Abstract
Peacebuilding in Deeply Divided Societies: Toward Social Cohesion? begins with an account of the scope and depth of the current, global “wave” of religious and ethnic violence. Cox and Sisk show how conflicts that begin over other issues – such as in Syria, with demands for regime change related to the Arab Spring – can evolve quickly into sectarian conflicts. They assess the increasing interest among donors in the social cohesion concept as a leitmotif of peacebuilding in deeply divided societies, and, in particular, analyze the dilemmas peacebuilders face in countries that experience religious and ethnic violence. In the introduction, Cox and Sisk critique earlier work on deeply divided societies in the twentieth century, which suggests providing security guarantees to ethnic groups and structuring the state in a group-based or consociational power-sharing framework contains identity-based conflict. They find that such approaches do not adequately address the underlying drivers of conflict, rooted in pervasive societal fears, as they rely on elites to prevent conflict along identity lines.
The editors are grateful to Elizabeth Hester for her invaluable research assistance on the social psychology dimensions of fear in deeply divided societies.
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Notes
- 1.
Pew Research Center, Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High, January 14, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/.
- 2.
Social cohesion – a critical concept for this book – is defined more fully in Chapter 2.
- 3.
For an evaluation of the peacebuilding term in its various dimensions, see Vincent Chetail, ed., Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: A Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- 4.
- 5.
Much of the scholarly debate has begun to describe approaches and outcomes in conflict-affected countries in terms of hybridity: a mélange of institutions that includes the formal state along with informal organizations, networks, and institutions. See, for instance, MacGinty (2010).
- 6.
See, e.g., International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (2011).
- 7.
Please see Chapter 2 for a more full articulation of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of social cohesion that inform our definition.
- 8.
- 9.
On elite accommodation as the basis of the consociational formula, through the so-called self-negating prediction in which elites are compelled to compromise to avoid violence, see du Toit (1989).
- 10.
For a review of literature that expands categorization of prejudice beyond a general attitude, see, Mackie and Smith (2002).
- 11.
See Omer et al. (2015).
- 12.
Case selection for this volume involved an initial set of possible cases chosen for variation across three dimensions: extent of expected identity-based cleavages within society, regional variation, and variation in the approaches of international and local peacebuilders. The initial selection was reviewed and amended by the participation of an international advisory group of scholars and practitioners who convened for a three-day conference in 2012 to evaluate the conceptual approach, comparative research methodology and case selection, and the country-level assessment framework that appears at the end of Chapter 2.
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Cox, F.D., Sisk, T.D., Hester, E. (2017). Introduction. In: Cox, F., Sisk, T. (eds) Peacebuilding in Deeply Divided Societies . Rethinking Political Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50715-6_1
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