This thesis investigates how and why various Iraqi and Lebanese politicians and laypeople account for the armed conflicts, which they have been living through, and the involved sides of these conflicts. In both of these countries people have been exposed to major international and civil wars. Both nations are also cosmopolitan societies that contain multiple ethnic, racial, and religious groups, which make the issue of identity of great importance. How wars should be examined is a subject of much debate within psychology. On the one hand, the majority of psychological studies of war rest upon the assumption that war is primarily a destructive experience. Thus, the focus has been traditionally on investigating lasting psychopathological effects of war. A Large number of previous studies have reported that a significant segment of people who were exposed to the experience of war developed psychological problems, especially post traumatic stress disorder. On the other hand, a growing number of psychology researchers contend that most people maintain their psychological equilibrium in the face of almost all types of traumatic experiences, including war-related affairs. These researchers have shifted the focus toward examining and explaining this finding. Within this vigorous debate, limited attention has been paid to the question of how and why people account for their experiences as well as the various aspects of war in their own words. Currently, a limited number of studies indicate that people can and do present the same war in significantly different ways, as a means to attain certain ends. Furthermore, a significant body of research suggests that people’s collective identities play an important role in relation to their understandings, descriptions, preferences and behaviours in relation to war. The war rhetoric is also reported as an important issue that can influence the people’s understanding of war, as well as war’s course of events. Hence, through adopting a discursive psychological approach to analysis, this thesis examines several important issues simultaneously. Accounts of the wars and collective identities are approached as communicative resources that are constructed and deployed as a means to accomplish social actions. This thesis examines, specifically, how different Iraqi laypeople and politicians construct the 2003 American and Allies intervention in Iraq, with focus on collective identity. It also examines how various Lebanese construe the events of the 2006 war and the civil strife that occurred during and afterward this war. The data is taken from three sources. The first one is represented by semi-structured interviews conducted in Lebanon in October 2006. The second source is TV interviews conducted and broadcasted live with Iraqi politicians and decision makers in the period from 2003 to 2008 and with Lebanese politicians from 2006 to 2008. The third source is an open-ended question distributed in Basra City, Iraq in May 2005 as part of an extensive questionnaire. This study has several practical and theoretical implications to psychology in general and in particular to the study of armed conflicts. The first contribution is highlighting the importance of analysing laypeople’s rhetorical accounts of wars, as directly involved people can and do present surprisingly different discourses from the outsiders’. I argue that to gain a realistic and applicable understanding of the discourse of war, its function and its potential implications, it is necessary to study the general public’s versions of such experience in addition to the elite’s discourses. The analysis shows that different participants have constructed different action-oriented accounts of the same war. Within these various accounts the participants invoked and incorporated a number of different stimulating notions, such as dignity, nationalism, religion, resilience and victory as part of the rational of the war. These accounts have important practical and discursive functions, such as establishing, warranting, rejecting, and promoting specific views of the war, the involved sides, and the appropriate course of action. Secondly, this study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the role of rhetorical collective identity during armed conflicts. The analysis shows that collective identities attain their meanings and their functions from, by, and through the accounts they are situated within. Thirdly, the findings of this thesis highlight the complex and consequential role of rhetorical accounts in relation to wars and to violence and the relevance of qualitative analysis. I argue that discourse of war can obscure its destructive effects, which in turn can contribute to maintaining people’s psychological equilibrium but, also, prolong the conflict. Thus, exposing the rhetorical strategies that legitimate war and warrant killing other people can be an important step toward making war unconditionally morally unacceptable.

Includes bibliographical references / Interest in this topic was awakened by the rapid growth of Relay For Life in South Africa and its striking ability to bond people during mass cancer gatherings. Questions were raised about the generation of collective identities during these assemblies, the nature of the activated identities, and how these relate to the broader debates about cancer and identity. This inquiry investigates the unexplored intersection of cancer and identity in the context of a burgeoning solidarity movement that has found a strong following countrywide. A contemporary hermeneutic perspective allowed a dual focus on the micro-sociological dimensions and the structural elements that converge to generate collective identities at assemblies. A theoretical scheme was synthesized out of the work of theorists who deal with collective identity, spaces set aside for people in crisis, social interaction during focused gatherings and illness narratives. A non-comparative case study was used to investigate the phenomenon at 20 cancer assemblies. Short-term ethnography, focus group interviews, photographs and YouTube videos provided the data that was analysed using the hermeneutic circle of interpretation. The findings showed that personal illness identities and situation-specific role identities interact with a potent cocktail of elements - ephemeral space, a shared focus on cancer, collective action, illusion and emotions - to activate three symbolic identities: a dominant collective identity that relies on heroic warrior mythology, a secondary collective identity that draws upon a transformation ideal, and a hidden identity which has its roots in the notion of being wounded. It is argued that assemblies rely on a dominant collective identity which is symbolic in nature and imposed on participants by the cancer movement. Participants are portrayed as positive, hopeful heroic warriors tasked with vanquishing cancer. Although ubiquitous at cancer assemblies, the dominant collective identity is nevertheless sufficiently fluid to allow a measure of hybridization, inversion and contestation. This inquiry gives credence to other work on cancer and identity which recognizes that the dominant identity provides benefits not offered by a victim representation. It also expresses reservations about the wisdom of expecting affected people to maintain a brave exterior in the face of an illness that causes emotional disequilibrium.

La forte médiatisation du football professionnel ne doit pas faire oublier l'existence d'une pratique du football amateur très active en Aquitaine dans le cadre des clubs. La diffusion de cette pratique s'est étendue à l'ensemble de la région sur un peu plus d'un siècle en quatre phases d'intensité variable marquées par des événements historiques et les évolutions de la discipline. La fin de ce cycle semble se dessiner aujourd'hui. De multiples acteurs individuels, collectifs, institutionnels, se sont impliqués tout au long de ce processus de diffusion dans des actions de découpage et de contrôle de l'espace aux échelles régionale et locale pour la « fabrique de territoires sportifs ». Des ensembles et des sous-ensembles spatiaux mal définis ont été peu à peu transformés en territoires de pratique, de gestion et d'application de politiques sportives. Ce processus de territorialisation a induit des modes de relation différenciés entre les groupes sportifs et leurs territoires. De multiples identités collectives fondées sur la conscience, le discours, les représentations culturelles, le sentiment d'appartenance ont facilité l'ancrage des clubs dans les territoires de proximité. Cette forme de territorialité sportive est aujourd'hui remise en cause par les réformes territoriales mises en oeuvre à travers l'intercommunalité. On assiste à une redéfinition des relations entre les acteurs du football et des collectivités territoriales, le football amateur étant devenu un enjeu des politiques publiques communautaires. Les recompositions territoriales affectent aussi les identités dans les nombreux clubs issus de fusions en quête de nouveaux liens. Les recompositions territoriales et identitaires sont en train de bouleverser le modèle traditionnel du club de football amateur. / The strong exposure of professional football must not make one forget the existence of the very active practice of amateur football of clubs in Aquitaine. The diffusion of that practice has spread through the whole region for over a little more than a century, in four stages of variable intensity, marked by historic events and changes in the sport. Nowadays, this cycle seems to be coming to an end. Many individual, collective, and institutional parties have been involved in that process of diffusion by dividing and controlling areas, regionally and locally, « to make sports territories ». Ill-defined spaces have been gradually turned into territories connected to the practice, management, and implementation of sports policies. Such process of territorial marking out has lead to different types of relationships between sports groups and their territories. Numerous collective identities based on consciousness, position, cultural perceptions and sense of belonging have made the establishment of football clubs and institutions in territories in proximity easier. Such a form of sports territoriality is nowadays called into question by the different territorial reforms implemented between districts. We are witnessing a re-defining of the relationships between the parties involved in football and the local authorities since amateur football has become an issue for the different local councils's public policies. Territorial reconstruction also affects identities in the numerous clubs which have been merged and are looking for new links and names. Territorial and identity reconstruction are completely changing the traditional amateur football club.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Elieyd Sousa de Menezes.pdf: 12422138 bytes, checksum: d77c6bd10c638346c8ec2a0f28fc599b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-10-31 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In the municipality of Barcelos-Amazonas [State, Brazil], mid Rio Negro [Black River], the political mobilizations that instigate collective identities, are related to the ideas that the social agents can assure their territorial rights, which imply the social reproduction of traditional peoples and communities. These agents are mobilized in associations, cooperatives, trade unions, and in a colony of fishermen/women demanding access to the natural resources and territory, which in this case, coexist. It is these social agents that call themselves “piaçabeiros”, fishermen and “patrõezinhos”, or constitute indigenas peoples (Tariano, Tukano, Baniwa, Baré, Arapaço, Werequena, Tuyuca). The present dissertation aims to comprehend the dynamic of the territorial conflicts in Barcelos, AM, the central problem being the social implications of these conflicts for the extractivist practices of piaçaba traditionally executed by the self-defined “piaçabeiros”. The designation “piaçabeiros” is marked by discontinuities with respect to the social representation of these agents. For the realization of the research, an undertaking of 4 discontinuous years of fieldwork was necessary, together with the social agents mentioned above, as well as a documentary, bibliographical and archive survey. I interviewed a total of 40 social agents with in the extractivist workers, indigenous people, fishermen/women and piaçaba traders. With the demand for the demarcation of the indigenous land, done by the very indigenous people themselves, of distinct ethnicities of the mid Rio Negro, beginning in 2001, but made official in 2007, the territorial conflicts are intensified in the town, that already was present with the domination of the piaçaba traders designated as “patrões” at the [small] rivers that give access to the so called “piaçabais”. The production unit desginated as “piaçabal” is not only the place of where the piaçaba palm tree occurs. Such a unit is also especially articulated in a complex of social relations entwined in extractivist practices. In the scope of these conflicts, the mobilized and articulated social agents began to distinguish themselves and mobilize (ALMEIDA, 2004) through collective identities, instigating them and looking for identity recognition (FRASER, 2012) to pressure and assure what they consider territorial rights, which are articulated with the logic of access to natural resources. The piaçaba extractivist laborers are immersed in this power game and subordination between the dominant commercial sistem (“aviamento”) and the demands for access to resources that can be assured by the domain of the territory. / No município de Barcelos-AM, médio rio Negro, as mobilizações políticas que acionam identidades coletivas estão vinculadas às idéias de que os agentes sociais podem assegurar seus direitos territoriais, que implicam na reprodução social de povos e comunidades tradicionais. Estes agentes estão mobilizados em associações, cooperativas, sindicatos e colônia de pescadores reivindicando acesso aos recursos naturais e território, que nesse caso, coexistem. São eles que se autodenominam “piaçabeiros”, pescadores e “patrõezinhos”, ou constituem povos indígenas (tariano, tukano, baniwa, baré, arapaço, werequena, tuyuca). A presente dissertação objetiva compreender a dinâmica dos conflitos territoriais em Barcelos-AM, tendo como a problemática central as implicações sociais desses conflitos para as práticas extrativistas da piaçaba realizada tradicionalmente pelos autodefinidos “piaçabeiros”. A designação “piaçabeiro” é marcada por descontinuidades no que tange a representação social destes agentes. Para a realização desta pesquisa foi necessário um empreendimento de quatro anos descontínuos de trabalho de campo junto aos agentes sociais mencionados acima, além de levantamentos documentais, bibliográficos e arquivísticos. Entrevistei um total de 40 agentes sociais entre os trabalhadores extrativistas, indígenas, pescadores e comerciantes da piaçaba. Com a reivindicação da demarcação da terra indígena, feita pelos próprios indígenas de distintas etnias do médio rio Negro a partir de 2001, mas oficializada em 2007 é intensificado os conflitos territoriais no município, que já se faziam presente com o domínio dos comerciantes de piaçaba designados de “patrões” nos igarapés que dão acesso aos chamados “piaçabais”. A unidade de produção designada de “piaçabal” não é somente o lugar de incidência da palmeira de piaçaba, tal unidade está, sobretudo, articulada em um complexo de relações sociais atreladas à prática extrativista. No âmbito destes conflitos, os agentes sociais mobilizados e articulados começaram a se distinguir e mobilizar (ALMEIDA, 2004) através de identidades coletivas, as acionando e buscando reconhecimento (FRASER, 2012) identitário para fazer pressão e assegurar o que eles consideram por direitos territoriais que estão articulados com a lógica ao acesso dos recursos naturais. Os trabalhadores extrativistas da piaçaba estão imersos nesse jogo de poder e subordinação entre o sistema comercial vigente (“aviamento”) e as reivindicações de acesso aos recursos que podem ser assegurados mediante o domínio do território.

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The major purpose of this study is to analyze principles of the multiconfessional society in the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I focus mainly on conflicts between elites of the different religion which I analyze through the concept of collective identities. The main target group of the analysis is the highest political elite of the Commonwealth. Through examples of the leading magnates from Lithuania and Ukraine I show the relation between different collective identities, loyalties and political pragmatism in the time of political crisis after the year 1648. My question is, how far different religion influenced formation of the political camps and behaviour of magnates in this age. I conclude that religion was an important factor in forming of the opposition groups and conflicts but one can not see the magnate society strictly devided between confessional groups. The different religion played an important role if it merged with other collective identities such as class, regional or national identity. This was the case of the conflict in Ukraine.

A presente tese analisa a formação de uma questão racial na França contemporânea. A hipótese do trabalho é que o tema tornou-se um problema social, adotando a definição de Lenoir, após os protestos urbanos violentos de jovens em 2005. A partir do estudo da cobertura da imprensa norte-americana e britânica, observou-se que a visibilidade internacional das revoltas, assim como uma leitura dos analistas estrangeiros dos eventos em uma chave racial, impulsionou a emergência da questão no debate público francês. Por outro lado, no trabalho foram também analisados outros fatores internos e externos que levaram à criação na academia francesa de um campo de estudos das relações raciais e à formação de ações coletivas fundamentadas em uma valorização positiva das identidades raciais. Finalmente, a análise do debate midiático, acadêmico, das mobilizações sociais e da controvérsia sobre as estatísticas étnicas confirmou o reconhecimento da existência de uma questão racial na França, porém, deixando margens de dúvidas acerca de sua consolidação. / This dissertation analyzes the configuration of a racial question in contemporary France, intended as a social problem in accordance with Lenoirs definition. The research stresses the role of violent urban protests in 2005 as a turning point. The investigation of American and British press coverage of the events reveals that the international visibility of the riots and the explanation of those events in terms of race protests spurred the emergence of a racial question in the French public debate. The research also shows the influence of other internal and external factors that led to two developments. First, the creation of an academic area on race relations studies in France. Second, the formation of collective actions and social movements based on racial identities. Finally, the discussion on French ethnic statistics suggests the recognition of a racial question in France, even if its consolidation is still not confirmed.

A presente tese analisa a formação de uma questão racial na França contemporânea. A hipótese do trabalho é que o tema tornou-se um problema social, adotando a definição de Lenoir, após os protestos urbanos violentos de jovens em 2005. A partir do estudo da cobertura da imprensa norte-americana e britânica, observou-se que a visibilidade internacional das revoltas, assim como uma leitura dos analistas estrangeiros dos eventos em uma chave racial, impulsionou a emergência da questão no debate público francês. Por outro lado, no trabalho foram também analisados outros fatores internos e externos que levaram à criação na academia francesa de um campo de estudos das relações raciais e à formação de ações coletivas fundamentadas em uma valorização positiva das identidades raciais. Finalmente, a análise do debate midiático, acadêmico, das mobilizações sociais e da controvérsia sobre as estatísticas étnicas confirmou o reconhecimento da existência de uma questão racial na França, porém, deixando margens de dúvidas acerca de sua consolidação. / This dissertation analyzes the configuration of a racial question in contemporary France, intended as a social problem in accordance with Lenoirs definition. The research stresses the role of violent urban protests in 2005 as a turning point. The investigation of American and British press coverage of the events reveals that the international visibility of the riots and the explanation of those events in terms of race protests spurred the emergence of a racial question in the French public debate. The research also shows the influence of other internal and external factors that led to two developments. First, the creation of an academic area on race relations studies in France. Second, the formation of collective actions and social movements based on racial identities. Finally, the discussion on French ethnic statistics suggests the recognition of a racial question in France, even if its consolidation is still not confirmed.

Since the wave of civil violence in the USA in the 1960s, many social theorists have tried to explain why riots occur. Despite at least 50 years of research since then, there is still not enough insight to anticipate large events like the 2011 Arab Spring and London riots. The main goal of this thesis is therefore to improve understanding about how underlying conditions influence and drive riot dynamics, such as the intensity, spread, and duration. I develop a new mechanistic and stochastic agent-based model for riots. Previous models have either only targeted general phenomena associated with riots, or aimed at behaviour specific to a single event. In this thesis I combine both approaches: I demonstrate how the model in which the motivation of the agents is based on general concepts, can be applied to the specific situation of the 2011 London riots. The model reproduces the majority of the behaviour observed in the London riots (r = 0.4-0.8). One of the key factors under investigation is the relationship between protests and outbursts of civil violence. Riots are often preceded by protests, such that a large pool of potential rioters is directly available. I find that the number of times a protest is repeated has greater influence on riot dynamics than the protest crowd size. The support shown during demonstrations might incite false confidence in individuals, potentially leading to quicker escalation. Another question is how contact networks and collective identity influence the spread of violence between different locations. The role of online social media (e.g. Twitter) has been a major focus in trying to explain why the violence in the 2011 Arab spring spread so quickly and so far. I investigate the role of social similarity as another factor that might have contributed to the diffusion of unrest, and demonstrate the existence of a critical transition in riot activity when increasing the density of the contact network in the model. Such increases in density beyond the critical thresholds might have been introduced by online social networks. Finally, I explore the sensitivity to cooperation of different potential riot groups. In some cases, mixed populations with different collective identities can form coalitions within neighbourhoods based on shared grievances, which could lead to increases in riot size and riot probability. I examine the influence of the social structure and spread of these populations over different neighbourhoods, as well as the overlap in grievances and different demographic structures.

No description available.