Program Directors:
Karina Korostelina
Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Daniel Rothbart
Director of the Sudan Task Group
Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Mission:
Why does mass violence occur? This program is a hub for researchers, theorists and practitioners seeking to examine the outbreak of mass violence and how such violence can be prevented. We seek to understand, explain and intervene in conflicts involving mass violence, from the perspective of the politics of identity: religious, ethnic, nationalistic and racial.
Project #1: Memory, History and History Education
With this project we are engaged in research, education, and practice concerning production and reproduction of history and memory in conflicts and post-violent societies. History education plays a significant role in fostering loyalty to those in power, supporting the legitimacy of ruling parties and their specific ethno-political as well as economical order, and articulating their worldviews and positions. Contested history narratives transmit to new generations established conceptions of power and society, as well as official knowledge about the past and present of a society. The project also fosters reconciliation of broken relationships in the aftermath of conflict, towards the goal of building a stable and peaceful future. The program includes a lecture series, conferences, seminars, and other related events. The lecture series features speakers from GMU, the Washington area, the broader US, and other countries. This program includes two tracks: (1) The tract on History Education, which examines the primary mechanisms, stakeholders, and media through which history education is created and disseminated in society and to identify possible models for conflict resolution, democracy building, and restoration of justice; (2) The tract on the Politicization of History, which analyzes how narratives of history and memory are charged with political meanings as they are deployed as instruments of power by government agencies, political parties and civil-society organizations. The processes for politicizing history are understood broadly to include memorials, museums, and archeological sites, popular culture, internet, and mass media.
Project #2: Power, Humiliation and Conflict in the United States
Participants of this project examine a wide range of current social and political systems that strategically deploy humiliation as a means of controlling a segment of the population. More than simply the small hurt from a public insult, systematic humiliation penetrates one’s sense of self by degrading, devaluing, and diminishing one’s “soul.” More than the momentary physical and emotion pain from a slap in the face, systematic humiliation targets one’s core sense of being. The source of this power is not localized to the work of one or a few individuals; it comes from structurally violent systems which impact negatively the sense of identity and difference for a large segment of the population. Humiliation-power is embedded seamlessly in social or political systems and released in efficient operations of bureaucrats, routine decisions of a political agency, or normal interactions with marginalized people in a “civilized” society. Such power is released when agents implement “normal” rules, “reasonable” decisions, “essential” directives, and “common sense” policies. No one person is solely responsible, so culpability cannot be localized to a single person. In fact, the intentions of the system’s operators, agents, or leaders may not be consciously malicious. The product will (1) an authored book and (2) a volume of essays showcasing the findings of social science academics, scholar-practitioners and civil rights activities.
Project #3: Human Rights and Identity Conflicts
This program focuses on dilemmas arising from these two contrasting perspectives that are taken by scholar-practitioners, activities, civil society leaders and political officials working towards peace in post-violent societies. Many nations recovering from the effects of mass violence engage in a collective “soul-searching” as they are engaged in challenges of transitional justice. These challenges of transitional justice reveal the complex interaction of the human rights and social identity perspectives. The HR perspective centers on the normative objective principle of the inherent worth of all people, that “all members of the human family are born with dignity, equality and inalienable rights” (Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The HR perspective motivates the work of international organizations, truth commissions, international humanitarian NGOs, human rights activists and many civil society leaders seeking to redress human rights abuses. The social identity [SI] perspective centers on the strong correlation between ingroup identity and notions of outgroup difference, differentiation and rank-ordering of segments of the population. This juxtaposition of perspectives underpins the work of post-violent truth commissions, courts and public hearings that are deployed to promote transitional justice, international NGOs engaged in bringing such perpetrators to justice, and organizations offering humanitarian relief.
Project #4: Early Warning Systems
The recent surge of violence in the Middle East, Europe and Africa reinforces the critical need for a system to warn those regional and governmental authorities who are responsible for national security of the potential outbreak of hostilities. Yet only three early warning systems have been developed to date. One such system focuses on minorities at risk, another centers on the ethnic dynamics between conflict parties and a third system addresses warfare for any kind of conflict without due attention to the most common category of violent conflict. These systems have limited utility for those conflicts grounded deeply in the identity affiliations of the protagonist groups, that is, their religious, nationalistic, ethnic or racial group. Over the past 25 years, such conflicts have accounted for approximately 90% of the occurrences of mass violence. Developing and deploying an early warning system to identify such conflicts is vital to the security needs of many nations globally.
This research program draws upon extensive analysis of the causes and consequences of identity-based conflicts conducted by the members of the program team. We will conduct twelve case studies of identity-based conflicts, as well as 40 semi-structural interviews with experts in the field, to define the most important factors contributing to the dynamics of such conflict. This study will take 14 months, from July 1, 2016 to August 31, 2017. From this database we will develop a system of early warning to serve as an instrument to predict and prevent future incidents of identity-based violence. Such a system will be hosted by George Mason University. We anticipate that both the database and the early warning system will be used by the State Department, Department of the Defense, the World Bank, social scientists and other stakeholders. To increase sustainability of the program we plan to charge a user fee to generating revenue and offset the costs of maintenance.
Project # 5. Identity-based reconciliation
The aim of the program is to create a foundation for the Reconciliation Knowledge Management Database (RKMD) that can be later expanded with new sources of funding. We see reconciliation as a restoration of relationships in the aftermath of conflict to build a stable and peaceful future where respect and security prevail. This process has four important components–the motives, actors, mechanisms, and nature–and is shaped by several factors: history, identity, power and leadership, institutions, domestic and international context. It involves the development of friendship, trust, empathy, mutual understanding, common and cross-cutting identities, and magnanimity. This program is based on a set of case studies that permits consideration of reconciliation in diverse settings: as an infant process, an ongoing engagement, and as a mature concept. We plan to conduct a comparative analysis across multiple cases to verify and further develop this model and provide descriptions of variability and commonality in reconciliation processes. The cases enables us to look at both the domestic and international determinants of reconciliation, and compare the relative importance of major factors that shape reconciliation: history, identity, gender, power and leadership, institutions, and international context. The data will be open to the public and freely available for the purposes of scholarly research and publication. The program team will conduct research, organize workshops and a final conference, and publicize results through publishing and presentations. The program will also involve the development and dissemination of teaching modules based on this database to be used by instructors across the humanities and social sciences.
