| 1. |
- Bjarnegård, Elin, 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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Gender, peace and armed conflict
- 2015
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Ingår i: SIPRI Yearbook 2015. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780198737810 ; , s. 101-109
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 2. |
- Bjarnegård, Elin, 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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Honor and Political Violence : Micro-level findings from a Survey in Thailand
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Peace Research. - : SAGE Publications. - 0022-3433 .- 1460-3578. ; 54:6, s. 748-761
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Who participates in political violence? In this study, we investigate the issue at the micro-level, comparing individuals who have used violence in political uprising with those who have not. We develop our argument from the observation that men are strongly overrepresented in political violence, although most men do not participate. Literature on masculinities emphasizes the role of honor and its links to different forms of violence, such as domestic abuse, criminal violence, and violent attitudes. Building on this literature, we discern two separate but related aspects of honor: honor as male societal privilege and control over female sexuality, i.e., patriarchal values, and honor as ideals of masculine toughness, i.e., the perceived necessity for men to be fierce and respond to affronts with violence or threats of violence in order to preserve status. We argue that patriarchal values combined with ideals of masculine toughness together constitute honor ideology, which contributes in turn to the explanation of who participates in political violence. We present new and unique individual-level survey data on these issues, collected in Thailand. We find that honor ideology strongly and robustly predicts a higher likelihood of participating in political violence among male political activists. A number of previous studies find a macro-level relationship between gender equality and peacefulness in a society. This study provides evidence for one micro-level mechanism linking gender equality and political violence at the macro-level. Based on these results, we conclude that honor ideology endorsement is a driver of violence in political conflicts.
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| 3. |
- Bjarnegård, Elin, 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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Violent Boyhoods, Masculine Honor Ideology, and Political Violence : Survey Findings From Thailand
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Interpersonal Violence. - : Sage Publications. - 0886-2605 .- 1552-6518. ; 36:15-16, s. 7136-7160
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Throughout history, those who have participated in political violence have predominantly been male young adults. At the same time, we know that most young men will not use violence for political protest. So what distinguishes those who do from those who do not? In this article, we link psychological research on the intergenerational effects of violence in the family to violence in the political arena. We ask to what extent experiences of violence as a child are associated with participation in political violence as an adult. Our overarching argument is that family-of-origin violence may not only have serious negative, intergenerational effects on health and well-being but also on future spirals of violence for the individual. Family-of-origin violence may also lead to an increased risk of using violence for political purposes due to the diffusion of violence norms, whereby violence is seen as a just and appropriate response to conflict. We test this claim using micro-level data from the Survey on Gender, Politics, and Violence in Thailand, conducted in 2012-2013. For our analyses, we zoom in on men from a specific cluster sample of the survey: 200 political activist interviewees—100 Red Shirts and 100 Yellow Shirts. The results support our claim. We find that experiences of family violence as a child increase the risk of participating in political violence as an adult among male political activists in Thailand. Our study suggests one imperative policy implication: Violence prevention measures at the individual level—against corporal punishment of children or violence against women—may have critical implications also for decreasing the risk for and prevalence of political violence and armed conflict in society.
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| 4. |
- Brosché, Johan, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Nio punkter för global fred (Nine Points for Global Peace)
- 2015
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Annan publikation (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Insatserna för global fred måste stärkas skriver tolv företrädare för institutionen för freds- och konfliktforskning apropå att världens ledare samlas i dag i New York för att anta 17 nya globala mål för en bättre värld och mer hållbar utveckling.
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| 5. |
- Brounéus, Karen
(författare)
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Analyzing Reconciliation : A Structured Method for Measuring National Reconciliation Initiatives
- 2008
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Ingår i: Peace and Conflict. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 1078-1919 .- 1532-7949. ; 14:3, s. 291-313
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Reconciliation efforts have become an almost routine element of postconflict peacebuilding. From a scientific point of view, we need tools to enable systematic studies of reconciliation. In this article a structured method for studying national reconciliation initiatives is suggested, focusing on public statements and behaviors of those in power. The aim is to contribute to the development of systematic research in the field, by designing a structured method to measure if, when and what kind of reconciliation initiatives promote durable peace and if and when they instead might be an obstacle to peacebuilding. Two widely used sources in peace and conflict research were used for coding: the Regional Survey of the World (RSW) and the Africa Research Bulletin (ARB). The analytical framework, built on Galtung’s well-known conflict triangle and applied to Rwanda and Mozambique, proves to be useful for structuring the analysis of reconciliation at this level. In addition, three hypotheses on reconciliation are generated which would benefit from further research.
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| 6. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-
(författare)
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Healing or Retraumatizing? : Women Genocide Survivors and the Gacaca Courts in Rwanda
- 2006
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Konferensbidrag (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- In this paper I present unique material from in-depth interviews with 16 women in Rwanda who have made testimonies in the gacaca, the village tribunals initiated to enhance reconciliation after the 1994 genocide. The aim of the interviews was to learn more of how testifying in such a public event as the gacaca affects psychological health: do the women find this experience as healing or retraumatizing or are there other effects? This article contains the first results of a project on the gacaca, psychological health, and reconciliation in Rwanda where field work was carried out during February to May 2006.There has been an assumption that testifying in truth and reconciliation commissions will be a healing experience for survivors. Healing has been a central concept in the general reconciliation literature and in political rhetoric around truth commissions. However, the findings of this study are alarming. Traumatization, ill-health, isolation, and insecurity dominate the lives of the testifying women. They are threatened and harassed before, during, and after giving testimony in the gacaca. It is a picture of a reconciliation process we seldom see.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-
(författare)
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Reconciliation and Development
- 2009
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Ingår i: Building a Future on Peace and Justice. - Berlin Heidelberg : Springer. - 9783540857532 ; , s. 203-216
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Reconciliation has become an important part of postconflict peacebuilding rhetoric and practice in recent years. As nearly all conflicts today are intrastate, former enemies, perpetrators and victims, must continue living side by side after the war. Yet, attitudes and behaviors do not change at the moment of a declaration of peace. Since coexistence is necessary, the need for reconciliation is profound.The aim of this chapter is to give a shared point of departure for discussion on the critical issues of reconciliation and development after war. Reconciliation is defined and seen from a pragmatic and societal perspective; it does not mean avoiding accountability for the sake of truth, neither does it entail collective amnesia to avoid the risks of truth telling, nor interpersonal forgiveness. Reconciliation means finding a way to balance issues such as truth and justice so that the slow changing of behaviors, attitudes and emotions between former enemies can take place. It is the pragmatic work of building relationships and confidence that will hold for the pressures on peace.In order to structure the analysis, reconciliation is suggested to be examined from three societal levels: top-level, middle-range, and grassroots. An overview is provided of some key concerns regarding reconciliation in relation to justice, security, and politics respectively, and their respective policy implications discussed. Regarding justice, recent research on truth commissions provides a basis for new development challenges. In close connection emerges the issue of security. Security risks have not been included in the theoretical literature on truth telling and reconciliation. However, recent research indicates that if security is not provided, the process of reconciliation may risk to backlash in increased violence or in suppression of truth. Political initiatives for reconciliation through for example legislation are crucial. However, the post-conflict state is often quite weak thus tensions may easily arise between reconciliation needs, development ambitions, and politics. Finally, truth telling being one of the major components in reconciliation processes around the world today, the concerns of truth telling with regard to trauma, reparation, and culture are briefly highlighted.The chapter concludes that there is no magic formula for reconciliation; each reconciliation process needs to be designed according to the specific context. We urgently need empirical research to learn of general trends regarding the promises and pitfalls for processes of reconciliation.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-
(författare)
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Rethinking Reconciliation : Concepts, Methods, and an Empirical Study of Truth Telling and Psychological Health in Rwanda
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation combines psychology with peace and conflict research in a cross-disciplinary approach to reconciliation processes after intrastate armed conflict. Two overarching contributions are made to the field of reconciliation research. The first is conceptual and methodological. The vague concept of reconciliation is defined and operationalized (Paper I), and a method is proposed for how reconciliation may be studied systematically at the national level (Paper II). By discussing what reconciliation is and how we should measure it, comparative research on reconciliation is facilitated which is imperative if we wish to learn of its promises and pitfalls in post-conflict peacebuilding. The second contribution is empirical. There has been an assumption that truth telling is healing and thereby will lead to reconciliation; healing is the assumed link between truth and reconciliation. This assumption was investigated in two studies in Rwanda in 2006. A multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 adults was conducted to assess whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation, was beneficial for psychological health; thereby investigating the claim that truth telling is healing (Paper III). The results of the survey are disconcerting. Witnesses in the gacaca suffered from significantly higher levels of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder than non-witnesses also when controlling for important predictors for psychological ill-health such as gender or trauma exposure. To acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the experience of witnessing in the gacaca, in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 women genocide survivors who had witnessed in the gacaca (Paper IV). The results of this study challenge the claim that truth telling is healing, suggesting instead that there are risks for the individuals on whom truth-telling processes depend. Traumatization, ill-health, isolation, and insecurity dominate the lives of the testifying women. Insecurity as a result of the truth-telling process emerged as one of the most crucial issues at stake. This dissertation presents a novel understanding of the complexity of reconciliation in post-conflict peacebuilding, demonstrating that truth and reconciliation processes may entail more risks than were previously known. The results of this dissertation can be used to improve the study and the design of truth and reconciliation processes after civil war and genocide.
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| 11. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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The bumpy road of peace research: reflections on sharing mistakes in fieldwork
- 2022
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Ingår i: Third World Quarterly. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0143-6597 .- 1360-2241. ; , s. 1-9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As medicine strives to find cures to illness, peace researchers strive to find cures for war-broken societies. To this end, we depend on learning from people who have survived political violence, in sensitive conflict settings. There is increasing awareness of the imperative of ethical reflection before, during and after ‘fieldwork’. However, the rocky road of doing the actual fieldwork in conflict settings is seldom part of our polished articles. The messiness, the ethical dilemmas, our hesitations, mistakes, regrets remain hidden. We argue this needs to change. We believe it is time for conflict-research to join the novel self-reflexive footsteps of neuroscience and psychology, and build a research culture of reflection and honesty, which includes the sharing of mistakes. If not, we will inevitably continue making the same mistakes over and over again. Reflexive honesty will make our research sustainable ethically, scientifically, and financially. Our aim with this article is to open such a conversation by sharing some recent experiences of fieldwork in Nepal: what went well, what we did wrong, and what we learned in this process. Hopefully, by sharing our lessons learned we can together, in time, make conflict research safer, richer, and more meaningful – for everyone involved.
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| 12. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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The burden of war widows: gendered consequences of war and peace-building in Sri Lanka
- 2023
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Ingår i: Third World Quarterly. - 0143-6597 .- 1360-2241. ; , s. 1-17
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research shows that war affects various groups of survivors differently, yet the severe consequences faced by war widows are often overlooked. Combining insights from fieldwork in Sri Lanka with secondary sources, we conclude that the time is ripe for the daunting challenges of war widows to be brought into the limelight. We argue that widowhood after war is conditioned both by the post-war context and society’s gendered constructions. The social expectations that follow pose exceptional trials in everyday life for war widows globally. As an important case and illustrative example, we analyse Sri Lanka: a decade ago emerging from civil war; today, in dire need of economic and political transformation. We demonstrate how war widows are caught in the crossfire of demographic change, post-war insecurities, economic hardship, and gender discriminating norms and traditions. This unseen group of survivors play a critical role for the prospects for economic, social and political development in the transition from war to peace, in Sri Lanka and beyond. We conclude by calling for a concerted effort wherein research and policy come together to outline a new research and policy agenda with the aim of lessening the burden of war widows.
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| 13. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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The Gendered Links between War-Related Trauma and Attitudes to Peace : Exploring Survey Data from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- While some studies suggest that women hold more peaceful attitudes than man, few studies have explored this question in the context of post-conflict countries. We argue that women, in this context, may in fact hold more negative views regarding attitudes of relevance for peacebuilding, for three reasons. First, the ways in which women are negatively affected by armed conflict are generally not sufficiently prioritized in the post-conflict period. Second, women and men are often subjected to different types of violence during armed conflict and the types of violence affecting women may to a larger extent carry stigma. Third, women are more likely to develop PTSD after traumatic events. These three factors all lead us to expect women to hold more negative towards peacebuilding. We explore these interconnections using data from a survey fielded in three post-conflict countries: Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland. Our preliminary analysis indicates support for our proposition, as women, for instance, are less positive than men towards truth-telling initiatives, less willing to allow refugees and ex-combatants return to their homes, and less likely to support amnesties.
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| 14. |
- Brounéus, Karen
(författare)
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The Trauma of Truth Telling : Effects of Witnessing in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts on Psychological Health
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Conflict Resolution. - : SAGE Publications. - 0022-0027 .- 1552-8766. ; 54:3, s. 408-437
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Truth telling has come to play a pivotal role in postconflict reconciliation processes around the world. A common claim is that truth telling is healing and will lead to reconciliation. The present study applies recent psychological research to this issue by examining whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, was beneficial for psychological health. The results from the multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 Rwandans demonstrate that gacaca witnesses suffer from higher levels of depression and PTSD than do nonwitnesses, also when controlling for important predictors of psychological ill health. Furthermore, longer exposure to truth telling has not lowered the levels of psychological ill health, nor has the prevalence of depression and PTSD decreased over time. This study strongly challenges the claim that truth telling is healing and presents a novel understanding of the complexity of truth-telling processes in postconflict peace building.
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| 15. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-
(författare)
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The Women and Peace Hypothesis in Peacebuilding Settings : Attitudes of Women in the Wake of the Rwandan Genocide
- 2014
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Ingår i: Signs (Chicago, Ill.). - : University of Chicago Press. - 0097-9740 .- 1545-6943. ; 40:1, s. 125-151
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- At the microlevel, the “women and peace” hypothesis suggests that women hold more pacific or compromising attitudes than men. Previous empirical studies of this hypothesis have focused on war-waging settings; this article is the first to bring the women and peace hypothesis to the peacebuilding phase. When studying the hypothesis after war, this article argues that the postconflict context, and especially war-related trauma, must be taken into account. Given that war affects women and men differently, there may be important gender differences in attitudes related to peacebuilding. To test this argument, data from a multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 Rwandans was analyzed, focusing on the connection between war-related psychological ill health and attitudes toward three issues of relevance for peacebuilding: trust, coexistence, and the gacaca (the Rwandan peacebuilding process). The results demonstrate that women reported significantly more negative attitudes than men toward all three issues. The article also suggests that this surprising finding may result from the different types and levels of trauma women and men experience in war: more men are killed, and more women are subjected to sexual violence. As more women are left to survive the atrocities of war, they may carry a heavier burden of war-related memories in their bodies and minds, leading to greater challenges in the peacebuilding and, often, truth-telling phase. In addition, higher levels of abuse against women in the postconflict phase may require continuing vigilance and anxiety. The article concludes by sketching out areas for future research investigating the important yet counterintuitive findings presented here.
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| 16. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-
(författare)
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Truth and Reconciliation Commission Processes : Learning from the Solomon Islands
- 2019
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Bok (refereegranskat)abstract
- After war, does truth telling lead to more peaceful attitudes between former enemies? This book is the first to study the over-time effect of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process on people’s attitudes towards peace. Focusing on the Solomon Islands TRC process, one of the least known or studied TRC processes in the world, and using surveys, focus groups and in depth interviews, the book reveals some critical issues for peacebuilding. For example, while support of the TRC was consistently quite strong over the two years of the study, there was a sharp decline in trust in the process as well as a significant increase in distrust and suspicion towards ex-combatants over the two-year period. The book shows that the ex-combatants did not feel safe to tell the truth in the TRC and had therefore decided beforehand what to say in the hearings. A systematic telling of untruths thereby took place, severely undermining relationships and peacebuilding in the country. The book weaves the findings from the Solomon Islands with experiences of other post-conflict truth telling process around the world, and suggests practical guidelines for future TRC processes after war.
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| 17. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-
(författare)
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Truth for peace? : Exploring the links between the Solomon Islands' TRC process and people's attitudes towards peace
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This report presents results from a research project that studied the links between the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)and the country’s peace building process.The aim of the research was to study the effects of the TRC process on people’s attitudes towards issues that are important for peace, for example trust, coexistence, the TRC, and ex-combatants. A total of around 1,900 Solomon Islanders participated in the research, insurveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews in 2011 and 2013. The project was conducted with support from the Solomon Islands TRC, Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, and Ministry of Peace, Unity and Reconciliation. The New Zealand Tearfund and the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund funded the project. The fieldwork was conducted in collaboration with Pasifiki Ltd, Honiara. In this report, the main results of the study are summarised. Hopefully, the findings may be of use to Solomon Islands Ministries, Churches, NGOs and others working with peace building in the Solomon Islands.
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| 18. |
- Brounéus, Karen
(författare)
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Truth Telling as Talking Cure? : Insecurity and Retraumatization in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts
- 2008
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Ingår i: Security Dialogue. - : SAGE Publications. - 0967-0106 .- 1460-3640. ; 39:1, s. 55-76
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article presents unique material from in-depth interviews with 16 women in Rwanda who have testified in the gacaca, the village tribunals initiated to enhance reconciliation after the 1994 genocide. The aim of the interviews was to learn more of how testifying in such a public event as the gacaca affects psychological health. Do the women find the experience healing or retraumatizing? Are there other effects involved? There has been an assumption that testifying in truth and reconciliation commissions is a healing experience for survivors, and healing has been a central concept in the general reconciliation literature and in political rhetoric around truth commissions. However, the findings of this study are alarming. Traumatization, ill-health, isolation, and insecurity dominate the lives of these testifying women. They are threatened and harassed before, during, and after giving testimony in the gacaca. The article provides a picture of the reconciliation process that we seldom see.
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| 19. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Underestimating the burden for peacekeepers? : Difficulty in determining psychological well-being following operational deployment with low response rates from NZDF personnel.
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of military and veterans health. - 1835-1271 .- 1839-2733. ; 23:2, s. 7-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Since 2010, the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) have used post-deployment psychological screens with personnel returning from operational deployments to predict and support psychological ill-health in returning peacekeepers.Aim: The objective of this article is to discuss the critical implications of low return rates in follow-up psychological health data in returning peacekeepers. Due to low response rates at the 4-6 month follow up screen, longitudinal analysis of mental health could not be conducted.Methods: Two sets of responses were analysed using logistic regression from NZDF Post-Deployment screens with personnel who had served in Timor Leste and Afghanistan over the period 2010–2011. The total sample consisted of 695 cases.Results: This study demonstrates that peacekeeping personnel with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) scores above the cut-off at the initial screen returned the follow-up (FUP) screen to a significantly lower degree than their peers.Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that among those who did not complete the FUP screen, there may be an over-representation of personnel with PTSD symptoms. If healthier subjects are more likely to return the FUP screen, post-deployment well-being may be skewed towards more positive mental health than is accurate, leading to an underestimation of the mental health burden for returning peacekeepers.
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| 20. |
- Brounéus, Karen, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Women, peace and insecurity : The risks of peacebuilding in everyday life for women in Sri Lanka and Nepal
- 2024
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 19:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Truth telling processes, initiatives to prosecute war-time perpetrators, and ex-combatant reintegration are examples of common peacebuilding practices after war. Yet, little is known of how women are affected by peacebuilding initiatives such as these, or how they perceive these initiatives for peace. For many women, peace after war does not bring peace to everyday life; research shows that domestic violence increases during and after war. In addition, some peacebuilding measures have been found to increase risk and insecurity, not least for women. To better understand the interconnections between gender and post-conflict attitudes to peacebuilding, we asked 2,041 women and men in Sri Lanka and Nepal of their views on post-war peace initiatives. In line with our expectations, we find that women are more skeptical than men towards peacebuilding measures that involve increased risk in everyday life, such as truth-telling and coexisting with former adversaries and warring groups reintegrating in local communities. There are no gender differences pertaining to peacebuilding initiatives that take place far away at the national level, for example, concerning accountability or, in the case of Nepal, the peace agreement. Our findings suggest that international peacebuilding practice is blind to the everyday insecurities of women after war. That a basic gendered lens is missing from most peacebuilding designs is both alarming and deeply troubling, but identifying this critical aspect provides the opportunity for imperative change. By shedding light on the challenges women face after war, we hope this article contributes to finding ways to mitigate unknown and unintended side-effects of peacebuilding efforts, and thereby to the development of better, evidence-based peacebuilding practice–of benefit to both men and women.
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| 21. |
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| 22. |
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| 23. |
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| 24. |
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| 25. |
- Simonsson, Olov, 1979-
(författare)
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God Rests in Rwanda : The Role of Religion in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study analyses the role of religion in the Rwandan genocide, providing new explanations to the complex dynamics of devaluation and victimisation processes in genocidal violence. The thesis explains how religion was used in different contexts prior to, during, and after the 1994 genocide. The following questions guide this study: What kinds of religious concepts and arguments were used in the context of the Rwandan genocide, and how? Why were they used and what did these concepts and arguments mean? Finally, did the meanings of the religious arguments change over time and between different contexts, and if so why?Texts from three sources were analysed: the Hutu extremist propaganda in Kangura magazine and in RTLM broadcasts, and testimonies from the ICTR trials. The analysis was guided by Roger Dale Petersen’s theory on Fear, Hatred, and Resentment, as well as theories on devaluation, social identity, self-victimisation, and competitive victimhood. This thesis utilises the computer software MAXQDA to search for concepts and arguments, which are analysed through the contextual approach developed by Quentin Skinner. This thesis demonstrates that the Hutu propagandists used religious mythology to argue that the Tutsis were not of Rwandan origin and therefore had no rights in Rwanda. The devaluation of the Tutsi was not only or even primarily done through downgrading animalistic epithets, but through the elevation of Tutsis with emphasis on the historical, and allegedly divine, superiority of the Tutsi. This devaluation allowed the Hutu extremists to claim victimhood, a necessary conviction to argue that violence committed by the Hutus were acts of self-defence. In the deeply Christian context of Rwanda, the extremist Hutu propagandists constructed a Hutu God, while claiming that the Tutsis were non-Christian, irreligious, or atheists, in order to create different religious identities for the two groups.This study also assesses the judicial aftermath, and argues that religious concepts were used in similar ways in ICTR testimonies to claim innocence, credibility, and victimhood. This thesis thus sheds new light on the importance of religious belief systems in genocidal violence, highlighting the crucial role of religion prior to, during, and after the genocide in Rwanda.
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| 26. |
- Sundberg, Ralph, 1981-
(författare)
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Values and Attitudes across Peace Operations : Change and Stability in the Political Psychology of Swedish ISAF Soldiers
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Participation in Peace Support Operations (PSOs) is one of the most common military duties assigned to present-day Western soldiers. Previous research concerned with the psychological effects of these missions on the individual soldier has focused on issues of mental health and how to ensure military effectiveness. This study takes a different perspective, and examines how PSOs affect the political psychology of the peace soldier, asking: how and to what extent do the sociopolitical psychological orientations of the individual soldier change as a consequence of peace support operations?The study combines theory from clinical, social, and personality psychology to construct a framework for understanding how and why the values and the attitudes toward violence of the soldier may be affected by PSO deployments. It is argued that although combat exposure may cause changes in attitudes and values, these variables will overall remain stable across the deployment. Stability is predicted to be the norm due to the importance of certain attitudes and values to the soldierly identity, and owing to the good person-environment fit that the deployment provides for the soldiers. It is also argued that the individual’s personality traits will predict levels of change and stability. Empirically, two Swedish contingents deployed to northern Afghanistan under the auspices of NATO’s ISAF mission are analyzed. Change and stability are examined by combining statistical analyses of surveys with in-depth interviews carried out at both the pre- and post-deployment stages.As hypothesized, the study finds that both values and attitudes exhibit high levels of stability across the mission. Contrary to expectations the soldiers’ experiences of combat exposure had little to no effect on attitudes and values. Combat exposure was, however, limited during the deployments studied. Finally, the individual’s personality traits are identified as being relatively potent factors for inducing change and stability. By demonstrating that low-exposure PSOs have only minor effects on the sociopolitical psychological orientations of soldiers, the study advances knowledge of the political psychology of the peace soldier and provides additional contributions to the fields of value and personality psychology. Among other things, the study demonstrates the stability of values in a very challenging environment, and how personality traits affect change and stability in values.
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| 27. |
- Svensson, Isak, 1974-, et al.
(författare)
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Dialogue and Interethnic Trust : A Randomized Field Trial of ‘Sustained Dialogue’ in Ethiopia
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of Peace Research. - : SAGE Publications. - 0022-3433 .- 1460-3578. ; 50:5, s. 563-575
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The growing field of peacebuilding has tried to mitigate interethnic conflicts by creating various sorts of dialogue programs, aiming to build social bonds and bridges between individuals from groups with a history of violent interaction. Yet, little is known of the effect of dialogue initiatives on interethnic relations and peacebuilding. Previous research on dialogue programs has suffered from the serious problem of selection bias: in other words, by not having comparable control groups it has not been possible to separate selection effects (that a program attracts certain types of people) from process effects (that programs have an effect on people). The present study is the first to examine the effects of a dialogue process in a context of political tension and ethnic violence through a randomized field experiment, thereby eliminating this problem. Using a stratified randomization process, participants were selected to a two-term Sustained Dialogue program at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, in 2009-10. Immediately following the dialogue intervention, an attitudinal survey and a behavioral trust game were conducted with a group of 716 participants and non-participants. We found that the program had a positive effect on participants' attitudes: it worked for decreasing mistrust and increasing the level of trust between people of different ethnic origins. Concurrently, however, participation in the dialogue program increased the sense of importance of ethnic identities as well as the perception of being ethnically discriminated - a somewhat counter-intuitive finding. Participation in dialogue processes had no significant effect on game behavior: participants in Sustained Dialogue were neither more trusting nor trustworthy than non-participants. This study shows the fruitfulness of randomized field-experiments in the area of peace and conflict research and finishes by identifying some important paths for future research.
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