Conflict between identities

These past weeks, I have been addressing various groups from political scientists to peace advocates on the conflict or to say the least the tension between ethnic identities. The reaction from the academe has been very encouraging, because there is the perceived openness to seriously look at the root causes of recent ethnic assertiveness leading to the famous or infamous “Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain’ or MOA AD for short. There are various factors that lead individuals to rebellion according to their ethnic or sectarian identification. Some of these factors are related to power struggles between elites, external actors, state interventions, and socio-economic change. There are numerous case studies that evidence that many and different factors influence identity so as to generate identity tensions. In extreme cases individuals become ‘anomic’ and then seek security in absolutist and exclusivist identities, directed against a demonized 'other'. The rhetoric following the legal debacle of the MOA AD is an example of the usual emotional response to demonize the other in the tension between ethnic identities. (In many ways, the many responses to our blog, especially the heated ones are good examples of the emotional responses to demonize the ‘other’ identity different from the mainstream.) Identities play two roles. First, ‘conflicts of interests’ will tend to become intense and potentially violent, when the community generates situations where individuals with multiple fluid identities feel they have to chose one identity against another. Second, ‘identity conflicts’ that fuel antagonistic identity-communities with each side having developed conflicting identities and ideologies, when a society itself becomes a cause of conflicts of (ideologically perceived) interests, so that conflict is exacerbated or renewed. Thus we have 'ethnic conflicts' are 'identity conflicts' because they are confrontations between groups competing not just for material advantage, but also for the defense of the moral and religious values that define their identity. Further, they involve tensions for individuals who feel forced to choose one identity against another. Lastly, they involve conflicts within each ethnic identity community as to the 'true' meaning of the identity label (militants and moderates within the ethnic us, accusing each other of betraying the true us) The ending of such conflicts needs both measures that reassure each side that their material interests can be protected, and also measures that begin to facilitate the de-polarization and re-intertwining of identities. The core prescription is for government/global policies (and social changes) which contribute to the building of new communities (cultural or political, territorial or non-territorial) which can transcend or transform antagonistic ethnic communities. The various possibilities for conflict resolution are focusing on the building of a civic national identity based on existing state boundaries, the possibility of boundary change (secession etc), the development of larger transnational polities, and/ or virtual communities. The implication is that peace processes which focus on the institutionalization of fair power-sharing /resource sharing between ethnic communities, are flawed to the extent that they thereby institutionalize the conflicting and ideologically entrenched identities. Ethnic identification should be seen as the results of effort by underprivileged groups to improve their lot through collective mobilization or conversely the efforts of super ordinate groups to preserve the privileges by exploiting subjected groups. The challenge in cases of and multiple identities is peaceful coexistence. The outcome would depend largely on the intensity, potency, content and causal role of ethnic/sectarian/national identities within a country or a given place. One starting point is for the individuals to develop multiple identifications/loyalties to the various interactive communities that they inhabit. "Interactive communities" are networks of social interaction which extend beyond face to face communities, and which are the arenas within which individuals function in pursuit of their material, power, status, moral, ideological or other goals. These interactive communities might be at locality, regional, language group, religious group, state, or other levels. These identities are fluid and overlap, to the extent that the groups within which people interact are similarly fluid and are integrated with each other. It is the overlapping or intertwining of various identity communities, and the fact that individuals subscribe to various identity communities, which promotes social cohesion and inhibits ethnic confrontation.