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A sense of self-perceived collective victimhood in intractable conflicts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

Daniel Bar-Tal ,
Lily Chernyak-Hai ,
Noa Schori  and
Ayelet Gundar
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Abstract

A sense of self-perceived collective victimhood emerges as a major theme in the ethos of conflict of societies involved in intractable conflict and is a fundamental part of the collective memory of the conflict. This sense is defined as a mindset shared by group members that results from a perceived intentional harm with severe consequences, inflicted on the collective by another group. This harm is viewed as undeserved, unjust and immoral, and one that the group could not prevent. The article analyses the nature of the self-perceived collective sense of victimhood in the conflict, its antecedents, the functions that it fulfils for the society and the consequences that result from this view.

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Type
War victims
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 91 , Issue 874: War victims , June 2009 , pp. 229 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2009

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Johanna Vollhardt, Sabina Čehajić-Clancy, Dinka Corkalo Biruski, Yechiel Klar and Dario Spini for their helpful comments on the earlier draft of the present paper.

References

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110 See D. Bar-Tal, above note 1.

111 See S. Čehajić and R. Brown, above note 97.

112 D.L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, University of California Press: Berkeley, 2001.

113 R.G. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002.

114 D. Enns, Identity and Victimhood, Berghof Occasional Paper No. 28, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management: Berlin, 2007; E. Staub and D. Bar-Tal, above note 34.

115 Lickel, B., Miller, N., Stenstrom, D.M., Denson, T. and Schmader, T., ‘Vicarious retribution: The role of collective blame in intergroup aggression’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 10, 2006, pp. 372–390.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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117 See E. Staub, above note 45.

118 Bandura, A., ‘Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanity’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1999, pp. 193–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

119 See R. Ramanathapillai, above note 59.

120 M. Mamdani, When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2001, p. 34.

121 See J. Chaitin and S. Steinberg, above note 84; J. Vollhardt, above note 56.

122 See V. Vollhardt, above note 56.