Reflections on the Strengths and Limitations to Cross-Cultural Evidence in the Study of Conflict and Its Mitigation

Abstract

As Mel Ember showed over the years, the cross-cultural record provides a rich source of data to test hypotheses and build theories about conflict and warfare. His and Carol’s work in this area challenged some long-held theories, offered some new and surprising ideas, and provided researchers with an incredible, splendid data-set with which to test additional theories of conflict and warfare. This article describes how the questions he and Carol posed stimulated and honed my interest in the relationship between macro and micro level theories of conflict and led me to devote the past fifteen years to the dispute level dynamics of ethnic conflict and its mitigation. Connecting theory and data across these levels in the study of conflict, is worth attempting, but not easy. The cross-level tensions are very basic from the definition of the relevant units of analysis—is it the society (or culture) as in cross-cultural studies or is each specific conflict as contemporary constructivist notions of group identities and boundaries suggest; the kinds of theories that are advanced; the data needed to examine each; the absence of good data on the micro level dynamics of in the ethnographic record; and how to best integrate structural theories of society most commonly found in cross-cultural work and the perceptual and constructivist theories of conflict employed in most micro-level research on conflict and violence. Despite these real challenges there is no inherent reason why cross-cultural data sets could not be developed that explicitly address these issues.