Reversing the destructive discourses of dehumanization: A model for reframing narratives in protracted social conflict through identity affirmation

Groups often perpetuate conflict by developing and enforcing hostile, dehumanized, and objectified images of the “other” with whom they intentionally engage in conflict. The thesis of this article is that if the double hermeneutics of identity “framing processes” (Lewicki, Gray, & Elliot, 2003) drive the dehumanization of the excluded or enemy other, then these same processes can be a factor in the social reconstruction of another's humanity. Specifically, a model of identity affirmation is posited that can ideally challenge and change the dominant discourses and narratives that go into the in-group's social construction of a dehumanized out-group. As such, the process of identity affirmation is designed to be used to rehumanize a once ethnic, excluded, or even enemy “other.” This model was inspired by, and is applied to, a brief case study outlined in the essay involving the Onondaga Sheriff's Department headquartered in Syracuse, New York, and the Onondaga Indians who are part of the Iroquois Confederacy.