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Table of Contents
Introduction
Outgroups: Us vs. Them
Outgroups and Social Contact
Out groups and Geography
Outgroups: Perceptions of Others
Outgroup Perceptions: Answers and Questions
Out Group Behavior: Cause and Effect
Out groups and Violence
Group and Personal Safety and Security
Special Interest Groups and Homogeneity
Out Groups and History
Civil Society and Inter Group Cooperation
Out Group Cooperation
Groups and Trust
Group Homogeneity
Group Think and Homogeneity
Emotional Motivations
Summary
References
Civil War or Family Feud: Iraq''s Ethnic Groups
Dr. Jon Gresham
Farouk Saleh, Shara Majid, Jaafar Reken Muwair.
European Research Center On Migration & Ethnic Relations.
University of Utrecht, Netherlands.
http://civilsociety.seedwiki.com.
To download a copy of this eBook, please email to me, and I will send to you a link to the book.
Email to: INTL _at_ securenym.net (change the _at_ to @). Thank you.
Sample from the first Chapter.
Ali and his cousin, Hussein1, operate a small bakery in Basra, Iraq, near the Diafa Hotel. They complained to me about problems caused by Sunni clans.
"Why do the Sunni hate us Shia?" asked Ali.
"We only want to be left in peace. They have their ways and we have ours. What is their problem with that? They always want to kill us."
A few days before I had been in Baghdad. There, Yiannis1, who is _NOT_ a Shia, warned me,
"Be careful among those violent Shia....it is dangerous to be among them."
Introduction
I would love to see simple explanations for the conflicts among Iraqi groups, and in this article will distinguish between what we observers can know and what we can only assume.
I have lived in the Middle East intermittently for the last thirty years, first, as a student, and then leading development and research projects in both theoretical and applied research. The Middle Eastern peoples fascinate me with their complex cultural interactions.
My work as a researcher and activist led me to build a team to study social attitudes of Iraqis, both visible and subtle. The main research questions addressed the effects of geographic location, social class, education, ethnicity, and religion on relations between social groups. Our main assumption was that conflicts between clans, tribes, and sects were not based on mere religious or ethnic differences.
We built a study in 2003 to test basic methods to explore assumptions and communicate facts about Iraq social systems. Our projects in 2005 added studies of social networks and social capital, giving a deeper look into motivations and support structures of inter-group conflict. We used quantitative surveys, looking at how many of what types of participants chose what types of answers out of a standard list.
But, we also used personal interviews to clarify opinions not easily captured by the numerical answers. This also led us into new personal friendships and opportunities to use our own social networks to find jobs and other tangible benefits for survey participants. We wanted our research to be practical, not merely academic.
The most important finding from our studies in 2003-2005 of social conflict in Iraq was that,
"Ethnic and religious identities alone do not relate strongly towards feelings about other groups."
That is, feelings and opinions of Iraqis about other Iraqis were not based solely on either the ethnic or religious identities. Again, Iraqis said that conflict between Iraqi groups was not over religion or ethnicity. Almost all Iraqis surveyed reported that Iraqis had no personal hatred or violent feelings towards other social groups because of ethnic or religious differences. Violent sectarianism is simply not a part of mainline Iraqi culture. But, we will see that social group conflicts do include elements of religion and ethnicity.
