Abstract
Herder–farmer conflicts in West Africa have caused thousands of deaths in recent years. Many conflicts are triggered by localized events that rapidly spiral out of control. What leads specific interpersonal conflicts to scale up into intergroup violence? We propose that such conflicts are rooted in identity and ritual dynamics. We present evidence that participants in Mambila traditions of masquerade initiation in Cameroon report especially strong identity fusion, a visceral sense of oneness with the ingroup. Results showed that men strongly fused to their ethnic ingroup were especially willing to fight and die for it. Overall, our findings provide evidence that when ordinary conflicts develop between groups that differ sharply on ethnic and religious lines, there is grave risk that fused persons will escalate violence. Understanding these processes may inform future development of new strategies to prevent or ameliorate intergroup conflicts of this kind.
Highlights
Herder–farmer conflicts in West Africa have caused thousands of deaths in recent years
In West African cultures, including Mambila, such rituals traditionally take the form of a masquerade, a frightening and life-shaping rite of passage that many undergo in childhood (Zeitlyn, 1994)
Most participants’ primary occupation was farming (97%), with 48% listing a second job; 88% reported their nationality as Cameroonian, 12% as Nigerian; 74% reported their religious affiliation as Christian, 26% as Muslim
Summary
Herder–farmer conflicts in West Africa have caused thousands of deaths in recent years. With estimates of the 2017 killings ranging from the hundreds to the thousands, and many thousands more displaced as refugees, including kidnapped children (Akpeji & Olaniyi, 2017; Kindzeka, 2017), there is great need to University of Oxford, UK To examine these issues, we utilize a recently developed identity-based framework for understanding extreme violence (Swann et al, 2009; Swann et al, 2012). Unlike the group identification construct, which assumes a hydraulic relationship between the salience of personal and collective identities, identity fusion theory assumes that some people experience a synergy between their personal and collective identity, resulting in feeling that group membership is deeply personal and self-defining (Swann et al, 2012)
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