Does the way we think about our personal self-complexity affect how we accept others? Researchers have offered various conceptualizations of how individuals manage their complex identities, while others have identified links between cognitive complexity and acceptance of outgroups. This paper integrates the two bodies of work by positing a route by which personal identity conflicts may lead to cognitive and cultural pluralism. For individuals committed to multiple identities perceived as conflicting, the intra-psychic experience of value conflicts may lead to (...) a recognition of self-complexity, which is then transposed from the personal domain to the social one and expressed as a pluralistic attitude towards others. This argument find support in a study of Israeli Jewish Orthodox psychoanalytic therapists who belong to what they perceive as non-pluralistic religious groups, yet express value pluralism, which they attribute to their complex identities. One of the educational implications of this study is that facilitating engagement with internal complexity, multiple identities and personal value conflicts may promote pluralistic thinking for individuals in religious societies. (shrink)

This project reflects on the way in which students in a situation of social risk construct their identity. Based on the reflections and theories originating from research conducted on individuals and collective groups in a situation of social exclusion due to disability, social class or ethnicity, this paper will analyse the conflicts these students have to deal with when constructing their identity. It also examines the challenge that education has to face to turn those conflicts into opportunities that (...) will help to build life projects with which they can freely identify. For this reason, from a critical perspective, the school’s role in constructing identity will be analysed, as will the way in which it affects children and adolescents from minority groups. In the same way, we will study and put forward some different channels aimed at providing more equal educational attention to those identities that are depreciated in neoliberal society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Through an interdisciplinary literature review, this propositional paper explores the emergence and unfolding of professionals’ moral identity conflicts involving important but contrasting values. Building on the exemplary case of physicians’ professional-religious dilemmas in End-of-Life circumstances, we develop a multilevel model of professional-personal identity conflict dynamics in ethically-charged situations in which we integrate individual-level mechanisms with organizational-level boundary conditions, namely peer social support and ethical climate, in relation to psychological well-being. Our conceptual model contributes to the ethics, (...) identity and human behavior literature by advancing suggestions of how professionals may prevent or/and resolve moral conflicts concerning also other identities and contexts. (shrink)

In societies like Bosnia or Rwanda, deep divisions along ethnic and religious lines and the legacy of years of atrocities and violence pose serious challenges to liberal forms of consensus. People do not recognise themselves asmembers of a political community, and identity politics is pursued at the expense of liberal democratic projects and reconciliation programmes. This book explores the nature and role of civil society in deeply divided societies. Civil society is presented here as the spherewhere a shared 'culture (...) of civility' emerges. The 'culture of civility' enables individuals to become part of a community of citizens and accept to reciprocate on the basis of some basic universal values, such as the protection of human dignity. The last chapter on Bosnia shows that relevance of civil society crucially depends on its capacity to represent the sphere where individuals are able to recognize and deal with transitional issues by appealing to the Bosnian 'culture of civility' and developing a sense of justice based on a shared understanding of the idea of human dignity. (shrink)

*An examination of the survival of cultural values in a postmodern environment*.

This study explored identity conflict dynamics in interpersonal interactions in professionals facing ethically charged situations. Through semi-structured interviews, we conducted a qualitative study among doctors and nurses working for the English National Healthcare Service and analyzed the data with grounded theory approaches. Our findings reveal that identity conflict is triggered by three micro processes, namely cognitive and emotional perspective taking, as well as identifying with the other. In these processes, identity conflict is signaled by (...) emotions and recognized as a clash not only between identities and their values, but also within one identity and its multiple values. Behavioral and psychological outcomes of identity conflict involve seeking peer support, doing reflective practices and identity growth. This article contributes to identity literature by providing a multilevel approach of identity conflict dynamics able to account for both interpersonal and intrapsychic processes, deeply hold values and emotions, as well as crucial behavioral and psychological consequences. (shrink)

In this article I explore some ancient issues of political theory in the light of some contemporary social and cultural issues. After developing a check list of the virtues and vulnerabilities of constitutional democracy (Section I), I go on to discuss some types and symptoms of difference, conflict, fragmentation and heterogeneity (Section II). I then proceed to a critical review of a particular set of strategies and institutional solutions—political group rights—that are often thought promising devices for strengthening the virtues (...) and overcoming the vulnerabilities of the constitutional democratic form of regime (Section III). Much of the contemporary philosophical and political discussion of these issues is enchanted by the post‐modern spirit of “multiculturalism,”“diversity” and “identity.” It tends to neglect issues of citizenship and social justice. It also tends to fixate on North American examples, neglecting some of the less benign West European and, in particular, Central East European varieties of identity politics. The discussion here, while mostly raising questions rather than claiming to provide definitive answers, nevertheless tries to overcome some of these biases. (shrink)

How are group-based identities related to intergroup conflict? When and how do ethnic, religious, and national identities lead to oppression, violence, rebellion, war, mass-murder, and genocide? How do intergroup conflicts change people's identities? How might social identity be harnessed in the service of reducing conflict between groups? The chapters in this book present a sophisticated and detailed interdisciplinary analysis of the most topical and fundamental issues involved in understanding identity and conflict.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

This paper considers the issue of fear in the field of international relations studies. Fear is a typical condition of international relations because of the anarchical nature of the international political system characterized by a common threat perception among states. Since the very beginning of international political thought the notion of fear has been given great consideration due to its correlation with conflict which is the main object of international relations. The paper argues that in order to better understand (...) what fear and perception in international relations is about is necessary to undertake the notion of political identity. In that sense we propose a would be political identity account of state that might share light on the perception of fear. We claim that the perception of fear depends on the type of identity of a given state. Hence we discuss three type of state political identity: weak-tribal, medium-ideological, strong-pluralistic. (shrink)

Everyday identity change is common after conflict, as people attempt to move away from oppositional group relations and closed group boundaries. This article asks how it scales up and out to impact these group relations and boundaries, and what stops this? Theoretically, the article focusses on complex oppositional configurations of groupness, where relationality and feedback mechanisms (rather than more easily measured variables) are crucial to change and continuity, and in which moral authority is a key node of reproduction. (...) It uses the normatively weighted concept of transformation to augment existing research on boundary and identity change, while elaborating it to recognise the role of everyday agency in furthering change and moral inertia in impeding it. Substantively, the article compares the processes of everyday transformation of groupness in three cases that are very similar in historical depth, social embeddedness, symbolic opposition and everyday change, but very different in time-scale and with contrasting outcomes: successful transformation of reformation religious groupness; partial transformation of national groupness; and failed transformation of complexly-configured ethnic groupness in Northern Ireland. This allows tracing of the patterns and mechanisms at work. To anticipate, the article argues that everyday identity change can erode the moral authority of groupness. Its impact is generational and dependent on institutional linkages. The article highlights the importance of moral mechanisms as drivers of and obstacles to change; and it suggests ways that the obstacles could be overcome by radical policy interventions. (shrink)

The present research used archaeological data, i.e., the data obtained from kamekan jar burials in the Mikuni Hills of the northern Kyushu area in the Mid- dle Yayoi period, to test the parochial altruism model. This model argued that out-group hate and in-group favor coevolved via prehistoric intergroup conflicts. If this model is accurate, such an out-group hate and in-group favor could be re- flected in the archaeological remains, such as pottery making; the more frequent intergroup conflicts are and the (...) more each group is opposed, the more independent and coherent each group will be and more evident cultural identity could be estab- lished within each group. We employed an elliptic Fourier analysis for the shapes of kamekan jar burials. We examined whether frequent intergroup conflicts in the period influenced kamekan jar pottery between subareas of the Mikuni Hills. The results suggested that the shapes of kamekan jar burials after the KIIIa type are slightly different between subareas, which is partially consistent with the model. However, the results do not support the model directly. (shrink)

Conflict of interest has been a leading issue in the Canadian legal profession over the last three decades, and it shows no sign of abating. No other issue has so consistently and dramatically dominated both the practice of law and its regulation in Canada. This article describes the conceptual and political battles that have been fought over conflicts of interest in Canada during this time. These battles reveal deeper ontological divisions about the practice of law in Canada. The clash (...) over conflicts of interest exposes competing conceptions of what it means to be a lawyer in Canada in the twenty-first century and how the legal profession should be governed. The conflicts of interest debate increasingly centres on the duty of loyalty owed by lawyers to their clients. (shrink)

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

We argue that how players perceive the attack-defense game might matter far more than its actual underlying structure in determining the outcomes of intergroup conflict. Leaders can use various tactics to dynamically modify these perceptions, from collective victimization to the distortion of the perceived payoffs, with some followers being more receptive than others to such leadership tactics.

Landscapes are public environments in which different communities and individuals dwell and which matter to them in ways which are not always consistent. As such they are open to strong conflicts about what the future of landscapes ought to be and who has an entitlement to involvement in a decision about that future. How should such conflicts be resolved? One influential approach is that embodied in the practice of cost-benefit analysis: the strength of preferences for different landscapes is measured by (...) individuals' willingness to pay and the potential Pareto improvement efficiency criterion is employed as a rule of choice. This paper contends that this approach is flawed. It examines an economic valuation study of landscapes in the Yorkshire Dales. Drawing on interviews with farmers in the Dales and on in-depth discussion groups with respondents to other economic valuation studies, it argues that landscape conflicts involve issues of identity that cannot be captured in terms of preference satisfaction and conflicts of perceived rights which could not in principle be resolved by cost-benefit analysis. (shrink)

A sketch of a way of characterizing multidimensional value commitments and the way they can come into conflict derived from my book Hard Choices is presented and applied to the question of how to characterize the relevance of identity to value commitments and conflict. The views of A.K. Sen and A. Bilgrami are examined in the light of these ideas.

A sketch of a way of characterizing multidimensional value commitments and the way they can come into conflict derived from my book Hard Choices is presented and applied to the question of how to characterize the relevance of identity to value commitments and conflict. The views of A.K. Sen and A. Bilgrami are examined in the light of these ideas.

This paper develops the thesis that personal identity is neither to be taken in terms of an unchanging self-sufficient ‘substance’ nor in terms of selfhood ‘without substance,’ i.e. as fluctuating processes of pure relationality and subject-less activity. Instead, identity is taken as self-transformation that is bound to particular embodied individuals and surpasses them as individuated entities. The paper is structured in three parts. Part I describes the experiential givenness of conflicts that support our sense of self-transformation. While the (...) first part develops an inter-subjective topography of emotional movements, the second part pays attention to their temporal dimension. We work with conflicts and get transformed by them also in the way we remember them. Part II focuses on the process of self-understanding that accompanies conflicts and their metamorphosis in memory. Part III compares and discusses different models of a ‘relational ontology’ of the person, which question the idea that we are defined only by how we define ourselves—just as they question the idea that one’s identity is independent of how one relates to one’s having changed. (shrink)

This short essay analyzes the deception and self-deception in talk of ‘the clash of civilizations’ and proceeds to diagnose what is wrong in the standard understanding of Islam in the Western media today by looking to the abiding history of colonial relations with Islam down to this day and also looking to the relation between ideals of democracy and the formation of religious identities. The essay closes with some remarks about the nature of identity and the importance to one's (...) own agency of the distinction between the first and the third person point of view in Muslim self-understanding. (shrink)

The force of globalization has greatly challenged people’s conceptualization of national identity. The traditional definition of national identity as being distinct, stable and generated by such internal factors as ethnic, religion, citizenship and so on, has been replaced by the understanding that national identity is invested with more dynamic and complex features and is actually constructed differently in different situations. By following Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive perspective in critical discourse analysis and drawing on the 47 news reports collected (...) on the websites of People’s Daily Online and Xinhuanet, this study explores how China’s national identities are negotiated in its news reports of the Sino-US trade war. It is found that China’s news reports have constructed three types of Sino-US relations, namely, antagonistic, negotiatory and cooperative relations. Out of these relations, China has been constructed as victim of the trade war, defender of free trade, driver for negotiations and beneficiary of mutual cooperation. The construction of these identities and relations is realized through constructive, destructive, justification and transformation strategies. It is further found that the diversity of both China’s national identities and Sino-US relations in China’s news reports is the result of the political, social and economic differences between the two countries. (shrink)

This paper presents an attempt to analyse the growth of conflict in the context of globalization processes of the XXI century, in particular the clash of cultural and social identities. The development of digital technologies has provoked an increased array of information flows, which bring disorienting sentiments to society. This resulted in the spread of such social phenomena as “echo chamber” and gaslighting. Conflict of identities is a response to the collapse of a unified society. Purpose and objectives (...) of the paper. The objective is to conduct a socio-philosophical analysis of identity as a conflict-causing phenomenon in the globalized digital age, based on the achievements of modern science and philosophy. Methodology of Research. The main research methods are structural-functional, philosophico-cultural and philosophico-anthropological. The principle “from abstract to concrete” and the principle of systemicity were applied to solve specific research tasks. Research results. On the one hand, modern globalization processes allow the interaction of previously distant or even mutually exclusive cultures, patterns of behaviour, or identities. On the other hand, there is a clash of previously separated and relatively closed cultural, civilizational groups, which becomes a catalyst in forming a completely new (or hybrid) identity and advocating existing identification values, where the alternative reality is perceived as a threat of losing the uniqueness or value of the heritage of generations. As a result, there is a conflict of identities at both the individual and social levels. Conclusion.The globalization processes of the XXI century are penetrating more and more actively into all spheres of social life: there is a clash of cultural and social identities, which provokes increasing conflict levels and grouping to preserve uniqueness in response to global trends, the establishment of new social norms and expansion of human rights. The world is in a state of formation, constant change, and the understanding of the described trends features and their mechanisms reveals their contradictory phenomena “echo chamber”, gaslighting etc. “Otherness” has become an integral feature of today and in our opinion, the search for practices of mutual understanding is becoming another cultural challenge. (shrink)

By exploring the role of student identities in shaping attitudes to learning, this study asks how design students draw on experience to work across theory and practice. It explores how a specific group of design undergraduate students in a UK university perform on two distinct learning experiences on their course: work placement and dissertation. In particular, it considers the context for learning: the value placed on practice and scholarship; the role of social identity; links between art and design education. (...) Using Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’ the discussion considers the role of experience and motivation in learning in design education, and questions how useful historical divisions drawn between theory and practice are to student learning in design education. By questioning the value of internal disciplinary conflicts to student learning, it asks how we distinguish between vital pedagogic processes and divisive practices in higher education. (shrink)

A characteristic feature of modern society is religious pluralism, which is an important factor in the competition between subjects of religious relations, the growth of their influence on each other. Ukrainian society has never been monoconfessional, and therefore contradictions or even conflicts between denominational communities have always existed in its territory. First of all, contradictions arose on the basis of the problems of coexistence of carriers of different confessional identities in society. In this context, the role of inter-confessional conflicts in (...) the processes of the formation and preservation of their own confessional identity was acquired and become acute. However, it should be noted that there is a possibility of the reciprocal influence of confessional identity on aggravation of confrontations in interfaith relations. (shrink)

This is a study of how ambiguous identities are interactionally managed in network marketing discourse. Network marketing, as an enterprise `using' friendship to promote products, has been notorious for its exploitative use of interpersonal meaning. In this study, the interactions between supervisors and subordinates in network marketing firms have been studied and their relationship was found to be ambiguous and conflicting. On the one hand, they are `friends' because of the strong emphasis on rapport and harmony in the philosophy of (...) network marketing; on the other hand, the supervisors have to regulate their downlines, which unfortunately lacks the legitimacy found in traditional business firms, as neither of them is an employee of their company. These ambiguous and conflicting identities motivate the participants to mobilize pertinent identities so as to manage conflicts, justify themselves and resume control. Previous research has shown that identities are both interactionally and retrospectively constructed. This study adds to our understanding that identities are not only products of interactions but that they are also interactional resources, which can be mobilized by participants to achieve their goals, although the identity mobilization does not always result in harmony owing to the inherent incompatiblity of the identities invoked. Implications for identity formation in contemporary firms are also drawn. (shrink)

This article investigates how national histories marred by racial conflict can be translated into narratives of group identity formation. I study the role of “identity-driven” museums in converting American’s racial past into a metanarrative of black identity from subjugation to citizenship. Drawing on a thick description of exhibitions at 15 museums, interviews with curators and directors, museum documents, and newspaper articles, I use the “political economy of memory” as a framework to explain how ideological and material (...) processes intersect in the production of exhibitions. I show that in addition to struggles over the truth and interpretive styles, more prosaic issues of funding, attendance, and institutional capacity-building hve an impact on representational selectivities. I explain how these issues affect black museums operating during the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. I consider the motivations and consequences of “remembering” national histories of violence and intolerance through the prism of group identity formation. (shrink)

Volume 17, Issue 4, September 2020, Page 470-473.