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Abstract
Stereotyping and prejudice, as the essential aspects of intergroup relations, are among the basic psychological determinants of conflicts. In this article, the knowledge of the categories of stereotypes and prejudice in societies experiencing intractable conflicts was applied to the study of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1995. The author attempts to answer the following questions: What was the role stereotypes and prejudice played in enabling the conflict? How did the groups involved in the conflict form the images about and attitudes toward each other? Results show that ethnically biased history has often been used in Bosnia as a tool for ethnic division and conflict. Rather than the mere fact of existence of negative stereotypes, it was the use of stereotypes and prejudice which was institutionalized through national narratives and manipulation of animosities by political elites that greatly contributed to the evolvement, maintenance, and management of the civil war.
I thought often of the refugees I had visited in 1992: how they knew many of the men who had killed and raped their families; how some of the killers had been their co-workers for twenty years; and how they had hardly been aware of ethnic hatred until 1990.
Richard C. Holbrooke
(recalling the events in Bosnia in To End A War, 1998)
Introduction
Ethnic and political conflicts have been part of human experience throughout history. Their persistence in contemporary times is evident in examples such as the Middle East, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In these places, groups clash and resort to violent means, including terrorism, atrocities, wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. In these conflicts, group members act on the basis of the knowledge, images, attitudes, feelings, and emotions that they hold about the conflict; about their own past, present, and future as a group; and about the rival group (BarTal & Teichman, 2005, p.l). One might think that conflicts are about disagreements and contradictions with regard to real issues such as territories, self-determination, resources, or trade. However, as Daniel Bar-Tal and Yona Teichman note in their study, Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society (2005), the psychological foundations of conflicts contribute greatly to their evolution, maintenance, and management.
Stereotyping and prejudice, as the essential aspects of intergroup relations,...