Attracted to Conflict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations PDF
Preview Attracted to Conflict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations
Peace Psychology Book Series Series Editor: Daniel J. Christie Robin R. Vallacher · Peter T. Coleman Andrzej Nowak · Lan Bui-Wrzosinska Larry Liebovitch · Katharina G. Kugler Andrea Bartoli Attracted to Confl ict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations Peace Psychology Book Series Series Editor Daniel J. Christie For furthervolumes: http://www.springer.com/series/7298 Springer Complexity Springer Complexity is an interdisciplinary program publishing the best research and academic-level teaching on both fundamental and applied aspects of complex systems – cutting across all traditional disciplines of the natural and life sciences, engineering, economics,medicine,neuroscience,socialandcomputerscience. Complex Systems are systems that comprise many interacting parts with the ability to generateanewqualityofmacroscopiccollectivebehaviorthemanifestationsofwhichare thespontaneousformationofdistinctivetemporal,spatialorfunctionalstructures.Modelsof such systems can be successfully mapped onto quite diverse “real-life” situations like the climate, the coherent emission of light from lasers, chemical reaction-diffusion systems, biologicalcellularnetworks,thedynamicsofstockmarketsandoftheinternet,earthquake statistics and prediction, freeway traffic, the human brain, or the formation of opinions in socialsystems,tonamejustsomeofthepopularapplications. Although their scope and methodologies overlap somewhat, one can distinguish the following main concepts and tools: self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, synergetics, turbulence,dynamicalsystems,catastrophes,instabilities,stochasticprocesses,chaos,graphs and networks, cellular automata, adaptive systems, genetic algorithms and computational intelligence. ThethreemajorbookpublicationplatformsoftheSpringerComplexityprogramarethe monographseries“UnderstandingComplexSystems”focusingonthevariousapplications of complexity, the “Springer Series in Synergetics”, which is devoted to the quantitative theoreticalandmethodologicalfoundations,andthe“SpringerBriefsinComplexity”which are concise and topical working reports, case-studies, surveys, essays and lecture notes of relevance to the field. In addition to the books in these two core series, the program also incorporatesindividualtitlesrangingfromtextbookstomajorreferenceworks. EditorialandProgrammeAdvisoryBoard HenryAbarbanel,InstituteforNonlinearScience,UniversityofCalifornia,SanDiego,USA DanBraha,NewEnglandComplexSystemsInstituteandUniversityofMassachusettsDartmouth,USA Pe´terE´rdi,CenterforComplexSystemsStudies,KalamazooCollege,USAandHungarianAcademy ofSciences,Budapest,Hungary KarlFriston,InstituteofCognitiveNeuroscience,UniversityCollegeLondon,London,UK HermannHaken,CenterofSynergetics,UniversityofStuttgart,Stuttgart,Germany ViktorJirsa,CentreNationaldelaRechercheScientifique(CNRS),Universite´delaMe´diterrane´e,Marseille, France JanuszKacprzyk,SystemResearch,PolishAcademyofSciences,Warsaw,Poland KunihikoKaneko,ResearchCenterforComplexSystemsBiology,TheUniversityofTokyo,Tokyo,Japan ScottKelso,CenterforComplexSystemsandBrainSciences,FloridaAtlanticUniversity,BocaRaton,USA MarkusKirkilionis,MathematicsInstituteandCentreforComplexSystems,UniversityofWarwick, Coventry,UK Ju¨rgenKurths,NonlinearDynamicsGroup,UniversityofPotsdam,Potsdam,Germany AndrzejNowak,DepartmentofPsychology,WarsawUniversity,Poland LindaReichl,CenterforComplexQuantumSystems,UniversityofTexas,Austin,USA PeterSchuster,TheoreticalChemistryandStructuralBiology,UniversityofVienna,Vienna,Austria FrankSchweitzer,SystemDesign,ETHZurich,Zurich,Switzerland DidierSornette,EntrepreneurialRisk,ETHZurich,Zurich,Switzerland StefanThurner,SectionforScienceofComplexSystems,MedicalUniversityofVienna,Vienna,Austria Robin R. Vallacher (cid:129) Peter T. Coleman Andrzej Nowak (cid:129) Lan Bui-Wrzosinska (cid:129) Larry Liebovitch (cid:129) Katharina G. Kugler (cid:129) Andrea Bartoli Attracted to Conflict: Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations RobinR.Vallacher PeterT.Coleman DepartmentofPsychology InternationalCenterforCooperationand FloridaAtlanticUniversity ConflictResolution BocaRaton,Florida TeachersCollege USA ColumbiaUniversity NewYork USA AndrzejNowak LanBui-Wrzosinska DepartmentofPsychology InternationalCenterforComplexityand UniversityofWarsaw Conflict Warsaw,Poland WarsawSchoolofSocialSciencesand Humanities Warsaw,Poland LarryLiebovitch KatharinaG.Kugler DivisionofMathematicsand EconomicandOrganisationalPsychology NaturalSciences Ludwig-Maximilians-UniversitaetMuenchen CityUniversityofNewYork Munich,Germany QueensCollege NewYork USA AndreaBartoli SchoolforConflictAnalysisandResolution GeorgeMasonUniversity Arlington,Virginia USA ISBN978-3-642-35279-9 ISBN978-3-642-35280-5(eBook) DOI10.1007/978-3-642-35280-5 SpringerHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2013935946 #Springer-VerlagBerlinHeidelberg2013 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionor informationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.Exemptedfromthislegalreservationarebriefexcerpts inconnectionwithreviewsorscholarlyanalysisormaterialsuppliedspecificallyforthepurposeofbeing enteredandexecutedonacomputersystem,forexclusiveusebythepurchaserofthework.Duplication ofthispublicationorpartsthereofispermittedonlyundertheprovisionsoftheCopyrightLawofthe Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer.PermissionsforusemaybeobtainedthroughRightsLinkattheCopyrightClearanceCenter. ViolationsareliabletoprosecutionundertherespectiveCopyrightLaw. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexempt fromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication,neithertheauthorsnortheeditorsnorthepublishercanacceptanylegalresponsibilityfor anyerrorsoromissionsthatmaybemade.Thepublishermakesnowarranty,expressorimplied,with respecttothematerialcontainedherein. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) Preface Conflict is ubiquitous in social life, leaving no realm of human interaction untouched. The potential for conflict in social relations has not gone unnoticed in psychologyandthesocialsciences,asevidentinthemanyinsightfulperspectives thathavebeenadvancedregardingthiscentralfeatureofhumannature.Despitethis long-standing preoccupation, however, conflict in all its manifestations has yet to beintegratedwithrespecttoaunifiedsetofprinciples.Thelackofanagreed-upon theoreticalsynthesisishardlysurprising.Conflictcancharacterizesocialrelations as distinct as marriage, parliamentary democracy, and international negotiations. Conflict can be a one-off experience, lasting minutes or even seconds, or it can becomeapersistentstatethatunfoldsovermonths,years,orevendecades.Conflict can be a constructive experience, promoting innovation and a shared reality, or it canengagethemostdestructiveaspectsofhumannature,promotingextremeforms of violence, disrupting social progress, and magnifying differences in people’s beliefs andvalues.Andconflictcansetinmotionmechanismsthatprovide forits resolutionoritcanrepresentaself-sustainingprocessthatmakesresolutionvirtu- allyimpossible. Theperspectivedevelopedinthisbookwasmotivatedinpartbytheinabilityof traditional models of social relations to impose coherence on the multifaceted natureofconflictinhumanaffairs.Weapproachedthistaskfromwhatmayseem like an ironic assumption: that the diversity of conflict can be integrated with respect to a perspective on science that encompasses the far greater diversity of phenomena in the natural world. This perspective—nonlinear dynamical systems theory—has proven successful since the 1970s in establishing the invariant pro- cesses that underlie seemingly distinct topics in fields such as physics, chemistry, cosmology,andbiology.Inrecentyears,themetaphors,principles,andmethodsof nonlineardynamicalsystemshavebeensuccessfullyadaptedtothesubjectmatter of human experience, from cognitive and social psychology to economics and politicalscience.Thisbookdescribeshowthedynamicalperspectiveinpsychology has been extended to understanding human conflict at different levels of social v vi Preface reality, from dyadic tensions to interstate warfare, with special emphasis on conflictsthataredestructiveandseeminglyimpervioustoresolution.Suchintrac- table conflicts are relatively rare, but their toll in loss of life, property damage, resourcedepletion,anddrainingofsocialcapitalqualifiesthemasamongthemost consequentialofallsocialproblems.Andtheyhaveproventobethemostdifficult tounderstand,letaloneanticipateorresolve. Considerable progress has been made over the past decade in framing the key features of intractable conflict in terms of formal models informed by nonlinear dynamical systems. These models have been instantiated incomputer simulations and tested against archival and empirical data. But this book is intended to be heuristicaswellassynthetic,establishingaroadmapforfutureresearchagendas. So in addition to framing conflict in dynamical terms and presenting supportive research,wepointtoareasinwhichmorescholarlyworkisneededandweoutline thestrategiesbywhichthesetheoreticalandempiricalgoalscanbeaccomplished. Because the potential for destructive and intractable conflict cuts across all levels of human experience, comprehensive yet nuanced understanding is best served by enlisting the involvement of theorists, researchers, and practitioners with correspondingly diverse areas of expertise. The authors of this book reflect thismultidisciplinaryapproach.Ourteamincludesanexperimentalsocialpsychol- ogist (Vallacher), a social psychologist with expertise in computer simulation of socialprocesses(Nowak),threesocial-organizationalpsychologistsspecializingin conflict management and resolution (Coleman, Bui-Wrzosinska, and Kugler), a cultural anthropologist with firsthand experience in intrastate conflict resolution and peace processes (Bartoli), and a physicist with expertise in complexity and nonlinear dynamical systems (Liebovitch). This collaborative effort, initiated in 2006,hastackledawiderangeoftopics,includingdyadic(e.g.,marital)conflicts, intra-organizationaldisputes,schoolviolence,civilwar,interstatewarfare,negoti- ation,peacebuilding,andsustainability. The scholarly output of our team to date would have been impossible without the valuable cooperation of colleagues and the organizational and financial assistance provided by several institutes and foundations. Much of the initial work in developing the dynamical framework, generating formal models, and collecting empirical data was funded by a grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Generous funding for conferences and workshops has been provided by the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) andtheAdvancedConsortiumonCooperation,Conflict,andComplexity(AC4)at ColumbiaUniversity;theInstituteforConflictAnalysisandResolution (ICAR) at George Mason University; the Community Foundation of Boulder; the Peace Studies Program at Florida Atlantic University; and the Berghof Foundation. Finally, we wish to acknowledge several colleagues, postdoctoral students, and graduate students for their invaluable scholarly contributions to our research program: Pawal Haltof, Wojciech Borkowski, Naira Musallam, Christine Chung, Jay Michaels, Susan Sullivan, and Vincent Naudot. The success of our efforts to date, as represented in this book, is attributable in large measure to the Preface vii collaborative spirit—and constructive conflict—inspired in our team by the aforementioned individuals and organizational entities. BocaRaton,FL RobinR.Vallacher NewYork,NY PeterT.Coleman Warsaw,Poland AndrzejNowak Flushing,NY LanBui-Wrzosinska Munich,Germany LarryLiebovitch Arlington,VI KatharinaG.Kugler AndreaBartoli . Contents 1 Overview:ConflictinHumanExperience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ChapterOverview. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 2 TheProblemofIntractableConflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 IntractableConflictintheContemporaryWorld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 WhatWeKnowAboutIntractableConflict. .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. 5 WhatWeDon’tKnowAboutIntractableConflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 TheRelevanceofSocialPsychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 TheAdvantagesofSocialPsychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 TheLimitationsofSocialPsychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 PuttingSocialPsychologyinContext. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 TheRelevanceofComplexityScience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 TheEssenceofComplexityScience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 ComplexityScienceandSocialConflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 TheOrganizationandTrajectoryofThisBook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Chapter2.Origins:ThePromiseofDynamicalSystemsTheory. . . 13 Chapter3.Foundations:TheDynamicalPerspectiveonSocial Processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Chapter4.Patterns:TrajectoriesofConflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Chapter5.Traps:IntractableConflictasaDynamicalSystem. . . . . 15 Chapter6.Escape:HowIntractableConflictsCanBeTransformed. . . 15 Chapter7.Sustainability:TheDynamicsofEnduringPeace. . . . . . 15 Chapter8.Epilogue:ConflictintheTwentyFirstCentury. . . . . . . 16 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2 Origins:ThePromiseofDynamicalSystemsTheory. . . . . . . . . . . 19 LessonsfromPeaceandConflictStudies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 TheParadoxesofSocialConflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 TheDiversityofConflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 FiveParadigmsofConflictStudies. .. . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. 27 ix
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