February 17: Influences

Conflict. Ch 8. "Situations"

This chapter talks about the influence of situations on how people behave. The author makes his argument for the importance of the situation on behavior by creating a continuum of where theorists have placed causes for behavior. On one end is personality and on the other is social structure. The situational viewpoint falls in the middle of the two. The author brings up the idea that interveners and third-parties could use the power of situations to their advantage. For example, they could manipulate where the parties are sitting.
I thought this chapter was important because it gave a lot of data to support the idea that situations are a large influence on how people act. I really liked the point that the author brought up about how this knowledge could help researchers to figure out how different environments affect conflict resolution. At the same time, I think it would be hard to conduct an experiment like this with a real conflict because it seems like it could be unethical or at least risky for the parties to the conflict.

Conflict. Ch 9. "Identities"

This chapter addressed the concept of identity and the many ways that people view themselves. Some topics that were brought up were ethnicity, race, gender, and religion. The author talked about the importance of taking into account the culture and identity of the parties to conflict as an intervener. The author also introduced the idea of conflict and identity as a cycle that sustains and sometimes strengthens itself.
For me, this chapter was much easier to read than the previous chapter in Conflict. I also really enjoyed this chapter because it brought up a lot of good points about how society has created categories for people such as race and gender and many people believe these to be real and natural. It is frustrating how many people do not know this and use race interchangeably with ethnicity and gender interchangeably with sex.

Boston Globe Article

This was a short article that talked about the efforts of pro-life and pro-choice leaders to come together to stop the violence and hatred between their two groups as a response to shootings at institutions where abortion was performed. These two groups started meeting privately and slowly developed relationships with each other. Although the two groups said they supported their sides even more strongly now, they also said that they respected the individuals on the other side.
I really liked this article because it emphasized the idea that people don't have to agree with each other to live together peacefully. This article really showed the importance of dehumanization in conflict. Once the leaders of the two sides started to know each other on a personal level, their comments about the other side were not as much attacks as wishes for change. I also really liked that the article mentioned some procedural pieces such as deciding which words shouldn't be used at the table. Overall, I think this article gives a lot of hope for interveners to draw from.