Music is often heralded as a means of bringing people together or celebrating diversity and therefore it is also often assumed that music can be a beneficial tool in conflict transformation settings. Despite this widespread belief there is little empirical evidence to support this notion. Indeed, there is more evidence that suggests the opposite; music can increase solidarity within one group but that very process strengthens the borders between what is accepted as in-group or out-group. It is this strengthening of identity borders that can lead to outright conflict if certain other social conditions prevail. One question remains, why is the belief in the power of music so widespread when there is evidence that demonstrates potential negative outcomes? In order to address that question, it is useful to observe that music continues to be used in community projects and within NGOs as a means to bond groups in social conflict despite the lack evidence to support their actions. The belief in the positive power of music has influenced behaviour so that musical activity is included in peace work. Indeed, belief can be seen as a prime motivator of behaviour in most sectors of the world, much more so than hard evidence. This thesis is an exploration of the social processes that occur in musical experiences that affect memory, identity and emotions and how they affect understanding and belief which in turn affects group behaviour. The research is inter-disciplinary, drawing on music sociology, social movements, cultural studies, ethno-musicology and conflict theory, and data was collected using qualitative methods (ethnographic interviewing, action research, observation/participation, grounded theory). The fieldwork was conducted with an inter-religious choir in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a comparative study conducted with a world-music community choir in London, UK.

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The main objective of this study was to analyze the knowledge and opinions on Xenophobia among Students in North West University, Mafikeng Campus, North-West Province, South Africa. The hypotheses tested by the research were that negative opinions about foreigners lead to inclination to xenophobia; positive opinions about foreigners lead to non-inclination toward xenophobia and that economic and sociological factors influence negative opinions about foreigners. The results of the study showed that the major source of opinions about foreigners were mostly through personal contact with foreigners possibly within the university environment as foreign lecturers and students account for a sizable percentage of the university population. The majority of the respondents knew and understood xenophobia as hatred and dislike of foreigners. Many of the respondents were of the opinion that only a few South Africans were xenophobic. Only 2.5% actually admitted to having hatred and dislike for foreigners. It was found that whereas the incIination of respondents to xenophobia decreases with increase in friendships with foreigners, it increases with increase in the opinion that foreigners must not be allowed into South Africa. Al so while inclination of respondents to xenophobia increases with increase in the opinion that foreigners are a threat to locals securing matrimonial partners; in their own words "taking away their women", surprisingly it decreases with increase in the view that foreigners are taking the jobs meant for South Africans. Previous studies have shown that attitudes toward xenophobia arc mostly associated with people with very little or no educational exposure and that fear, dislike and hatred, generally result from ignorance. This appears to be the case regarding xenophobia and negative attitudes towards foreigners in South Africa, the primary challenge identified here is education. Adult education at grass-root level has a role to play. It is recommended that citizens be given access to accurate in formation through all sorts of media such as television programmes, radio, newspapers and magazines, to dispel myths and stereotypes about migrants, immigrants and refugees. In addition, a greater sense of continental ism and international ism should be developed in the country through adult education and curriculum reform at schools and through the public pronouncements of opinion-makers. Service delivery should also be improved in the rural areas and township settlements which evidently arc the areas prone to such incidents of xenophobia. Immigration laws should be revised to provide guidelines regarding the issuance and renewal or permits, as well as implementing more stringent steps to ensure effective border control, thereby limiting and eventually curbing illegal migrants in the country. / Thesis (M. Arts) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2011

In this thesis, I investigated effects of conflict strength and ageing on cognitive control. Conflict strength was manipulated in the Eriksen flanker task using two different approaches: 1. independent variation of flanker and target contrast; 2. manipulation of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Reducing flanker contrast relative to target contrast decreased conflict strength, as shown by a reduction in compatibility effects, when contrast conditions were presented in a randomized fashion but not when they were presented block-wise. An SOA of 100 ms did lead to increased compatibility effects compared to SOAs of 0 ms and 200 ms. Effects of conflict appear to be reflected in the N2 component of the ERP. Although priming played a crucial role in the emergence of the sequential adjustment effect, conflict strength also influenced this effect to a certain degree, supporting the claim that sequential adjustments represent an adaptation of cognitive control. Post-error slowing and error-related ERP components, on the other hand, were not affected by the conflict manipulations, suggesting that errors cannot be explained in terms of conflict processing. Effects of ageing on cognitive control were investigated in a group of middle-aged participants. Although physiological indicators of conflict and error processing were compromised in this age group and overall response times were increased, compatibility, sequential adjustment, and post-error slowing effects were of comparable size as in young adults. These findings suggest that participants could successfully compensate for age-related physiological changes at this early stage of ageing. In conclusion, the research presented in this thesis provided important information to extend our knowledge of factors influencing cognitive control processes.

This thesis analyses the effects of gender inclusive policies or the lack of such on development at a time of conflict transformation. It has nowadays been established that the presence of women and the existence of gendered policies at a time of peace building are vital for the development of any country or region presently in this situation. Despite this knowledge, inclusion of women and gender has remained scarce and effects of their integration have thus proven difficult to measure. It is the aim of this thesis to support research in this area, by demonstrating the implications of incorporating or failing to implement different types of gender inclusive policies on the example of the actions taken in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Kurdistan Region is currently in a unique position of its development. After withstanding decades of armed conflict, the region today is greatly autonomous and economically prosperous. For the previous decade it has been the government’s aim to decrease the potential of new conflict, to become internationally competitive and to increase positive development for its people. One of their stated foci was thereby the promotion of gender and women’s inclusion in public policies. By comparing the policies deployed in the Kurdistan Region with experiences and knowledge from around the world, and by using the citizens of the region themselves as validators, this thesis will examine if the existing policies have had the desired effect, and if not, what should be changed. This will be done in the political, economic and social sphere (focusing on education), with the outcome that policies introduced by Kurdistan’s decision makers are partly positive, but lack in consistency, inclusiveness and gender sensitivity. This leads to a loss of human resources for the region, as well as to unequal effects within society, and thus to a lack of sustainable peace.

Gender development in Sweden is in the forefront and an increasing number of women choose to work.However, women still have the primary responsibility for home and family even though she and her partnerare working to the same extent. This leads to women, more than men, experience conflict between work andfamily. The conflict arises when then role, time and behavioral demands from one domain interfere orcompete with duties and responsibilities in the other domain. The purpose of the study is to examine femalemanagers' experiences of combining work and family as well as how they try to cope with demands from thetwo domains. I wanted to further explore the coping strategies used to handel the family demandsinterferance withthe work demands. This is a qualitative study and data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The results show that women primarily use problem-focused coping strategiesbytrying to solve the problem, planing and priortizing. Although, the problem-focused strategy to seek help andthe emotion-focused strategies to seek support and to accept the situation were also used.

This thesis presents theoretical work on armed group activity and empirical work on post-conflict recovery. In chapter two, I develop a general equilibrium model of violence to explain observed variation in coercive practices in conflict zones. Armed groups own land in the resource sector and allocate military resources between conflict and coercion, which assign de facto ownership over land and labour respectively. I find that coercion is higher if labour is scare relative to land, production is labour-intensive, or if one group is dominant relative to others. Furthermore, contrary to other studies, I find that coercion could decreases with price if military power is sufficiently decentralised, since conflict draws resources away from coercion. In chapter three, I evaluate a reconciliation program in post-conflict Sierra Leone. The program provides a forum for villagers to air war-time grievances, and also forges institutions designed to improve conflict resolution and build social capital. I find that respondents who received the intervention are more forgiving and are more charitable in their views of ex-combatants. Furthermore, conflict resolution improved and involvement in village groups and activities increased. However, psychological health---depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety---deteriorated. This study has direct implications for the design of transitional justice programs, as well as programs that aim to promote institutional change. In chapter four, I experimentally vary foreigner presence across behavioural games conducted in 60 communities in Sierra Leone, and assess its effect on standard measures of generosity. I find that foreigner presence substantially increases player contributions in dictator games, by an average of 19 per cent. Furthermore, the treatment effect is smaller for players who hold positions of authority; and subjects from villages with greater exposure to development aid give substantially less and are more inclined to believe that the behavioural games were conducted to test them for future aid. In chapter five, I use a model of repeated bargaining with one-sided asymmetric information to investigate the difficulties of reaching and sustaining power sharing agreements. I show that asymmetric information can explain the persistence of conflict, since learning slows down when there are future opportunities for bargaining.

Conflict or battlefield archaeology has been steadily gaining traction within British archaeology since the 1990s. Methods of inquiry unique to conflict archaeology, allied to a growing body of theory, have enabled archaeologists to define and reconstruct events of past conflict, illuminating a distinctive component of the human experience. This thesis applies the theories and methods of conflict archaeology to investigate Anglo-Welsh conflict landscapes of the twelfth century. It aims to explore patterns of Welsh resistance to Anglo-Norman military campaigns through the analysis of documents, landscapes and archaeological sites. Events of armed conflict explored archaeologically using battlefield archaeology methods, present a unique opportunity to undo biases inherent in traditional military history approaches. Unfortunately the amorphous and at times ephemeral nature of medieval conflicts has generally discouraged their archaeological investigation. The study seeks to address this by the application of a holistic conflict archaeology methodology, refined for medieval conflicts. This research specifically focuses on the often overlooked conflicts associated with the reign of Owain ap Gruffudd, (better known as Owain Gwynedd) from 1137–1170, particularly the conflict events connected to King Henry II’s 1157 campaign along the North coast of Gwynedd, and the 1165 campaign in the Berwyn Mountains. A significant part of this is accomplished by successfully utilizing devices of military terrain analysis, spatially represented via GIS (Geographical Information System) technology, to reconstruct archaeological landscapes of conflict. Using these approaches, the thesis presents new understandings of both specific events and the broader conflict landscapes associated with Welsh resistance to the Anglo-Norman conquest.

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The purpose of this thesis is to explore the significance of conflict stories in the Gospel of Matthew from a literary critical perspective. The key research question the thesis has attempted to answer is, how do conflict stories function in Matthew’s narrative? Because their interest is often limited to the Sitz im Leben behind the Matthean text, previous studies attempting the similar pursuit view conflict stories as transparent accounts of Matthew’s polemical program against the Jews or Judaism. Thus they have neglected a vital purpose of the author, that is, besides his interest to record or preserve what happened in history, the Gospel author is also interested to arouse or affirm the readers’ faith in Jesus through his preservation and redaction of his sources, which is an inseparable part of the author’s theological program. How exactly then has his literary work achieved this purpose? Assuming the literary unity of the Matthean text, this study has treated the Matthean text as a mirror and explored literary nuances reflected by the textual ‘surface.’ Under such a premise, the narrative analysis of this thesis has highlighted three foci: 1. The connection which each conflict makes with its narrative context; 2. How the Hebrew Scripture interacts with the author’s composition or redaction of the stories; and 3. The literary impact these stories have on the implied reader. This study selects a total of seventeen conflict stories in Matthew based on three criteria, Matt 9.1-8, 9-13, 14-17; 12.1-8, 9-14, 22-37, 38-45; 13.53-58; 15.1-9; 16.1-4; 19.1-9; 21.14-17, 23-27; 22.15-22, 23-33, 34-40, 41-46: 1. The presence of an attitude of hostility or challenge in the setting of the narrative (either explicit or implied); 2. The presence of a question of an accusation or a challenge; and 3. The question or the accusation is usually followed by a reply of Jesus. In conclusion, the literary analysis of this study suggests two most important functions of Matthean conflict stories: 1. Conflict stories function, either individually or in clusters, as kernels of the Matthean plot to advance the narrative forward in order to reach its climax in the passion narrative. 2. The Christological focus in conflict stories is consistently concerned not only with the superiority of Jesus over the opponents, but more importantly with the nexus between the divine status of Jesus and him being the messianic figure.