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Promoting conflict or peace through identity

Since the end of the Cold War, many violent conflicts have been justified with identity-based arguments. Old theories about political and economic roots of war have been seriously challenged by religious, cultural and ethnic arguments, which claim to offer a better understanding of the nature of these conflicts as rooted in a fear of losing one’s identity in a globalizing world. The UN concept of a culture of peace and non-violence seems to be a recognition of this challenge and of the necessity to find new strategies for the promotion of peace. From this point of view, it will be very important to pay attention to the study of identity constructions and their role in conflict, peace and processes of regional integration. Slocum-Bradley’s anthology Promoting conflict or peace through identity is a well elaborated and sophisticated introduction to this topic. In her theoretical introduction, she presents the question of identity as a peace problem, noting that the book intends to study how the construction of identities can be included in a process of promoting peace and mutual understanding, i.e. ‘What kind of identities enable peace-promoting acts? facilitate conflict-promoting acts? and why?’ (12). Eight case studies about identity construction in different contexts aim to answer these questions. Dubois describes the origin and history of Belgian identity. Belgium has been a nation state since 1830. However, its borders were defined earlier by the Romans while Philip the Good of Burgundy proposed the idea of a unity of the Belgian provinces and Charles V extended this idea to all 17 low countries. After 1830 two types of nation building started: Belgium as a nation and Flanders as a (sub-) nation, which strived to defend the Flemish language threatened by the Frenchspeaking elite. The result was a political federalization of the country along linguistic borders, which did not, however, destroy the Belgian state, nor produce violent conflicts or war. Aluba reports on a study of identity construction and citizen conflicts in Central Nigeria, a country consisting of groups defined by ethnic identity (indigenous vs. settlers), religious identity (Christians, Muslims, animists) and a politically-based identity (majority/minority). The study concludes that where access to resources, opportunities or the rights of individuals depend on the groups to which they belong, identity often leads to conflict and violence, and that it is mainly the use of identities, not identity itself, which leads to conflict. Using the construction of spatial knowledge and contested narratives, Newman considers the formation of national identity in Israel and Palestine. He questions whether the Israeli identity is changing since the younger generation tends to have a post-Zionist perspective on the state, while, at the same time, the growing influence of a Neo-Zionist identity strives for a continuing occupation and widening Journal of Peace Education Vol. 9, No. 1, April 2012, 103–110