ASA Section Activities Montreal 2024.

40810 - Open Session on Issues in Peace, War and Social Conflict

Mon, August 12, 2:00 to 3:30pm, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 511F

Presider: Brenda L. Moore, University at Buffalo

Session Organizers: Andrew P. Davis, North Carolina State University, Selina R. Gallo-Cruz, Syracuse University

At the Heart of It: The Relationship between Memorials and Emotions

Ashley Veronica Reichelmann, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

James E. Hawdon, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

This manuscript explores if and how memorial placement affects the collective emotions of respondents. This question is of importance, since previous research has found: 1) representations of racial violence trigger emotional responses among implicated groups, and 2) collective emotions are associated with policy support, meaning memorials can have both direct and indirect consequences on policy support. To target this question, the manuscript assesses the effects of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) on the residents of Montgomery, Alabama, where it was developed and built, focusing on how memorialization impacts guilt, shame, threat, resentment, and anger, in comparison to non-residents. Using longitudinal data from the “Memorialization and Community” project, we conduct a repeated measures analysis, regressing post-opening emotions (September 2018) on pre-opening emotions (April 2018), residency, visit, race, and other socio-demographic variables. The results indicate that the memorial does not have an independent long-term effect on emotional change; however, visiting increases guilt, net of race, and in less saturated models, visiting increases anger. Two other variables were consistently related to changes in emotions: pre-opening emotions were positively related to all emotions and conservativism was inversely related to them, save a positive relationship with resentment and no relationship with threat. The results also reaffirm previously observed relationships between socio-demographics and emotions. An inverse relationship between whiteness and threat was an unexpected finding. The final paper will discuss the theoretical and practical implications these findings have for future memorial development and its potential role in the transitional justice and reparations process.

Could resolving the protracted FDLR insurgency de-escalate the deadliest conflicts in the eastern DR Congo?

Eustache Zihalirwa Zigashane, Texas A&M University-College Station

This paper builds upon Azar’s (1990) protracted social conflict theory to examine the armed insurgency of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). My analysis indicates that the focus on military approaches fails to address the FDLR insurgency, escalates conflict, and exacerbates regional tensions. Following the historical context, I examine data collected in the province of North Kivu through semi-structured interviews and structured questionnaires. Results show that unmet needs and struggles accessing natural resources contribute to the FDLR insurgency. I conclude that stabilizing the region requires more than resolving the FDLR problem. Specifically, stabilization requires full implementation of the 2013 Addis Ababa Peace, Security, and Cooperation Framework for the DR Congo and the Region. The findings of this paper can assist scholars and policymakers with alternative solutions to the conflicts in the DR Congo.

How the State Shows Up: Theorizing the Transitional State after Violence

Leslie Elva MacColman, Brandeis University

Peter Dixon, Columbia University

After mass violence, countries face the daunting task of reestablishing relationships both within society and between society and the state. Where the state was itself implicated in the violence, as it often is, how does the state show up in people's lives? This question is important both for our theoretical understanding of the role of the state in transition from violence to peace, as well as our analyses of these transitions in practice. Although social reconstruction processes vary widely among countries, much can be gained through comparative analysis. In this paper, we develop a new way of conceptualizing the role of the state in social reconstruction after violence, building on the state-in-society approach advanced by Joel Migdal and drawing on a unique dataset of perceptions of the state in Colombia and Sri Lanka. Using this approach, we explore similarities and differences in community-level indicators of reconciliation and justice in both countries. We find that across both countries, different social groups share a high level of importance on the state’s role in processes of social transformation after conflict. Our second finding, which we present here in-part, highlights that different social groups in transitional societies experience the state differently, depending on their actual position in society and their historical experience of violence. This has important implications for how we understand the role of the state in transitions from violence to peace.

The Threatening Contexts of Criminal Wars and a Non-Responsive State

Dolores Trevizo, Occidental College

This chapter offers a theoretical framework for understanding various responses to Mexico’s criminal wars, including protests against them. If, as Albert Hirschman argues, people generally respond to challenging contexts with either exit or voice strategies, in Mexico each approach has subvariants: Whereas exit strategies take the form both of displacement and what I call “silent bystanding,” voice strategies manifest as both non-violent and violent protests. To explain such varied responses, this chapter interrogates the role of threat; and specifically the kind posed by a combination of a weak state’s acts of omission, its acts of commission, as well as the threat posed by nonstate armed actors. To illustrate, Mexico’s criminal wars—--themselves partly the result of the country’s low-capacity state—account for various exit or voice responses depending on the degree of threat intensity, one ranging in scale from general criminal insecurity to a direct, personal or community, death threat. While the latter tends to result in exodus, I show that in some cases direct threats catalyze collective armed resistance. This is more likely when the threat of cartel violence is credible, imminent, proximate, and severe, but also perceived as malleable (diminishable) through collective resistance.

41035 - Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict Roundtables

Mon, August 12, 4:00 to 5:00pm, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 517B

Session Organizers: Andrew P. Davis, North Carolina State University, Selina R. Gallo-Cruz, Syracuse University

-Roundtable 1: Gender and Conflict

Presider:  Anneliese M Schenk-Day, Ohio State University

Co-optation or Creation?: Organizational Constraints on the use of Sexual Violence in Authoritarian Regimes - Joelle Marie Rosenberg, University of California-Los Angeles

Feminist Elites: The Emergence of Elites-Turned-Activists during the Arab Spring in Tunisia, 2010-2021 - Maro Youssef, George Washington University

Gendered Components of Silencing Rescuers During Commemoration Events of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda - Anneliese M Schenk-Day, Ohio State University; Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira, The Ohio State University; Nicole Fox, California State University-Sacramento

The Hate Industry: Anti-Transgender Rhetoric and the Cultivation of Violence - Jack Gabriel Risien Wippell, Ohio State University

-Roundtable 2: Legacies of Violence and the State

Presider: Michelle I. Gawerc, Loyola University Maryland

Coordination Issues in reform of modern China - yi none hu, Yu Qun public opinoin research institute

Cultural Heritage Education and Militarization: A Case-Study of Israel’s Castel National Heritage Site - Rudy Kisler

It’s Complicated: How Civil War Education Impacts Support for Confederate Statues - Heidi Michele Williams, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Ashley Veronica Reichelmann, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Reckoning with Racial Terror for Racial Healing and Transformation: Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission - Michelle I. Gawerc, Loyola University Maryland

-Roundtable 3: Advances in Conflict Theory

Presider: Selina R. Gallo-Cruz, Syracuse University

Conflicting norms, frames and definitions of the situation - David (Jed) D. Schwartz

Fractal Narratives: Intersections of Violence at the Urban Margins - Andrea Roman Alfaro, University of Toronto

Neo-Medievalism or a New Cold War? A Comparative Study of World Powers, Paramilitaries, and Global Conflict - Cameron Graham, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Religious Hegemony and Political Regime: Examining the Inverted U relationship with Conflict - Tamanna Maqbool Shah, Ohio University

-Roundtable 4: Contemporary Global Conflicts

Presider: Isabel Maria Kenngott, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Sociological analysis of Religious intolerance among Shia and Sunni Sects - Aman Ullah, university of Swabi

The First Casualty of War: Fake News in the Israel-Gaza War - Ori Swed, Texas Tech University; Kaeyln Lara, Peace, War, and Social Conflict Laboratory; Connor Perry, Texas Tech University

The Positioning of Chinese Diplomacy on Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine - Isabel Maria Kenngott, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Effects of water on the peace and conflict of societies. Middle East case study - ZANIAR Zamiran; MARYAM Mirzaee ghale, Payame Noor University

-Roundtable 5: Peace and Justice Movements

Presider: Nikoleta Sremac, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Justice for Palestine: Student Movement in the US - Juan Du, Huizhou University; Srijana Karki, Texas A& M University Corpus Christi

Responses of the violent Muslim groups to the “Muslim terrorist” stereotype - Hakim Zainiddinov, Bowdoin College

The New Peacebuilders: Shifting Violence, Shifting Peace in Northern Central America - Robert Brenneman,       Goshen College

41135 - Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict Business Meeting

Mon, August 12, 5:00 to 5:30pm, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 517B

Session Submission Type: Business Meeting

40149 - Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict Council Meeting

Mon, August 12, 7:00 to 7:45am, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 522C

Session Submission Type: Council Meeting

Joint Reception: Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance; Section on Sociology of Law; Section on Sociology of Human Rights; Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict; Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity

Sun, August 11, 6:30 to 8:30pm, Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Floor: Level 5, 517C