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International Online Training Program On Intractable Conflict |
Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, USA |
All societies and groups are held together, at least to some extent, by social bonds. These bonds relate to people's identities--their roles--in the group, community, and society. In a strongly integrated society, most people have a multitude of identities and roles. One person might be a husband, father, truck driver, Roman Catholic, tennis player, who loves gardening and classical music. Another might be a wife, mother, teacher, Moslem, social activist, who loves reading and studying foreign languages. Both of these people have links to other people who live with them, work with them, or share their interests. The more links between people, and the more active people are in different social, political, and economic organizations, the more strongly they are tied to their social system and the more strongly the social system is held together.
When societies are wracked by conflict or war, many of these identities and roles get abandoned or submerged. People emphasize or focus on their primary group identity, abandoning any links with people from the other side with whom they might have shared experiences before the conflict began. In the Balkans, for example, one's identity as a Muslim, Croat, or Serb became far more important than one's identity as a parent, a teacher, a truck driver, or a scholar. People who worked side-by-side in Yugoslavia routinely killed each other over these national identities, with no regard for the former ties that had held them together, and had given them common bonds. In severely war-torn societies, the only aspect of the integrative system that remains is the system that operates within each side--bonding the factions together, but in opposition to the other(s). Any remnants of an integrative system between groups can be lost, making peacebuilding efforts very difficult, but at the same time terribly important if long-term, stable peace is to be obtained.
Copyright ©1998 Conflict Research Consortium -- Contact: crc@colorado.edu