• Course Evaluations
• Key Lessons
• Limiting Ethnic Conflict
• What can we do?

We started off trying to answer:

• What is ethnicity?
• Why does ethnic conflict occur?
• Why does ethnic violence occur?

Answers to these questions vary across contexts, but we have three sets of tools to explain:

• Strategic
• Psychological
• Structural

Ethnicity takes a variety of forms:

• We have to see how people label themselves and others strategically
• Ethnic choices reflect cognitive limits and social esteem
• Ethnicity embedded in shared understanding, relations of power

• Ethnic groups more effectively mobilized in competition over resources/power
• Zero-sum status competition between ethnic groups generate conflict
• Structures that institutionalize and generate disparities between ethnic groups lead to conflict

• Violence can be used to win elections, extract resources
• Perceived status threats, moral transgressions, stereotypes drive individuals to participate in violence
• Media that justifies or encourages violence also increases ethnic violence

Can these same tools reduce violence and conflict?

Electoral incentives to win votes of ethnic out-group leads parties to limit violence against them. (Wilkinson 2004; Nellis, Weaver & Rosenzweig 2016)

Rules/procedures that ensure fair distribution of state “goodies” limits incentives for ethnic conflict (Chandra 2004)

Constitutional/electoral rules that encourage vote-pooling, limits consequences of losing elections reduce conflict (Horowitz 1985)

Contact Hypothesis: Allport (1954)

prejudice/negative stereotypes of other groups may be reduced by personal contact with members of the group when that contact…

• is among people of equal status
• involves pursuit of common goals
• is sanctioned by institutions (law, custom)
• can reveal common interests

Paluck, Green, and Green 2019

Focus on results of studies where contact is randomly assigned and prejudice measured at least 1 day later.

• Only 27 contact studies that were experiments
• Who is studied? (~ 1/4 study adults over age 25)
• What kind of prejudice (~3/5 study ethnicity)
• What kind of contact? (mostly short, scripted, lacking common goal or cooperation)
• What outcome? (explicit/implicit prejudice, behaviors)

Overall:

• 24 out of 27 find reductions in prejudice (\(p < 0.001\))
• Effect is very weak in larger, better designed experiments
• Effect is smaller in ethnic prejudice studies >- Few studies attempt to explore sustained, collaborative contact in realistic settings

Caste in Rural India

• Can cooperative contact vs adversarial contact reduce caste prejudice?
• Randomized experiment in local cricket league
• Cooperation reduces prejudiced attitudes and behavior

Race in the United States:

• Teach For America: community service organization
• place top university graduates as teachers in low-income schools
• 80% of students in these schools are African American or Latinx
• use TFA admission score threshold for “natural experiment”

Does participation in TFA reduce racial prejudice, increase empathy with racial outgroup?

As-if random assignment to TFA…

• increases perceptions of systematic injustice and inequality
• decreases racial prejudice
• increases positive assessment of racial minorities

Do these psychological findings have an effect at a larger scale?

Need to investigate whether structural changes can reduce conflict.

Mohamed Salah, Muslim star for FC Liverpool

• high profile public image reduces Islamophobia?
• Compare change in hate crimes in Liverpool vs other similar cities

Medieval Trade in India and Hindu-Muslim Violence

• Coastal towns saw collaborative trade between Muslims and Hindus due to Hajj
• What if Muslim traders picked towns that were already more welcoming?
• Compare coastal towns with and without natural harbors for “random” allocation of Muslim traders
• Does legacy of inter-group collaboration reduce violence?

Medieval port cities (Muslim traders) had fewer riots in 19th-20th century:

Civil War and Black Freedom

• Republican party abolished slavery, laws granting/protecting new rights
• Why did racist white voters accept this?
• Union Army vets and Black Americans: shared enemy, wartime collaboration, what was won?

In places with more soldiers support for Black voting rights \(\uparrow\)

Strategic Incentives: Difficult to change, especially when conflict is present

Psychology: We can promote and take part in inter-group contact

Structure: As individuals, we can’t overturn existing ethnic structures…

… but, with cooperation, structure is changeable