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Community Resilience to Sectarian Violence in Baghdad pp 23–39Cite as

Violence and Extremism: Sources of Sectarian Violence in Baghdad

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Abstract

This Chapter integrates multiple empirical explanations about the causes of sectarian and ethnic conflict and settles on constructivism as the “middle-ground” theoretical framework for introducing the nature of religious and tribal identity in Iraq. This Chapter explores several deeply rooted causes of sectarian conflict in Iraq including the nature of religious and tribal identity and the Sunni–Shi’a fracture to which many attribute sectarian violence. However, the Chapter concludes by pointing toward more proximate causes of violent conflict in Iraq: the cultural context of the modern Iraqi state, influential roles played by religious and political figures, and the structural, political, and economic sources of internal conflict present in Iraq prior to the US invasion.

“Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.”

Lao Tzu

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Per Jeffrey Checkel’s admonition that constructivist scholarship should focus on delimited aspects of the social world in order to generate ‘middle range’ theories of the actors and mechanisms bringing about change.

  2. 2.

    The connection between language and social relations is often contested and is far too complex a topic to dwell on here. For differing perspectives on the question of whether language embodies or constitutes social relations (or both), see [14, 15].

  3. 3.

    Robert Kaplan, in his dispatches for The Atlantic and in his Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (New York: St. Martin’s 1993), and (writing mainly on large-scale conflict) Samuel P. Huntington, in "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993): 22–49.

  4. 4.

    Brown (2001). Ethnic and Internal Conflicts.

  5. 5.

    Middens 1990.

  6. 6.

    Pruitt and Kim 2004: 29. See also Gaertner & Dovido 2000; Tajfel and Turner 1979.

  7. 7.

    Pruitt and Kim, 2004: 29, emphasis mine. Underpinning the division of people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is the universal and biologically rooted tendency toward social categorization, a cognitive mechanism for dividing the world into separate categories so as to bring order to the enormous array of stimuli encountered. Thus, the process of designating someone as a member of one’s own group (i.e., the in-group) or not (i.e., a member of an out group) is one that occurs almost automatically.

  8. 8.

    Tajfel and Turner 1986.

  9. 9.

    The importance of social identity is paramount in the study of human relationships, though social scientists lack cross-disciplinary agreement on its meaning. Well known to psychologists and sociologists is Tajfel’s social identity theory (SIT) and accompanying definition of social identity as “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significant attached to that membership” (1981, 255).

  10. 10.

    Stereotypes are cognitive structures that contain simplified and highly categorical information about a person, group, place, or thing. Although stereotypes aid our cognitive sorting system in perceiving, encoding, storing, and retrieving social data, they are highly simplified versions of reality that ignore the great variability that exists among people in any given group.

  11. 11.

    Although Shi’a Muslims are the majority in Iran and Iraq (and large minority communities live in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Lebanon), 80 % of the world’s Muslim population are Sunni.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego, Alcala Park 5998, San Diego, CA, 92110, USA

    Ami C. Carpenter

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Correspondence to Ami C. Carpenter .

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Carpenter, A.C. (2014). Violence and Extremism: Sources of Sectarian Violence in Baghdad. In: Community Resilience to Sectarian Violence in Baghdad. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8812-5_2

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