International Journal of Conflict and Violence (IJCV - Universität Bielefeld)
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Group-based Compunction and Anger: Their Antecedents and Consequences in Relation to Colonial Conflicts
Full text linkGroup-based emotions can be experienced by group members for the past misdeeds of their ingroup towards an outgroup.. The present study examines distinct antecedents and consequences of group-based compunction and anger in two countries with a history of colonization (Portugal, N = 280 and the Netherlands, N = 184). While previous research has focused mainly on ingroup-focused antecedents of group-based emotions, such as ingroup identification and perceptions of responsibility, our research also analyzed outgroup-focused variables, such as outgroup identification and meta-perceptions. Multiple groupstructural equation modeling showed that group-based compunction and group-based anger have similar antecedents (exonerating cognitions, collectivism, outgroup identification and meta-perceptions). Furthermore, the results showed that the two emotions have distinct but related consequences for the improvement of intergroup relations (compensation, subjective importance of discussing the past and forgiveness assignment)
The Secret Islamization of Europe Exploring the Integrated Threat Theory: Predicting Islamophobic Conspiracy Stereotypes
Full text linkThe revised integrated threat theory (Stephan and Renfro 2002) is tested as a framework for analyzing Islamophobic conspiracy stereotypes (Kofta and Sedek 2005) in Germany. Threats (symbolic and realistic) were analyzed as mediators between different antecedents (in-group identification, ambiguity intolerance, clash of civilizations) and the dependent variable, conspiracy stereotypes. Respondents from Berlin (N = 355) participated in an online survey (Summer 2014). First, the findings indicate that higher education and political orientation towards the left are negatively related to conspiracy stereotypes and threats. Furthermore, the findings of the structural equation model indicate partial mediation via symbolic threats for clash-of-civilizations intergroup conflict and education on conspiracy stereotypes. Full mediation is reported for in-group identification and ambiguity intolerance via symbolic threats.Despite any factual evidence for support, the idea of a secret "Islamization of Europe" is finding increasing support among different groups in Germany (Benz 2011; Shooman 2009; Shooman 2014). Anders Behring Breivik, who killed seventy-seven people on the 22 July 2011 massacre in Norway, was, beside other factors, motivated by the “belief in a Muslim conspiracy to take over Europe” (Fekete 2011)
“Go Back and Tell Them Who the Real Men Are!” Gendering Our Understanding of Kibera’s Post-election Violence
Full text linkUsing a gendered analysis, this article examines the post election violence (PEV) in Kibera, Kenya, between December 2007 and February 2008. Through indepth interviews with Kibera residents, the article interrogates how gender influenced violent mobilizations in Kenya’s most notorious slum. Most scholarly analyses have tended to understand the post-election violence as a result of politicized ethnic identities, class, and local socio-economic dynamics. Implicitly or explicitly, these frameworks assume that women are victims of violence while men are its perpetrators, and ignore the ways in which gender, which cuts across these categories, produces and shapes conflict. Kibera’s conflict is often ascribed to the mobilization of disaffected male youths by political “Big Men.” But the research findings show how men, who would ordinarily not go to war, are obliged to fight to “save face” in their communities and how women become integral to the production of violent exclusionary mobilizations. Significantly, notions of masculinity and femininity modified the character of Kibera’s conflict. Acts of gender-based violence, gang rapes, and forced circumcisions became intensely entwined with ethno-political performances to annihilate opposing groups. The battle for political power was also a battle of masculinities
Validation of the Greek Acceptance of Modern Myths about Sexual Aggression (AMMSA) Scale: Examining Its Relationships with Sexist and Conservative Political Beliefs
Full text linkThe Acceptance of Modern Myths about Sexual Aggression scale measures contemporary beliefs about sexual aggression that tend to blame victims and exonerate perpetrators. A Greek version of the thirty-item AMMSA scale was administered to two diverse convenience samples, one in Greece and one in Cyprus. Convergent and discriminant construct validity were assessed via correlations with other constructs that were hypothesized to be strongly related to AMMSA (Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance; hostile sexism) or moderately related (benevolent sexism; social dominance orientation; right-wing authoritarianism). It wasfound that the Greek AMMSA was unidimensional, highly internally consistent, normally distributed, and showed good construct validity. When sociodemographic data were analyzed, age, gender, and nationality turned out to be significant predictors of AMMSA, with a U-shaped trend for age, higher scores for men than women, and higher scores for Cypriots than Greeks. In sum, the Greek AMMSA scale provides a highly useful instrument for further research on sexualaggression myths, their correlates, and effects on judgment and behavior
Cascades Across An ‘Extremely Violent Society’: Sri Lanka
Full text linkIn the “Peacebuilding Compared” research project so far, violence is seen as cascading across space and time within and between war-torn societies. This article illustrates the cascade lens as a framework for hypothesis generation. Both violent actions and violent imaginaries cascade. The recent history of Sri Lanka is used to illustrate three cascade dynamics: crime cascades to war, war cascades to more war and to crime, and crime and war both cascade to state violence such as torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial execution. Sri Lanka is also a case that cascaded new technologies of crime-war globally, such as suicide bombing vests. These are not the only important cascade dynamics, just neglected ones. The implications of our cascade analysis are not most importantly about building positive peace with justice, participation, truth and reconciliation at the end of tragic cascades. They are more importantly about securing negative peace preventively at the font of cascades.
Violent Mexico: The Mexican Case as an ‘Extremely Violent Society.’
No full textViolent conflicts have evolved significantly throughout time and have become more intricate and hard to define under traditional categories. Armed conflicts, genocide, and mass atrocities are no longer enough to classify new conflicts that emerge every day in different regions of the globe. Such is the case of Mexico, a country that after a series of conflicts over more than a hundred years, became relatively stable throughout the 20th century; nonetheless, such apparent tranquillity became abruptly altered with a roughly 150% increase in intentional homicides starting in 2007, totalling more than 121,000 killings in the six-year period from 2007-2012, most of which were somehow linked to organised crime. The levels of violence, the nature of different groups involved, the advanced weaponry and the widespread of the conflict make the context difficult to be labelled through traditional concepts. As new approaches are considered for evolving developments, the situation in Mexico is described under an emerging classification, the “extremely violent societies.” This paper explores the country’s context to conclude its features meet indeed the characteristics of an extremely violent society as a tool for future policy shaping
Xenophobic Violence and the Manufacture of Difference in Africa: Introduction to the Focus Section
Full text linkOver the past decade, the exploration of xenophobia, particularly of the violence xenophobia may unleash and its related effects on citizenship outside of Western Europe, has been limited. If there is a large body of research on autochthony and xenophobic practices in a number of African countries, much less is known on the outcomes of xenophobic violence and how it reshapes the making of authority, the self-definition of groups making claims to ownership over resources and the boundaries of citizenship. Analyses of collective violence in Africa have devoted much attention to conflict over land ownership, civil wars or vigilantism while quantitative studies have placed much emphasis on putative difference between labelled groups in the production of “ethnic violence”. Inthis issue, we understand autochthony, nativism and indigeneity as local concepts used by actors in situations of xenophobia. Xenophobia is consequently understood as the systematic construction of strangers as a threat to the local or national community justifying their exclusion and sometimes their suppression. Drawing on extensive empirical research undertaken over the past four years across three countries (Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa), this issue intends to offer renewed analysis on the understanding of xenophobic violence focusing on local and urban scales using historical and ethnographic methods. Focusing on micro-level qualitative research helps avoid reflecting a monolithic image of the “state”, “society” or “community” and underestimating internalstruggles among elites in the production of violence; it also helps contesting analyses which exclusively look at violence inflicted on behalf of a group claiming to share an exclusive identity; it eventually allows to reconsider how processes of violent exclusion are contested, disputed, ignored or fought against by a number of actors
Social Cohesion Activities and Attitude Change in Cyprus
Full text linkDo social cohesion activities change the attitudes of the participants? This paper uses intergroup contact theory to explore attitude change resulting from contact with out-group(s) in social cohesion activities. Results from a pre-test/post-test design with fifty-five participants in two bicommunal camps in Cyprus show how attitudes change at the immediate end of these activities; an analysis of fourteen participants’ comments after one, thirteen, and twenty-five months provides a medium- to long-term assessment of attitude change. Not all participants were completely positive towards the other community before they took part, as assumed by some. There is clearly space for impact in terms of attitude change. Social cohesion activities represent indispensable tools for reducing prejudice and improving relationships between former enemies in post-conflict countries
The Analysis of Non-Stationary Pooled Time-Series Cross-Section-Data
Full text linkIt is common in macro-level research on violent crime to analyze datasets combining a cross-section (N units) with a time-series (T periods) dimension. A large body of methodological literature accumulated since the 1990s raises questions regarding the validity of conventional models for such Pooled Time-Series Cross-Section- (PTCS) data in the presence of non-stationarity (i. e. stochastic trends). Extant research shows that conventional techniques lead to consistent estimates only under specific conditions, and standard procedures for statistical inference do not apply. The approaches proposed in the literature to test for stochastic trends and cointegration (see the introduction to this issue) are reviewed, as well as methods for estimation and inference in the non-stationary PTCS-context. A host of procedures has been developed, including methods to take simultaneously cross-section dependence and/or structural breaks into account. Thus there are now all the tools needed for valid analyses of non-stationary PTCS-data available, although many of them need large samples to perform well. The general approach to the analysis of non-stationary PTCS-data is illustrated using a data set with robbery rates for eleven West-German federal states 1971-2004. Several meaningful long-run relationships are identified and estimated in these analyses
Guest Editorial: Methodological Issues in Longitudinal Analyses of Criminal Violence
Full text linkThis editorial introduces the IJCV Focus Section on Methodological Issues in Longitudinal Analyses of Criminal Violence. Longitudinal designs offer distinctive advantages for purposes of making causal inferences with observational data, but significant challenges must be confronted as well. The purpose of this editorial is to highlight some of the more important methodological issues that arise in longitudinal analyses, describe in general terms selected approaches for dealing with them, and indicate ways in which the papers included in this focus section skilfully apply methodological techniques for longitudinal analyses to address substantively important issues pertaining to criminal violence