JPM631: Psychological and Social Aspects of Armed Conflicts

Syllabus of the course

Winter semester 2015/2016

The course will start on 3rd November 2015 and it will then take place every Tuesday six/seven times, with one exception in the end of November that will be specified.

Course leader: Hana Oberpfalzerová

The aim of this course is to make the students familiar with key theories and concepts from the area of psychological and social aspects of armed conflicts. The course will have a strongly multidisciplinary character and it will deal with theories from disciplines such as peace and conflict studies, social / political / peace psychology, sociology, anthropology, communication studies and religion / theology. These theories will be illustrated through the presentation of several key case studies. Special attenttion will be paid to ethnic and intractable conflicts and to the role of religion in the violence perpetrated by the "Islamic State".

The course will provide the students with new and maybe unexpected perspectives, concepts and tools that will widen their view of armed conflicts and of the possibilities of their analysis and intervention in them. It shall open their mind for a deep understanding of the causes and processes that determine the outbreak, course and settlement of armed conflicts. We will also see that things are sometimes not as they seem to be: be it the fact that an average "good" human can under certain circumstances commit the worst evil, that media play a key role in conflict, that conflicts can be resolved in a nonviolent way, etc.

The course will consist of 6 mandatory seminars. For each seminar, the students will have to read about 100 pages and respond to questions concerning these readings. The readings will be either online or on Moodle and the responses are to be uploaded on Moodle as well. During the lessons the teacher will discuss the texts with students, complementing them with other topics, observations and examples.

The course will end with a seventh seminar with voluntary participation that will introduce the students to the methods and practices of researching social and psychological aspects of armed conflicts, in order to help the students understand how they can research these topics themselves.

Credit requirements

Students must fulfill ALL of the following requirements, otherwise they will not be allowed to pass the course:

a) Participation in the seminar (1 absence allowed)

b) Reading of all mandatory texts and responding to the required questions and/or performing given research tasks (homework) before the seminar, respecting the required number of words. The deadline for sending the responses is the night before the respective seminar at 6 PM so I can read them. If the students send the annotations later than at midnight, they will be penalized by losing 2 point from the total number of points for the given annotation.

Moodle of our course: http://dl1.cuni.cz/enrol/index.php?id=4174, use your login to SIS and register for the course.

The texts that are not on Moodle are either in free online access or in library databases that you can find at www.pez.cuni.cz

c) Term paper at the end of the course that will deal with psychological and/or social aspects of an armed conflict of the student´s choice (4000 - 5000 words). Every paper must have a conceptual or a theoretical framework. The topic has to be agreed with the course leader in advance per email before 15th December 2015. The students will have one, and only one chance to improve their grade for the paper. Final deadline for the paper is 10th January. Please note that the papers submitted by Czech students have to respect the ČSN ISO 690 norm as promoted by the Jinonice library (with a few exceptions such as the ISBN that I will specify Papers not respecting the citation norm will not be accepted. Plagiarism will be punished by exclusion from the course.

Grading:

Annotations: 30% of the final grade (6 annotations, 5 points per annotation, 30 points in total maximum)

Term paper: 70% of the grade (70 points)

Excellent: 100 - 88 points
Very good: 87 - 70 points
Good: 69 - 55 points
Fail: 54 points and less

Program of the course

Please note that the readings follow a logical order and build one upon another. It is strongly suggested that you read them in the order that is indicated in the syllabus.

1. Armed conflict: genesis and escalation

a) Johan Galtung´s theory of conflict: the conflict triangle (attitudes, behaviour, contradiction), manifest and latent conflict, destructive and constructive conflict, conflict transformation. Prejudice.

b) Preconditions for the emergence of armed conflict: three types of violence (structural, cultural, direct), the victim-perpetrator circle

c) Lewis Coser´s theory of conflict: realistic/unrealistic conflict, scapegoating and their application to the concept of diversionary war

d) Media and its possible roles in armed conflict

Required readings:

GALTUNG, Johan, 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. Oslo: International Peace Research Institute [Ebrary]

úvod - část 2 (The Direct-Structural-Cultural Violence) (1 p.)
2.1 - Conflict Formations (10 pp.)

4.1 - Cultural violence - 4.1 a 4.2 (196 - 201)

KRIESBERG, Louis a Bruce W DAYTON, 2012. Constructive conflicts: from escalation to resolution. 4th ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. (chapter "Bases of Social Conflicts" - p. 23 - 47)

MARKER, Sandra, 2003. Unmet Human Needs. In: BURGESS, Guy; BURGESS, Heidi (eds.). Beyond Intractability [online]. Boulder: Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado. Posted: August 2003 [cit. 2014-11-06] . Available from <http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/human-needs

MIALL, Hugh, 2004. Conflict Transformation: Conflict Transformation: A Multi-Dimensional Task. [online] Berlin: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management [cit. 2015-10-7]. Available from: http://www.toolkit.ineesite.org/resources/ineecms/uploads/1283/Miall,_H._2004_Conflict_transformation.pdf [1]

GAVIN, Alis, 2006. Conflict transformation in the Middle East : Dr. Johan Galtung on Confederation in Iraq and a Middle East Community for Israel/Palestine. Peace Power. Berkeley´s journal of nonviolence and conflict transformation [online]. Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6 - 7 [cit. 2015-09-27]. Available from: http://www.calpeacepower.org/0201/PDF/galtung_transcend.pdf

VOLKAN, Vamik Djemal, 2009. Bosnia-Herzegovina: Chosen Trauma and Its Transgenerational Transmission. In. Vamik D. Volkan [online] Charlottesville, Va. [cit. 2015-09-27]. Available from: http://www.vamikvolkan.com/Bosnia-Herzegovina%3A-Chosen-Trauma-and-Its-Transgenerational-Transmision.php . (16 pp.)

OBERSCHALL, Anthony., 2000. The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation to violence and war in Yugoslavia. Ethnic and racial studies, Vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 982-1001.

Framing and Framing Theory. In: California State University Northridge [online] Northridge, CA: California State University Northridge. 8 August 2004 [cit. 2015-09-27]. Available from: http://www.csun.edu/~rk33883/Framing%20Theory%20Lect