Ethnic conflict, tensions, and protests: taking stock of available cross-country data

COVID-19, originally reported in China, has brought an increase in anti-Asian and Asian American hate incidents and crimes in the United States. However, research on hate incidents and crimes are relatively new in the field of geography. To provide better ways to investigate hate crime incidents against Asians and Asian Americans during COVID-19, this article draws on various research methods from existing studies on hate crimes. Geographers have focused attention on minority groups linked to different geographic scales, and non-geographic studies have focused mainly on psychological symptoms and impacts on health. Even though existing studies have helped broaden the knowledge of the subject, the geographic aspects of the issue require further examination. This article suggests that geographers should pay more attention to four aspects of research in hate crimes and incidents for future research: avoiding oversimplified concepts, reconsidering relational aspects within the local community, identifying intersectionality and everydayness of people, and engaging more with the practice of the law enforcement and the local communities.

Due to ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversities, there is potential for ethnic conflicts and ethnic tensions in community, but the emergence and occurrence of ethnic conflicts depend on the state's approach to managing or suppressing ethnic, linguistic, and cultural variations. Federalism is one of the most important mechanisms that governments adopt to manage ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversities. But the function of federalism in reducing ethnic conflicts is not necessarily positive, and in some cases, it has led to an escalation of ethnic conflicts. Accordingly, the central question is to examine whether federalism is a system to resolve or reduce ethnic conflicts? With an emphasis on ethnic conflicts in Iraq. The research hypothesis is that federalism, through the creation of bureaucratic structures, the development of political parties, the identification, and acceptance of cultural and linguistic commonalities, will restrict and reduce ethnic violence and conflict but not necessarily ethnic protest.
 
 Received: 26 December 2021 / Accepted: 28 February 2022 / Published: 5 March 2022

Racist violence in Russia has recently become a subject of interest to scholars and analysts of Russian politics. What are the similarities and differences between racist violence in Russia and the West? How does the level of Russian racist violence compare to other societies? Do racist hate groups in Russia have similar origins to groups in the West? This article considers these questions. I first demonstrate that Russia is indeed the most dangerous country in Europe for ethnic minorities, and argue that such violence is more ‘systematic’ (structured, ideologically coherent, patterned) than in other developed societies. The high level of violence against ethnic minorities in Russia is ‘over-determined’ by a combination of post-Soviet social and economic social changes, the brutalizing consequences of a long counter-insurgency campaign, and government passivity (and sometimes complicity) in the face of racist violence and hate speech. Thus, Russia’s systematic racist violence is analytically closer to outright ethnic conflict than to a form of criminal deviance that could aptly be termed ‘hate crime’.

Addressing racial and ethnic tensions in the United States is a critical issue that requires multifaceted approaches. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) strategies offer a promising avenue for managing and reducing these conflicts by fostering dialogue, understanding, and cooperative problem-solving among diverse groups. ADR mechanisms such as mediation, arbitration, and negotiation provide neutral platforms for addressing deeply rooted racial and ethnic tensions in a constructive manner, emphasizing collaboration over confrontation. These strategies aim to bridge gaps in communication, build trust, and promote reconciliation by engaging stakeholders from various communities in open, respectful discussions. Mediation, as one of the key ADR methods, allows for the involvement of a neutral third party to facilitate conversations and identify mutually acceptable solutions. It is particularly effective in addressing issues of racial and ethnic discrimination, police-community relations, and institutional biases, where trust and open communication are essential for progress. Restorative justice, another ADR approach, focuses on healing and repairing the harm caused by racial or ethnic conflicts, encouraging offenders to take responsibility while empowering victims to voice their experiences. However, the effectiveness of ADR in addressing racial and ethnic tensions depends on cultural sensitivity and the inclusion of minority voices in the process. ADR practitioners must be trained to recognize power imbalances and systemic inequalities that could influence the resolution process. Furthermore, community involvement and continuous dialogue are vital in ensuring long-term success and sustained peace. This abstract highlights the potential of ADR strategies in addressing racial and ethnic tensions in the USA, emphasizing the need for culturally attuned practices and inclusive dialogue. By prioritizing collaboration and understanding, ADR can play a significant role in mitigating racial and ethnic conflicts, promoting social cohesion, and fostering a more just and equitable society.

During the next stage of the Russian-Ukrainian war, started with a full-scale military invasion to Ukraine, the signs of growing xenophobia and ethnic hatred Ukraine has been found, which is the aim of this study. The research methods are based on monitoring of the ethnic and ethnopolitical components of the Russian- Ukrainian war – official and political statements, media reports on crimes based on ethnic hatred, systematic analysis of opinion polls that reflect the ethnicity of the war parties and case studies - analysis of individual situations, which illustrate the rapid degradation of interethnic Russian-Ukrainian cooperation during the Russian war. Despite the high level of xenophobia researching, the convection war waged by Russia against Ukraine has not yet been studied in the current context of total digitalisation, which allows tracking ethnic hatred crimes in real time. Despite the fact that any conventional war is a priori accompanied by an increase in xenophobia and ethnic hatred, as citizens of both states during hostilities in the status of combatants and civilians are being killed, the Russian-Ukrainian war is complicated by a number of circumstances that exacerbate the atmosphere of ethnic hatred and lead to an increase in xenophobia. Although no official increase in xenophobia has been recorded during the Russian-Ukrainian war, as it has not yet been measured, a number of factors analyzed in the article point to an unprecedented rise in Russophobia in Ukrainian society in response to the Russian military invasion. The degree of ethnic hatred is increased by anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and intentions to denationalize Ukraine by the Russian military and political leadership (to destroy the Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian nation), war crimes committed by the Russian military in Ukraine, non-compliance with humanitarian law during the war to intimidate and increase casualties increase civilians, which leads to a humanitarian catastrophe in the settlements of Ukraine. Capture and deliberate destruction of infrastructure, which provides basic needs and livelihoods of people, makes it impossible to maintain normal, decent living conditions in Ukraine. The actions of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine show all the signs of a crime of genocide. Although xenophobia is a destructive phenomenon, an obstacle to democratic development, it has been suggested that defensive Russophobia and ethnic hatred of Russia and Russians are at the core of the consolidation and resilience of Ukrainian society to achieve victory over Russia, a necessary component of preserving the state subjectivity of Ukraine. Key words: Russian-Ukrainian war, xenophobia, genocide.

Prior research has frequently drawn parallels between the study of hate crimes and the study of terrorism. Yet, key differences between the two behaviors may be underappreciated in extant work. Terrorism is often an “upward crime,” involving a perpetrator of lower social standing than the targeted group. By contrast, hate crimes are disproportionately “downward crimes,” usually entailing perpetrators belonging to the majority or powerful group in society and minority group victims. The latter difference implies that hate crimes and terrorism are more akin to distant relatives than close cousins. These divergent perspectives provide a backdrop for the present research, which empirically investigates the association between hate crimes and terrorism. In doing so, we contribute to prior work on hate crimes and terrorism by emphasizing the temporal association between these behaviors and by empirically investigating the potential for one kind of violent event to trigger another kind of violence. Time-series analyses of weekly and daily data on terrorism and hate crimes committed in the United States between 1992 and 2008 reveal three primary conclusions. First, we find no evidence to suggest that hate crimes are a precursor to future terrorism. Second, hate crimes are often perpetrated in response to terrorist acts. Third, the latter association is particularly strong for hate crimes perpetrated against minority groups after a non-right-wing terrorist attack, particularly attacks on symbols of core American ideals, indicating that some hate crimes may essentially constitute expressions of retaliation.

Racial and ethnic violence takes many forms. Genocides, ethnic cleansing, pogroms, civil wars, and violent separatist movements are the most obvious and extreme expressions, but less organized violence such as rioting, and hate crimes by individuals or small groups are products of racial and ethnic conflict as well. Also, the distribution of criminal violence within societies, which may or may not be aimed at members of another group, is in some places a by-product of ongoing conflicts between superior and subordinated racial or ethnic groups. Although estimates of the number of deaths attributable to ethnic violence vary widely, range of eleven to twenty million given for the period between 1945 and the early 1990s show the gravity of this type of conflict (Williams 1994, 50). So it comes as no surprise that scholars have paid increasing attention to such conflicts over the last decades.

Ethnic tensions and conflicts in Temerin, a town located close to the capital of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, have attracted the attention of both the Serbian public and the public of Hungarian national minority in Vojvodina. The paper relates ethnic conflicts in Temerin with non-ethnic social dimensions. Generally, the author tests modernisation theory, as an example of developmentalist theory, as well as interactionist and instrumentalist theories of ethnicity. Particularly, the paper provides corroboration test of the ethnic competition hypothesis, posed by Sarah Belanger and Maurice Pinard, which specifies conditions that transform ethnic competition into ethnic conflict. Finally, the study has revealed that material status has no influence on national intolerance. However, at the level of ethnic groups, the issues of public usage of language and positioning in the labour market are related to the ethnic conflicts in Temerin.

The current study examines violent and nonviolent traumatic events involving friends and family members as predictors of PTSD, depression, internalizing, and externalizing behaviors in a sample of 403 African American early adolescents from chronically violent environments. Although there are many studies of urban children's exposure to community violence, few address the unique contribution of events involving significant others, and almost no research addresses African American youths' exposure to traumatic events other than violence. This study found that violent and nonviolent traumatic events were pervasive in the lives of these urban youth, and that they were as likely to report loss and injury of a close other through an accident as an act of violence. There were strong gender differences in the data. Unexpectedly, injury or loss of a close friend or family member from nonviolent events, but not from violent events, predicted PTSD, internalizing, and depression for boys. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for school-based universal interventions in communities where large numbers of children live with loss and trauma.

In the previous chapters, our argument was developed in two steps. First, we discussed the challenges arising when public discourse or scientific analysis of political violence takes an ethnic or 'civilisational' turn. We added our voice to those who plead for vigilance such that we avoid taking descriptions of events in terms of (say) 'ethnic conflict', 'ethnic violence' or inferred 'ethnic hatred', as an explanation of these events. We concluded that a non-circular analysis needs to take a step back and, instead of taking ethnic or cultural categories for granted as the primary units of analyses, we need first of all to explain how these categories came into being. Or rather, we need to show what makes people accept such categories as 'real' in the pragmatic sense that they provide a grid for interpreting social experience and for giving a direction to social behaviour.

In modern Russian society, there take place the processes of cardinal transformation of socio-economic, political, spiritual and other spheres of its functioning. This fact conditions an urgent need to study risks and threats to preservation of social stability, sustainable development, strengthening of ties and relations in the Russian society. This aspect is especially important in multinational subjects of Russia, which differ in national heterogeneity of the population, degree of socio-economic development of the territories, variability of ethno-cultural norms and value patterns of social life. The article deals with vital and complex issues related to the phenomenon of “interethnic tension” and ethnic conflicts existing in modern national and foreign science, theoretical and methodological approaches to their study, classification criteria, various concepts of the causes and typologies of these phenomena. The author of the article presents classification of interethnic conflicts according to their stages or forms, to the nature of conflicting parties, which makes it possible to single out conflicts of “psychological stereotypes”, “ideological doctrines”, “political institutions”. In the study of the phenomenon of “interethnic tension”, it is important to establish risks and reasons for deterioration of interethnic relations in multinational administrative entities, the role of the factor of ethnic heterogeneity in the emergence of ethnic conflicts in modern Russian society. National diversity is fraught with various negative consequences, risk of interethnic confrontation and ethnic conflicts as polyethnic communities are more at risk of their appearance than mono-national ones.

Reality to Dream: Western Pop in Eastern Avant-Garde (Re-)Presentations of Socialism's End – the Case of Laibach

It would be an exaggeration to say that Eastern Europe was ever awash with violent ethnic conflict. Nonetheless, communism's demise did contribute to about a dozen ethnic conflicts, and by the early 1990s numerous crisis points emerged. Yugoslavia was undeniably the worst case scenario, but ethnic tensions had reached a dangerous level in several other states, including Romania, Latvia, and Estonia. As these problems unfolded, some scholars predicted that the West would simply leave Eastern Europe and its problems to itself. Fortunately, this did not happen, and throughout the 1990s, European regional organizations, in particular, made the prevention and management of ethnic conflict a priority. Given both the continued need to prevent ethnic-based conflicts and the dearth of research on ethnic cooperation, it is worthwhile recalling how the West responded to this new security threat. Which organizations led these efforts? What strategies were used? Most importantly, what were the effects of these initiatives? My research contends that ethnic disputes in Eastern Europe were shaped fundamentally by a transnational network of public and private organizations that worked in complementary, reinforcing ways to manage ethnic conflicts. It would be simplistic and empirically incorrect to assert that international factors alone explain the changes associated with ethnic relations in Eastern Europe, and this is not the argument that I make. Instead, I contend that while domestic politics within Eastern European countries were casually important to the timing of accommodating policies and the international community's influence had to coincide with the preferences of domestic elites, transnational involvement was, nonetheless, crucial. The involvement of regional organizations, governments, and NGOs was important for putting -and keeping ethnic conflict management and minority rights on domestic agendas.

Why do dams exacerbate ethnic conflict in Turkey but not in Ethiopia? This paper analyzes the impacts of a growing push to develop water resources through hydroelectric dams, which promise clean energy, jobs, and economic opportunities. Yet dam building also causes environmental degradation, mass relocation, the flooding of historical sites, and long‐lasting cultural impacts. This paper focuses on how dams, as an extension of the state, can increase ethnic tensions by decreasing their autonomy and challenging their cultural practices, ultimately exacerbating violence. A comparison of two instances of large‐scale dam building in Ethiopia and Turkey during conflict illustrates various factors that contribute to ethnic tensions between minority groups. In Turkey, dams are weaponized against the Kurdish population, deepening ethnic conflict as the state asserts itself and a state‐centered national consciousness into a region historically wary of Turkish nation‐building. In Ethiopia, dam‐building, while framed in similar language as it is in Turkey, avoids heightening ethnic conflict because dams are seen as unifying the country rather than homogenizing ethnic minorities in rural areas. This paper argues that ethnic conflict is exacerbated when both (1) damming disproportionately targets one ethnic group and (2) when the targeted population is unable to access alternative mechanisms to air grievances. In developing the proposed theory, more insight can be gained into water, conflict, and dam‐building in conflict‐prone areas in fragile political positions. From a policy perspective, these findings indicate that more scrutiny over dams in such contexts is necessary for the protection of minority populations.

Social scientists have long been interested in the significance of unexpected, dramatic events for social change. However, when it comes to research on prejudice and hate crimes, the impact of sudden, dramatic events has been little considered. The purpose of this research review is to survey European data to elucidate the temporal links between unexpected events, prejudice, and hate crimes, and also to pinpoint some of the methodological problems faced by scholars studying the impact of unanticipated dramatic events on prejudice and hate crimes; the significance of unexpected events often leaves researchers without access to relevant baseline data. The studies of Islamophobia and Islamophobic hate crimes considered in the present article privilege a dynamic view of time: terrorist attacks instill a sense of uncertainty and risk and Islamophobia and hate crimes are to a large extent event-driven and reactive, and tend to flare up on the heels of dramatic events. The recent attention paid to the role of unexpected, dramatic events represents a new and very promising approach to the study of prejudice and hate crimes; with the earlier, essentially spatial research focus now complemented by a temporal focus, the chances increase of charting the underlying dynamics and causes of prejudice and hate crimes.