Analyzing Conflict:
Identity, Power & Rational Choice

"We have three different perspectives today to reflect on," says our professor. The first two were developed by the researchers who wrote this week's readings: Henri Tajfel and John Turner's social identity theory and Ralf Dahrendorf's social (or class) conflict theory. We're also looking at a set of ideas known as rational choice theory, described in the literature by John Scott.

Speaking generally about theories, the professor reminds us that each of these perspectives is incomplete. They're able to detect specific dynamics that lead to conflict onset, but they're best used as one tool in the toolbox rather than as a be-all-end-all approach.

Each of the theories discussed today incorporates the perspectives of the people who developed them. They all collect or analyze data differently. They all have a unique viewpoint, or even a bias – but bias isn't always negative. It just means they look at things in a certain way and ask particular questions. This means each theory has its own particular blind spot. Which is why we supplement it with other ones. We study them in order to get a feel for what they can or cannot do, and so that we can use them more effectively in our own research or in the field.

We go through each one by one.

In the article we're assigned, Henri Tajfel and John Turner call theory "integrative theory of intergroup conflict," but they eventually incorporated their insights under the broader umbrella of their more well-known social identity theory (SIT). Much of their pioneering work was done in the late 1970's and early 1980's, so they were relatively ahead of their time. They asked questions of how social identity impacts group decisions (like group conflicts) long before violence in Rwanda or Bosnia dragged ethnic conflict into the public eye.

Identity and group psychology wasn't a major focus in the study of conflict at that point. Military and strategic scholars focused more on game theory (more on that below), incentives, deterrents and great power politics. Johan Galtung, the focus of last week's lecture, had already started laying the foundations of peace and conflict studies but it wouldn't be until the 90's that the field recognized identity as a major factor. He did, however, make a plea for transdisciplinarity, which he understands as an approach that uses all sorts of disciplines, each with their own way of thinking about or measuring behaviour, to analyze conflicts in hopes of finding ways to build sustainable peace.

For Tajfel and Turner, their preferred unit of measurement was intergroup behaviour. For them, groups form the base unit of society, and they placed a huge emphasis on the human need for group identity and a sense of belonging. Groups were significant for them because everybody belongs to several. We're not just talking about class structures (which was the main thing Karl Marx, one of the major influences on any kind of conflict studies, was concerned with) but also groups defined by religion, language, political affiliation, race and more.

Meaning that the conflicts Tajfel and Turner likely found interesting were the ones motivated by group membership or identity. Ethnic cleansing? Group identity. Identity politics? Group identity. Mass protests? Group identity. Individual behaviour as a unit of measurement was less important to them so they didn't study lone shooters, heroic figures or sociopaths. What was more relevant to them were the group dynamics that promote shootings (extremist movements) or how historical heroes are used to incite people to violence (ethnic nationalism) or whether or not a sociopath will be defended by his clan (group networks).

"Think for a moment," our professor asks. "What groups do you identify with?" Or to take the question a step further: what groups do you feel loyal to? If you were to fight or defend something along with others, which group identity might fuel your behaviour? Tajfel and Turner say that group conflict emerges when group loyalty is activated, often in the context of oppression, comparison or competition with other groups. When was the last time you felt group loyalties override your usual interests?

There are a couple factors that are thought can impact when and how our group interests start to supercede our individual ones.

One that Tajfel and Turner discuss is positive social identity. Once an individual meets their basic need for belonging, they might want to make sure their group identity doesn't negatively affect their self esteem. This is an internal factor – your group might be perceived negatively by other groups (immigrants, anarchists, evangelicals, Roma, intelligentsia), but so long as the group sees itself positively then this need is met.

People often try to leave their groups when their social identity is negative, the hypothesis goes. This is usually a sign that a group has no positive self-image of itself, or that its members identify with some other group marker (playing down one's race in favour of nationality, for example, or minimizing religion while emphasizing level of education). This can happen if the group is oppressed or downtrodden, which can lead to external negative opinion becoming internalized. It can also happen when someone feels threatened because of their group membership.

Whether or not you have a positive or negative social identity is important because a negative identity can lead to an inferiority complex, and if you see your group as inferior then you might try to escape it instead of empowering it. When a group has a positive group identity but sees itself as oppressed, that identity could become the basis for group action that tries to change the power structure oppressing it – sometimes through violence.

Intergroup conflict doesn't have to be violent, though. You see different groups promoting their interests (sometimes aggressively) against those of other groups in the media, through protests or on social networks. You get different ingroups criticising outgroups that have a different immigration status, political loyalty, religious beliefs or interpretation of history.

Another factor that can increase the likelihood of intergroup violence is social mobility. What's meant here is the ability to go from one group to another. One hypothesis is that if you're a member of an oppressed group, but have the option to switch to a different group, then it's far easier to pick up your family and leave than to challenge the oppression. Interpersonal factors (connected to individual needs and perspectives) might become more important than intergroup factors like structural oppression, discrimination or collective threat. If you have low social mobility, you might be more willing to fight for your group's status because you can't escape. Having a positive group identity while being oppressed is thought to make resistance more likely. In some cases, this resistance can become violent.

A key ingredient for creating resistance, Tajfel and Turner add, is that the group perceives themselves as in conflict or competition with other groups. An oppressed group that's internalized their negative social identity might have a legitimate grievance, but they've accepted their inferior status and so don't see themselves as entitled to rights when compared with groups presented as superior. There's less motivation to resist, as with learned helplessness. Paolo Friere describes this in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, using the term conscientization to describe the process by which a group becomes aware of their grievances (and more willing to promote their interests). Once a group has been conscientized, they're more likely to start making noise.

They noted another interesting factor: perceived competition. Marginalized groups are more likely to resist privileged groups if they see themselves as competing with them. Not all groups compare themselves to other groups. If you take a colonial context like the British Raj in South Asia, the differences between the British colonizers and the locals were so vast that differences in power were easy to justify. But when the groups are relatively similar (Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, Croats and Serbs in the former Yugoslavia), it's thought that feelings of competition and grievances are more likely to surface, with groups potentially challenging blatant inequalities.

Their three conditions for seeing your group as differentiated (treated different enough to create resistance) are as follows:

This framework identifies different dynamics to look for when analyzing conflict. Ideally, they can be part of an early warning system where you can look at existing group dynamics and realize there's a risk of conflict. Then you can intervene to find nonviolent ways of helping different groups meet their needs.

But this can be difficult because people cycle through different identities all the time. A person can be female, conservative, hispanic, Catholic, English-speaking or Canadian, and activating any of these identities may make her join up with certain people to resist a specific outgroup. She doesn't have to think of the outgroup as a threat – she just might suddenly start thinking of them as fundamentally different from her. And an identity that's "activated" one year might be superceded by another identity conflict the next year.

The process of emphasizing one identity over another is called coalescing, and different positive social identities coalesce for different reasons. If another country starts threatening you, your national identity could coalesce. If a scary political party becomes powerful, your political-orientation identity coalesces. If legislation is passed that regulates what languages are spoken and where, your linguistic identity rises to the top. One major coalescing factor is the presence of threat, and another could be the sense that a) you are being oppressed and b) you can change that.

Our professor arranged this course to look in particular at conflicts that emerge from structural oppression (as compared to emerging or felt threats), and so we discuss the ways oppressed groups can shift how their identity is perceived so that things flip from negative to positive. Being a rebel, or downtrodden, can become cool when looked at from the right angle. Given enough confidence or resources, group members can confront those in power or try to delegitimize their power, identity, status or hold on the culture. If it goes far enough, they can try to take power through a revolution or a coup and restructure the social balance.

For our professor, the focus on ethnic identity in Tajfel and Turner's work doesn't go far enough – you can look at your neighbourhood as an identity, or your taste in culture. These can prove just as relevant in cases of structural violence, but they're harder to see.

Interest in identity-based conflict theories exploded after genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, and continue to prove relevant when dealing with cases of terrorist cells or political polarization. According to Tajfel and Turner, they ask us to look at a conflict and ask: what are the group identities involved? How do they provide their members with a sense of belonging? What might people do for the sake of that belonging?

The second theory we look at is Ralf Dahrendorf's social conflict theory, which sees conflict not through the lens of group identities, but of power structures. If Tajfel and Turner were informed by group psychology, Dahrendorf was more influenced by thinkers like Marx (with whom he had disagreements). Marx held that conflicts revolved around the means of production, but Dahrendorf instead saw class and group formation in terms of shared interests and dynamics like authority and subordination. In his thought, you can find explanations for various conflicts by paying attention to who gives commands and, importantly, can punish various actors for not doing as they're told.

For him, conflict stems from three sources: individual psychological factors (e.g. lone shooters), historical events (Africans being brought to America as slaves) or by the structural arrangements built into a society. He thought that studying the third type was the most useful, and the dominant structural arrangement he found relevant was the unequal distribution of power.

This means looking at legal structures, governance, norms and rules to find sources of conflict. Who has power and who doesn't? Do people feel disenfranchised? Who has the ability to use force? Who is justified when they use force? Do people feel empowered to make positive social changes in their lives, or do they feel trapped by the system?

The focus on structure rather than individual bosses, oppressors or tyrants is important for him – if you try to change a massive corporation from the inside, it's the structure you run up against more than any one person. Rules and bureaucracy often maintain a status quo that benefits some more than others. This can also apply to the different mechanisms that a state uses to maintain a particular legal order, or the social norms that keep gender relations in check.

This way of looking at power, as a source of conflict and oppression, is very different from, say, the opinion of philosopher Thomas Hobbes. In his book Leviathan (mentioned elsewhere in lectures on just war and archaic societies), he made the argument that oppressive power is what keeps us from tearing each other apart. For Dahrendorf, power just gives us a reason to rebel.

His model for how oppressed groups form coalitions to make change through social conflict goes like this:

There are different factors he says influences this process:

According to Dahrendorf, when analyzing a conflict you suspect is influenced by power structures, you can look at the way the military is organized, how governments present themselves as legitimate (or delegitimize other groups), the ways power structures make people feel helpless or enraged and whether or not people can escape through social mobility.

You wouldn't be able to analyze primarily cultural or ideological conflicts with this kind of lens, but it does help when thinking about how power can intensify these and other kinds of conflicts.

Rational choice theory originally emerged in economics and, as compared to the previous two theories, it frames social behaviour in terms of individuals. Group actions aren't analyzed as a separate category so much as seen as the sum of individual choices.

The main questions here are: what do individuals have to gain from a given action? How does this behaviour serve to further their interests? How does conflict emerge from individual needs and the strategies people use to meet them? What is the hidden logic behind behaviours that don't make sense to us?

This issue of hidden logic is important here, because rational in this context doesn't mean not irrational so much as following one's inner logic. It's conceivable that someone's rational choice might seem irrational to you, but that's because we just don't know what informed their decision-making process. The theory assumes that no one ever makes a choice without thinking (or feeling, as this process can happen unconsciously) it benefits them. Of course they can have bad information, or influenced by bad habits, but the feeling that they're benefited by this behaviour is there.

Rational choice theory prompts us to understand conflict as a consequence of numerous choices generated from peoples' inner logic, a logic driven not by group needs but by the self. If a person conforms themself to a social code, a religion or an ideology that incentivizes group action, it's still done with the aim of meeting one's own individual needs.

This theory has been criticized for reducing all choices to selfishness or self-interested calculation, but it's good here to separate selfishness from the pursuit of interests. Your interests can include protecting or helping other people – a parent can sacrifice their life for their kid and still be acting according to their interests. All that's meant here is that all decisions come down to a cost-benefit analysis where we weigh (consciously or otherwise) the pros against the cons.

Accordingly, if someone makes a choice to publically criticize another group, or pick up a gun against the state, they can be understood as having made a choice based on supposed benefits to their interests. It's important to point out that choices aren't always freely or joyfully made: someone may be coerced into becoming a soldier, or they may pick up a gun in response to poverty, or their families could be held hostage. A coerced choice is still coercion. But it's also still a choice.

So if you're wanting to manage (or prevent) a conflict using this framework, your tools are going to be deterrents and rewards. If you want someone to go along with you, you're going to need to convince them it's in their best interest to do so. You can make an ideological case for a ceasefire, but unless you understand what the different parties actually need, and how they benefit from the fighting, then any solutions you propose are unlikely to be relevant.

This is an approach that's used at high levels, like at UN negotiation tables, where the threat of sanctions can carry more weight than an appeal to international law or human rights. Deals can be sweetened by promises of increased trade, political representation or some other factor. For a rational choice theorist, you have to learn to make offers that make ending a conflict more attractive than continuing it. Appealing to ideals (unless they have reason to hold to them) isn't necessarily going get you far. Rational theory doesn't make room for strictly moral judgements.

"This sounds crass, but it's not," our proessor says. If you spend time thinking of all the choices you make in a day, and if you try to get some objective distance, how many choices did you make that you didn't think would benefit you in some way?

This kind of framework has proved relevant in a lot of fields. In politics it's used by realists, or with social contract theory. All the game theorists love it to bits, and it's used by economists and strategists. Psychologists use it, and sociologists can turn to it to understand personal motivations behind power and what people will do to get it. Or the choices they make to deal with threat.

It may not be useful when speaking conflicts rising from mental illness, or soldiers who are drugged before being deployed. Plus it doesn't explore the difference between apathetic, informed and uninformed decisions, or the ways that certain structures may limit the information people have at their disposal. All that matters for rational choice theory is that people work with what they got. It doesn't explore why certain choices are limited. But every theory has a blind spot.

Theories don't pretend to solve every last question. They don't work well when they try to answer everything. They take one facet of a complex conflict situation and try to make it understandable, or they point to certain nuances and mechanisms of what's happening and why. Social identity theory suggests individual actions give way to group decision-making when certain conditions are met. Social conflict theory maps how authority structures apply pressure or are overturned. Rational choice theory highlights individual cost-benefit equations.

When you let go of a single approach and instead cycle through different theories, you have more tools at your disposal to understand why something happens. Often our conversations in class turn to the racial protests prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement – if you look on social media, you'll find vastly different analyses of what's happening. Some voices emphasize the part they play in a broader culture war of interests. Others emphasize how histories of oppression caused a group identity to form that allowed for mass mobilization. Still others talk about how posting acts of protest on social media allows certain individuals to increase their social standing. Then there's how people on different sides of the conflict use their participation to prove their group belonging (to themselves or their group members).

The moral our professor keeps repeating is: don't get stuck in one theory or one approach. Otherwise you'll miss out on key parts of the picture.