Intergroup Dialogue Research Articles

Symbolic Violence in Indonesian Society

Islam is by far the largest religion in Indonesia, and given the size of Indonesia’s population and the massive percentage of which follow identify as Muslim, Indonesia becomes the biggest Muslim majority country. In the light of this reality, Islam becomes the society’s dominant role of conduct. As to be predicted in such system, a social hierarchy has developed in which Indonesian Muslims enjoy the most privileges. Such a situation has created a fertile ground for the possible use of what Pierre Bourdieu’s call ‘symbolic violence’. As a consequence, there is a tendency for the minor group of Indonesian people to be marginalized. Sadly, this seems to be exacerbated by the rise of Islamic conservativism and radicalisation in post-1998 Indonesia. That says, their lack of capability in recognizing minority’s rights often leads to religious intolerance. Considerably, as to solve such a situation, widening perspective as well as strengthening inter-group and inter-religion dialogue is required.

Intergroup Dialogue and Social Justice Group Work: A Call for Increased Research Attention

The intergroup dialogue (IGD) process involves individuals and facilitators with diverse social identities intentionally coming together to explore divergent and shared values and experiences. It is widely accepted that IGD serves as a meaningful and transformative process for individuals with diverse social identities; yet, professional understanding of the various applications of IGD remains minimal. This article summarizes existing IGD literature, and calls for specific research efforts which hold promise for deepening the understanding of IGD in the field of counseling.

The window becomes a mirror: the use of the Johari Window model to evaluate stereotypes in intergroup dialogue in Israel

This paper examines attitudes and stereotypes in intergroup dialogue (religious, secular) via the Johari Window model. Participants (N = 114) presented perceptions of the in-group and a data analysis revealed three prominent findings: (1) the presence of out-group members in the measuring of attitudes contributed to the moderation of stereotypes towards the in-group; (2) the measure of attitudes in the group setting and in conditions of numerical equality among groups intensified discrimination in favour of the in-group within the minority group; (3) presentation of attitudes on the in-group while being aware of the out-group members contributed to the process of defining identities. The theoretical contribution of this paper lies in the understanding of the role of perceiving an identity, in the process of formation of stereotypes in the intergroup dialogue. From a practical viewpoint, a helpful tool is presented for the improvement of communication patterns in general and in dialogues among groups who are in conflict in particular.

Intercultural Understanding through Intergroup Dialogue between Japanese and Chinese University Students.

This study had two purposes: (1) to develop university classes in which students can participate in intercultural dialogue by exchanging letters focusing on a topic about everyday norms implicit in each culture, and (2) to examine how students develop their intercultural understanding through participating in these classes. Twenty-two Japanese and six Chinese university students (each group in their own country) participated in three class sessions. At the beginning of the first class, students were given a dialogue theme that focused on cultural differences. The selected theme was mobile phone use while riding on public transportation, as this practice is prohibited in Tokyo but not in Beijing. Students discussed their opinions in small groups, wrote questions to their counterparts in the other country, and then reflected on and discussed the answers received. Analysis of the Japanese students' written reflections showed that their understanding of different cultural values and beliefs changed from one based only on a Japanese cultural perspective to one that respected the relativity of cultural norms. The results suggested that the arousal of negative emotions when students are exposed to the perspectives of other cultures is closely related to their understanding of cultural relativity.

Can Intergroup Dialogue Combined with SLCE Answer Today’s Call to Action?

Dozens of bodies lay stiff and still. Arms and legs overlay one another. Black, Brown, and White undergraduate bodies clogged the arteries of the student center at Hobart and William Smith (HWS) Colleges in Geneva, New York. Flanking them were faculty and staff, standing in solidarity, holding block letter signs reading: BLACK LIVES MATTER, HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT, and I CAN'T BREATHE. It was the end of the Fall 2014 semester, and Black Lives Matter protests pervaded cities and campuses nationwide. This was not the first time our city had witnessed mass protest against police violence. Following the 2011 police shooting death of unarmed Black resident Cory Jackson, Geneva's Hispanic and Black community and White allies rose up in protest to demand accountability by, and greater inclusion in, city government. Such campus and community protests have guided us to reimagine service-learning as cooperative, rights-based, and dialogue-driven. At the center of our vision for the future of the service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) movement is an inextricable link between dialogue and collaborative action. In our campus-community initiative Tools for Social Change, we use intergroup dialogue (IGD) to help students, faculty, staff, and city residents co-create knowledge and expand their civic capacity. Beyond the particularities of our work, we see a universal role for dialogue in building trust and understanding between stakeholders so they can more effectively serve their communities. In his 2015 framing piece for the SLCE Future Directions Project, Zlotkowski calls for enhanced social efficacy through stakeholder inclusiveness and demonstrable community impact. This thought piece dreams out loud, with Zlotkowski and others' bold calls to develop SLCE programs for collaborative learning and social change. For us, collaborative learning requires creating conditions for stakeholders to engage in active, often difficult, conversations about identity, power, and oppression. It is not until we have named our personal experience with (or complicity in) broad and deep forces of inequality that we can begin to create community anew. What follows is an overview of our call for linking dialogue-to-action in SLCE. Throughout the piece we reference our initiative, Tools for Social Change, not as a program description but as a love story about enactments of justice and human agency that moved us to share our vision for democratic, transformative SLCE. We offer nothing prescriptive, but instead send a dispatch from the place where memory and imagination meet. Yet this is not a passive call. Any ethical pedagogy must attend to the historical moment it occupies. SLCE practitioners and scholars cannot turn away from the fierce urgency of the call to empower our communities. In their 2016 thought piece, Whitney and colleagues call for designing asset-based, collaborative programs that engage with the contexts of local places and national realities. Looking at today's national realities we see a rising tide of youth movements for racial and economic justice. Our campus mirrors national activism. As we write this piece, students are rallying to establish HWS Colleges as a sanctuary campus, participating in the International Women's Day Strike, marching against the Muslim Ban, and participating in national marches. Our students are calling us to the realities of the world. In today's climate of social activism, we believe SLCE, combined with IGD, is uniquely situated to address these realities. We both affirm our students' street-level activism and assert that SLCE educators have a special role to play in supporting democratic urges. Student activism often engages in discrete acts of virtue signaling (e.g., a single rally or vigil), rather than building, power at a grassroots level to achieve systemic change. This is where IGD holds a capacity for generating student and community civic collaborations: by supporting collaborative learning. …

Establishing a Secure Base to Increase Exploration of Diversity in Groups

ABSTRACTAll groups can be considered multicultural, and group members often present with issues that stem from contextual factors related to cultural identities, including experiences with oppression. Therefore, group leaders must be able to effectively facilitate deep intercultural dialogues in psychotherapy groups, and we suggest that an understanding of attachment theory can help leaders engage group members in these dialogues. In order to demonstrate how attachment theory can be applied to the exploration of diversity in groups, we provide a case example from an intergroup dialogue group bringing together religious minorities, secular individuals, and Christians over the course of eight weeks. In this example, we focus on the two group members who scored the lowest (Jill) and highest (Sarah) on a measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance to illustrate the experiences of one member with more secure attachment and one with more preoccupied attachment. Specifically, we present data from their weekly reflective journals to explore their different experiences of the group over time. Finally, we discuss the case in terms of attachment theory and highlight implications for group leaders.

A dialogue with the ‘self’: Identity exploration processes in intergroup dialogue for Jewish students in Israel

Abstract Intergroup dialogues can create a safe environment that encourages individuals to engage in self reflection. This article has examined identity exploration processes among undergraduate students who have participated in a dialogue course. Findings have pointed out several factors that have enabled self-exploration in the group and the dialogue course was fulfilling for most students. The participants felt that the dialogue had helped them form a greater understanding of their identities through two levels of discourse: with the ‘self’ and with ‘the other’ - however, findings also indicated a process that appears to disrupt a ‘deep’ and authentic discourse and can be considered as a contestation of identity. The contribution of this research lies in investigating how identities are shaped within a context of intergroup dialogues and in proposing several hypotheses and questions to advance the research in this field.

Intergroup dialogue in undergraduate multicultural psychology education: Group climate development and outcomes.

We examined group climate and outcomes in 19 intergroup dialogues (IGD) focused on gender, race and ethnicity, religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, or social class at a large, public university in the Southeastern United States. Group members were undergraduate students enrolled in a course in multicultural psychology. Participants completed preand post-dialogue outcome measures of: attitudes toward diversity, colorblind attitudes, and ethnocultural empathy. Following each of the eight weekly sessions, participants completed a group climate measure assessing engagement, avoidance, and conflict. Across eight weeks, group members perceived significant increases in engagement and decreases in avoidance, but no significant changes in conflict. In addition, we found significant decreases in two aspects of colorblind racial attitudes: blindness to racial privilege (RP) and blindness to institutional discrimination (ID); and significant increases in empathic perspective taking (EPT). Finally, change in individual group members’ perceptions of the level of engagement over time predicted post-dialogue RP, ID, and EPT, when controlling for pre-dialogue scores on the same variables. These findings are discussed in relationship to the critical-dialogic model of IGD, and implications for research and practice are explored.

An Evaluation of Intergroup Dialogue Pedagogy: Addressing Segregation and Developing Cultural Competency

ABSTRACTThis article presents data from a study of an intergroup dialogue (IGD) course in an urban Midwest MSW program guided by Derald Wing Sue’s multicultural education model. IGD was used as an innovative pedagogy to meet the Council on Social Work Education mandate for cultural competence and social justice education. Results showed significant gains in student aware-ness of self as a member of social identity groups, knowledge about structural group inequality, motivation to bridge, differences, and action to do so. Segregation by race and social contact did not predict change in confidence and frequency to take social justice action. Prior knowledge about racial inequality and motivation to bridge difference did predict change in action. IGD is a promising cultural competence pedagogy.

The Nutella Project

How different the world would be had countries not reopened their borders to welcome tourists after conflict, thus providing opportunities for travelers to learn, understand, and overcome potential stereotypes and negative perceptions of a country’s residents and environment. This study reveals preliminary results of an education initiative focused on understanding, addressing, and overcoming negative perceptions, with the possibility of creating interest in, and opportunities for, a revitalization of tourism in Afghanistan. The study offers contact theory as a way to present organic images of a place to help create perceptions of destinations that are more accurate than induced images. Results revealed that contact theory, through intergroup dialogue between residents of two countries with noted historic conflict, provided the means for reducing cultural ambiguity and overcoming stereotypes. The findings offer implications for both the tourism and education sectors and suggest that intergroup dialogue may be key to increasing visit intentions and, most importantly, enhancing a destination’s image after conflict.

"Likes" for Peace: Can Facebook Promote Dialogue in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

<p>This study examines the ways in which social media is used to promote intergroup dialogue and reconciliation in the context of the protracted, ethnopolitical conflict between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. We focus on content analysis of posts and comments on a Facebook page named "Tweeting Arabs", which states that its' main goal is to publicize opinions, thoughts and beliefs of Israeli-Arabs, enabling the moderate voice to be heard and encouraging dialogue between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. The analysis is based on a data set containing posts and comments collected from "Tweeting Arabs" since the page was founded in November 8th 2014 and until December 4th of the same year. This data set contains 85 posts which gained total of 9657 "likes", and 461 "shares", as well as 3565 comments and replies to these posts. Our findings reveal that while posts that presented the narrative of Palestinian suffering were mostly followed by negative comments from Israeli-Jews, posts that brought up the Palestinian moderate and peace seeking voice elicited higher Jewish-Israeli acceptance and sympathy. The research adds to our understanding of Facebook as a dialogue provoking platform that enables users from different ethnopolitical groups, in divided and conflicted societies to perform peacebuilding actions.<strong> </strong></p>

Social work students’ experiences in a Christianity and sexual minority intergroup dialogue

A tension between the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) and (heterosexual) conservative Christian communities has been documented within social work. This qualitative study explores students’ experiences in a Christianity and LGB sexuality intergroup dialogue at an American graduate social work program. This dialogue was the first known case of intergroup dialogue being used to address these topics in a social work program. Students’ motivations for participating in the dialogue, challenges faced throughout the dialogue, and what they learned are discussed. Pedagogical implications for schools of social work and intergroup dialogue are outlined.

“Likes” for Peace: Can Facebook Promote Dialogue in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict?

This study examines the ways in which social media is used to promote intergroup dialogue and reconciliation in the context of the protracted, ethnopolitical conflict between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. We focus on content analysis of posts and comments on a Facebook page named “Tweeting Arabs” which was established and is administered by Palestinian citizens of Israel. This page states that its’ main goal is to publicize opinions, thoughts and beliefs of Palestinians, enabling the moderate voice to be heard and encouraging dialogue between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. The analysis is based on a data set containing posts and comments collected from “Tweeting Arabs” since the page was founded in November 8th 2014 and until December 4th 2014. This data set contains 85 posts which gained a total of 9657 “likes”, and 461 “shares”, as well as 3565 comments and replies to these posts. Our findings reveal that while posts that presented the narrative of Palestinian suffering were mostly followed by negative comments from Israeli-Jews, posts that brought up the Palestinian moderate and peace seeking voice elicited higher Jewish–Israeli acceptance and sympathy. The research adds to our understanding of Facebook as a dialogue provoking platform that enables users from different ethnopolitical groups in divided and conflicted societies to perform peacebuilding actions.

Group member affect and session evaluations in intergroup dialogue.

Group member affect and session evaluations in intergroup dialogue.

The Violation of Mankind’s Multiculturalism: Another Approach to the Definition of International Crimes

This article discusses the core question of the legal interests offended by international crimes, and therefore the question of the justification of a rational and moral acceptance of an international criminal jurisdiction. International crimes may start off as violations of human rights, but end up affecting humanity as a whole, not as a supranational statehood or as an institutionalised order or mechanism of international policy-making, but more as a societal relationship and co-existence, an empirical quest into the reality of the meaning of life. They offend the collective art of living in its essential core, i.e., the cultural and ethical diversity as a free creation and promotion of a different meaning of life. The criminalised act is here directed against the collective self-realisation of humanity formed through free intra- and inter-group ethical dialogue, through cultural interaction. This multiculturalism, as a social fact, is expressed in a collective and social-political way and is also affected the same way.

Immigrants as brokers: dialogical diffusion from Spanish indignados to Occupy Wall Street

This article analyses the role played by Spanish immigrants in the diffusion of the indignados movement in Occupy Wall Street (OWS). I argue that Spanish residents in New York City acted as brokers between the two movements, and that their behaviour had a significant impact on OWS’s understanding of itself as an expansive, inclusive and empathic phenomenon. Building on recent theoretical developments, which stress the importance of dialogue and collective learning in the transnational diffusion of historical social movements, this research produces results at different levels. At the empirical level, the problems faced by the immigrants reveal the cultural complexity of transnational diffusion within the recent wave of contention. At the analytical level, the personal contact and intergroup dialogue established between immigrants and local activists challenge accounts stressing the role of social media and the internet within the transnational diffusion of this protest. At the theoretical level, the article develops a process-oriented perspective on brokerage, improving our understanding of its implications concerning diffusion. I argue that a longitudinal analysis of brokerage shows how interaction can modify role identity and movement diffusion: diffusion develops where brokers maintain a coordinating role in the movement, and ceases to do so where brokers are displaced from this central position.

Social Class Dialogues and the Fostering of Class Consciousness

How do critical pedagogies promote undergraduate students’ awareness of social class, social class identity, and social class inequalities in education? How do undergraduate students experience class consciousness-raising in the intergroup dialogue classroom? This qualitative study explores undergraduate students’ class consciousness-raising in an intergroup dialogue on social class at a large, private Northeastern university. Analyses of weekly student journals are offered to expand upon our knowledge of undergraduate students’ social class experiences in higher education contexts, as well as illuminate positive impacts that intergroup dialogue pedagogy has on students’ class consciousness-raising in the intergroup dialogue classroom.

Intergroup Dialogue as a Just Dialogue: Challenging and Preventing Normalization in Campus Dialogues

Intergroup Dialogue as a Just Dialogue: Challenging and Preventing Normalization in Campus Dialogues

From Awareness to Action: College Students’ Skill Development in Intergroup Dialogue

A central goal of intergroup dialogue (IGD) is to strengthen individual and collective capacities to foster social justice commitments by supporting new ways of thinking about oneself, others, and the social structures in which we live. Relatedly, IGD assists individuals with building multicultural competencies and skill sets that support peoples’ capacities to take action and work towards social change. The following qualitative study contributes to current research by describing the types of skills undergraduate students report learning as a result of their IGD experience and the challenges they encounter as they develop communication, cognitive, and affective skills.

“When You Tell a Personal Story, I Kind of Perk up a Little Bit More”: An Examination of Student Learning From Listening to Personal Stories in Two Social Diversity Courses

This article explores the role of personal storytelling about social identity-related experiences in two diversity courses that were informed by social justice education pedagogies with a focus on race/ethnicity and racism. The two courses included racially diverse groups of students in two undergraduate diversity courses at two Northeast universities (a social diversity and oppression course, and a race/ethnicity intergroup dialogue course). Participants describe a variety of learning outcomes after listening to personal stories. Findings also indicate that students across identities value storytelling, describing it as engaging, enjoyable, and integral to their learning. This underscores the value and impact of face-to-face, synchronous learning as a valid, transformative, and critical educational method in diversity courses.