The problem
How does an ethnoreligious group become an existential security threat to states and societies? Much of the available literature on internal/intrastate conflicts in Political Science has focused on determining the most relevant factors that led to their emergence, and/or why some conflicts turned violent while others were settled without carnage. Despite providing valuable insights, determining the various causes of these clashes does not necessarily clarify how the very first stage of all internal/intrastate conflicts – the manufacturing of ethnoreligious others as existential security threats – gets set in motion and crystallized. What is mostly missing are explanations on the underlying processes that link the causes to the outcome. Hence the ER uncovers and explains the unseen, albeit existing causal mechanisms that drive state and non-state actors within territorially bounded polities to frame certain ethnoreligious groups as threats to their relative security, power, and status. The ER draws on the interdisciplinary theories on critical security, religious, and nationalism studies and develop a framework that traces and elucidates how imagined insecurities are transformed into tangible security threats.
Importance to society
The rationalist assumption of a straightforward relationship between individual and group preferences, information collection, and belief formation has been at the crux of existing peacebuilding strategies. Conflict resolution frameworks that are purely based on rationalist approaches usually fail as they deliberately ignore the powerful emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions being experienced by the actual actors involved. The findings from this research reveal that without a serious appreciation for these intangible yet highly crucial elements, violent internal/intrastate conflicts are bound to re-emerge and remain entrenched over long periods of time. To escape from the cycle of mass hostility, security dilemma, and chauvinist political mobilization that characterizes these conflicts, the project underscores the importance of promoting emotive, symbolic, and perceptual reconciliation and regulation between the rival ethnoreligious groups. Undoing the invisible strings of ethnoreligious othering – to once again humanize and embrace the 'stranger' and the 'enemy' – takes enormous time and extraordinary resolve. However, as the cases examined in the project illustrate, this is a necessary first step in breaking the cycle of violent protracted conflicts.
Overall objectives
The ER has three main objectives for this project. The first is to highlight the centrality of the invisible yet concrete emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions linked to ethnoreligious nationalism in providing a more holistic and realistic understanding of the eruption, protraction, and possible resolution of internal/intrastate conflicts. settlement among the competing ethnoreligious communities observed.
The second is to emphasize the importance of recognizing religion and nationalism as legitimate constituents and instruments of realpolitik and, as such, must be provided appropriate seats at policymaking tables.
And third, to demonstrate how the ethnoreligious othering framework developed and applied in the project can bolster and advance process tracing explanations by systematically incorporating context-specific intersubjective meanings into causal accounts of the phenomenon under investigation
