framing the argument in terms of the identity duality advances the present body of knowledge and understanding of conflict and human society. The author seeks to explain the dualism in human nature and the occurrence of wars in human society.

Twenty years ago Ukraine gained its independence and started on a path towards a free market economy and democratic governance. After four successive presidents and the Orange Revolution, the question of exactly which national model Ukraine should embrace remains an open question. Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power provides a comprehensive outlook on Ukraine as it is presented through the views of intellectual and political elites. Based on extensive field work in Ukraine, Karina V. Korostelina describes the complex process of nation building. Despite the prevailing belief in a divide between two parts of Ukraine and an overwhelming variety of incompatible visions, Korostelina reveals seven prevailing conceptual models of Ukraine and five dominant narratives of national identity. Constructing the Narratives of Identity and Power analyzes the practice of national self-imagination. Karina V. Korostelina puts forward a structural-functional model of national narratives that describes three major components, dualistic order, mythic narratives, and normative order, and two main functions of national narratives, the development of the meaning of national identity and the legitimization of power. Korostelina describes the differences and conflicting elements of the national narratives that constitute the contested arena of nation-building in Ukraine.