Conflict Trajectories Research Articles

Colonial legacies, postcolonial ‘selfhood’ and the (un)doing of Africa

The debate triggered by recent publications and research justifying colonialism demands an intellectual engagement with the histories of colonialism, and their impact on postcolonial trajectories of development, peace and conflict. The argument that colonialism inspired development in societies that embraced its modernity project, enlightened governance and efficient administration – which in turn inspired national consciousness embedded in anti-colonial struggles – has been extensively critiqued. However, less attention has been paid to colonialism’s enduring everyday impact and visible continuities. We argue that the present political moment defined by right-wing, conservative and insular nationalisms and racisms – particularly in Western polities – requires deeper critique. It demands an intensive re-engagement with colonialism’s legacies, the politics of race and racism and the postcolonial (un)making of ‘selfhood’ and ‘nation-statehood’ evidenced in many parts of the world. This collection revisits the impact of colonialism on the postcolonial politics and decolonial developments in Africa; its focus is to reinvestigate the endurance and efficacy of the power relations devised and propagated by the European colonial projects and their continued presence in African states and societies.

Exploring the future of fishery conflict through narrative scenarios

Recent studies suggest that the pervasive impacts on global fishery resources caused by stressors such as overfishing and climate change could dramatically increase the likelihood of fishery conflict. However, existing projections do not consider wider economic, social, or political trends when assessing the likelihood of, and influences on, future conflict trajectories. In this paper, we build four future fishery conflict scenarios by considering multiple fishery conflict drivers derived from an expert workshop, a longitudinal database of international fishery conflict, secondary data on conflict driver trends, and regional expert reviews. The scenarios take place between the years 2030 and 2060 in the North-East Atlantic (“scramble for the Atlantic”), the East China Sea (“the remodeled empire”), the coast of West Africa (“oceanic decolonization”), and the Arctic (“polar renaissance”). The scenarios explore the implications of ongoing trends in conflict-prone regions of the world and function as accessible, science-based communication tools that can help foster anticipatory governance capacity in the pursuit of future ocean security.

Trajectories of interparental conflict and children's emotional-behavioural functioning at 10-11years: an Australian population-based study.

Interparental conflict (IPC) has the potential to adversely affect children's social, emotional, and behavioural functioning. The overall objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between both the severity and chronicity of IPC across early and middle childhood and children's emotional-behavioural functioning at 10-11years. Specifically, we aimed to: (1) identify distinct trajectories of IPC spanning 10-11years since birth of the study child as reported by mothers, and (2) examine the emotional-behavioural functioning of children exposed to the identified IPC trajectories. Drawing from a nationally representative longitudinal study of Australian families (N = 4875), four distinct trajectories of IPC were identified: (1) consistently low exposure to IPC over time, (2) persistently elevated exposure to IPC, (3) increasing IPC exposure over time, and (4) decreasing IPC exposure over time. Children exposed to trajectories with high IPC at any point during the study period were reported by their mothers to be experiencing more emotional-behavioural difficulties than childrenexposed to low IPC over time.Based on teacher report, there were no differences in emotional-behavioural functioning of children exposed to the different patterns of IPC. Our findings reinforce that high parental conflict at any point in a child's life is a form of adversity that can have adverse consequences for their mental health, and that early interventions for parents and caregivers experiencing high IPC are critical.

Enacting sabotage in siblings’ conflicts: Desired objects and deceptive bodies

The present study examines sibling’ conflict trajectories with a specific focus on acts of sabotage – deliberate obstruction or destruction of activities with an object. Multimodal interaction analysis is used to understand how siblings’ conflicts are organised through multiple (verbal and embodied) practices. We further draw on childhood studies that focuses on children’s material practices and use the term enactment to better understand human-nonhuman relations. The study found that children put considerable time and energy into configuring deceptive bodies that both organised and disrupted their local moral orders.

Riddle Me This: What Do Top Management Team Boundary Spanning, Team Conflict Trajectories, Team Creativity, Faultlines, Grit, and Global Virtual Teams, Have in Common? Answer: Outstanding 2019 GOM Articles

Riddle Me This: What Do Top Management Team Boundary Spanning, Team Conflict Trajectories, Team Creativity, Faultlines, Grit, and Global Virtual Teams, Have in Common? Answer: Outstanding 2019 <i>GOM</i> Articles

Things Are Not Always What They Seem: The Origins and Evolution of Intragroup Conflict

Teams scholars have historically conceptualized and measured intragroup conflict at the team level. But emerging evidence suggests that perceptions of intragroup conflict are often not uniform, shared, or static. These findings suggest important questions about the microfoundations of intragroup conflict: Where does conflict within teams originate? And how does it evolve over time? We address these and other questions in three abductive studies. We consider four origination points—an individual, dyad, subgroup, or team—and three evolutionary trajectories—conflict continuity, contagion, and concentration. Study 1, a qualitative study of narrative accounts, and Study 2, a longitudinal social networks study of student teams, reveal that fewer than 30 percent of teams experience team-level conflict. Instead, conflict more commonly originates and persists at individual, dyadic, or subgroup levels. Study 2 further demonstrates that traditional psychometric intragroup conflict scales mask the existence of these various origins and trajectories of conflict. Study 3, a field study of manufacturing teams, reveals that individual and dyadic task conflict origins positively predict team performance, whereas traditional intragroup task conflict measures negatively predict team performance. The results raise serious concerns about current methods and theory in the team conflict literature and suggest that researchers must go beyond team-level conceptualizations of conflict.

Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree: A Khaldunian Study

Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree is the postmodern retelling of what happened to the Muslim civilization in Spain and how the Muslims fell from their grandeur in a cyclic mode of rising and fall. Due to the lack of social solidarity (Asabiyyah) and weak civilization (Umran), the Nasrid Empire in Granada became weak and was overrun by the stronger Christian civilization. Ibn Khaldun's Cyclic Theory of the rise and fall of civilizations from his Muqaddimah is applied as a major theoretical perspective and two of his key concepts, Asabbiyah and Umran are also discussed with reference to Ali's work. Ali's metafiction combines politics as well as the poetics of the postmodern culture and shows the relevance of Khaldunian ideas to the current metamorphosis in the Muslim World. The study deconstructs the Eurocentric notions of Muslim history and finds the trajectory of cultural conflicts of Christian-Muslim civilizations.

Developmental trajectories of teacher-student relationships and longitudinal associations with children's conduct problems from Grades 1 to 12

This study examined the development and continuity of teacher-student relationship quality across the formal schooling years (Grades 1 to 12) and investigated how variations (i.e., differential trajectories) in teacher-student relationship quality were longitudinally associated with children's conduct problems across childhood and adolescence. Participants consisted of 784 students (Mage = 6.57 in Grade 1; 47% girls, 37.4% Latino or Hispanic, 34.1% European American, and 23.2% African American) who were identified as being academically at risk (i.e., had low literacy scores at school entry). Distinct subgroups of children were identified based on variations in their teacher-student warmth and conflict trajectories, and patterns of continuity and change were also assessed across the transition to middle school. The findings provided insights into how the duration, magnitude, and timing of teacher-student relationship quality were associated with children's conduct problems. More specifically, relationships characterized by early-onset deficits, chronic and persistent relationship difficulties, or adolescent-onset conflict were associated with distinct patterns of conduct problems throughout childhood and adolescence.

ASPECTS OF PRECOLONIAL ISOKO SOCIO-POLITICAL RELATIONS WITH THEIR NEIGHBOURS IN SOUTH CENTRAL NIGERIA

This work focused on aspects of pre-colonial Isoko socio-political relations with their neighbours in the Niger Delta region of South Central Nigeria. It attempts to illuminate the nexus between internal and external dynamics and the concomitant changes and continuities in Isoko relations with their Urhobo, Ijaw, Ukwuani and Aboh neighbours. The work is premised on the historical method and interpretations deploying primary and secondary data to achieve its objective. The study concludes that intergroup relations in the region is largely influenced by their somewhat common ancestral origin; geographical contiguity; a shared common environmental and cultural practices; and the experience of similar external influences. This is done within the context of contemporary trajectory of the socio-political conflicts in the Niger Delta with serious implications for both National and International interests.

A Dynamic Model of Buyer-Supplier Conflict Processes

Studies examining the temporal dynamics of buyer-supplier conflict are scarce despite emphatic calls for investigating conflict as a dynamic process. This research takes an initial step and examines the trajectory of conflict towards functional or dysfunctional outcomes, by specifically investigating the interplay between task and relationship conflict. Towards this end, dyadic case studies each with multiple respondents were used. The interviews were semi- structured and paired retrospective data from both sides were collected. We propose a phase-based model of conflict process, wherein conflict moves from a conflict initiation state, to a conflict spiral phase where task and relationship conflicts impact each other in a continuous feedback loop until a conflict tolerance threshold, and then to conflict outcomes. We propose mechanisms that trigger the transition among phases (interphase) and mechanisms leading to dynamics within phases (intraphase). In formulating a dynamic model of buyer-supplier conflict process, this paper offers new insights by incorporating a temporal perspective into the study of conflict. Our findings suggest that conflict unfolds over time and is more complex than originally recognised in the literature.

Depressive Symptom and Financial Conflict Relate Over Time Among Couples

Since the housing market collapsed in the late 2000′s, researchers have explored the link between finances and mental health in more depth. Although there is discussion around how financial conflict is related to mental health illnesses, it remains unclear how financial conflict and depressive symptoms are related bidirectionally over time. Using an integrated family stress model and stress generation theoretical lens, we sought to investigate bidirectional relations between financial conflict trajectories and depressive symptom trajectories among partnered men and women. Using 1273 German couples and multivariate latent growth models, we tested this bidirectional association over three waves. Our results revealed that men’s and women’s initial financial conflict and initial depressive symptoms were related. This bidirectional association, however, was more nuanced when we examined these associations longitudinally. Men’s and women’s initial depressive symptoms were associated with the partner perceiving greater financial conflict over the three waves. In addition men’s initial financial conflict was associated with increases in their partner’s depressive symptoms over the three waves. These findings begin to address a gap literature, which has not yet explored the bidirectional association between financial conflict and depressive symptoms among couples over time. These findings also offer insights for practitioners to explore with couples regarding the relation between their financial conflicts and depressive symptoms.

Happily (n)ever after? Codevelopment of romantic partners in continuing and dissolving unions.

Do patterns of intimate relationship development foreshadow whether couples' unions stay together or end in separation? Integrating tenets from the enduring dynamics and emergent distress models of relationship development, we propose an accumulating distress model suggesting that the trajectories of those in dissolving partnerships (i.e., unions that ultimately end) are characterized by higher base levels of distress that increase more rapidly over time compared to those in continuing partnerships. In addition, we propose that this pattern applies to codevelopment between partners: those in dissolving unions are expected to have higher base dissimilarity that increases more rapidly over time compared to continuing couples. We further test whether the proposed patterns of codevelopment are equally apparent in young and middle adult couples. To test this model, we draw on data from 1,965 couples from 2 age groups in the German Family Panel study surveyed annually 7 times. Results support the concept of accumulating distress in the trajectories of relationship satisfaction, commitment, and conflict. For codevelopment, increasing dissimilarity in dissolving couples emerged for connectedness and autonomy in the relationship. In addition, dissolving partners became more similar in their low degree of commitment to the relationship. Age-related analyses broadly replicated the pattern of accumulating distress in young and middle adult couples with few exceptions for young adult women. In sum, in accordance with an accumulating distress concept of relationship codevelopment, our results revealed higher base and increasing levels of distress and dissimilarity across time among partners in dissolving unions compared to continuing couples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Living with Conflicts over Wolves. The Case of Redes Natural Park

Numerous efforts are implemented to manage conflicts over wolves with the implicit aim to predict, gain control, and resolve them. Yet conflicts over wolves tend to persist in practice. Based on Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, we aim to explain this persistence by considering conflicts over wolves as evolving unities of persisting and contradicting communications. Using a case study in Redes Natural Park, Spain, we illustrate how conflicts over wolves evolve semi-independently through internal and external communications. These communications can both fuel and redirect the complex trajectories of conflict, thereby contributing to its persistence over time. Taking lessons from this case, we propose alternative interventions that do not necessarily aim at resolving conflicts, but instead consider an open-mindedness toward the multitude of conflict observations and experiences; the need to follow and monitor the enduring lives of conflict over wolves; and the prudence of overly managing these conflicts at a distance.

Review: Trajectories of Conflict and Peace: Jerusalem and Belfast since 1994, by Scott A. Bollens

Review: <i>Trajectories of Conflict and Peace: Jerusalem and Belfast since 1994</i>, by Scott A. Bollens

Violence, Autochthony, and Identity Politics in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa): A Processual Perspective on Local Political Dynamics

Abstract:“Political violence” is seemingly on the rise again in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The violence that began in the 1980s and reached a peak in the transition period resurfaced before the local government elections in August 2016. Krämer provides a processual understanding of local dynamics of violence in the eThekwini Municipality and situates the current episode within the historical trajectory of violent conflict. He examines how exclusionary identities get activated in local elections and argues that underlying the violence between supporters of hostile political parties are conflicting forms of autochthonous belonging and contradictory ideas about what constitutes membership in a community.

Introduction: Accountability Amidst Fragility, Conflict, and Violence: Learning from Recent Cases

Conflict, violence, and fragility exacerbate the difficulties faced by poor and marginalised people, particularly in influencing the policy decisions that affect their lives. Comparing five cases in conflict-affected contexts, this introduction highlights a number of approaches. It emphasises the importance of distinguishing processes of accountability from those of empowerment, and recognising the complexities of the relationships between them. It highlights how the dynamic nature of contexts of fragility, violence, and conflict constrain citizen action but simultaneously offer opportunities for civic actors to form coalitions with new actors and movements. It underscores the value in viewing accountability gains within the longer historical trajectory of particular conflicts. Finally, it illustrates the core importance of narratives and framing in driving collective action and embedding the legitimacy of claims. The cases highlight that progress towards accountability is often transitory and partial, but together also foreground key issues that are relevant for understanding empowerment and accountability processes.

Coping in context: The effects of long-term relations between interparental conflict and coping on the development of child psychopathology following parental divorce.

Exposure to high levels of postdivorce interparental conflict is a well-documented risk factor for the development of psychopathology, and there is strong evidence of a subpopulation of families for which conflict persists for many years after divorce. However, existing studies have not elucidated differential trajectories of conflict within families over time, nor have they assessed the risk posed by conflict trajectories for development of psychopathology or evaluated potential protective effects of children's coping to mitigate such risk. We used growth mixture modeling to identify longitudinal trajectories of child-reported conflict over a period of six to eight years following divorce in a sample of 240 children. We related the trajectories to children's mental health problems, substance use, and risky sexual behaviors and assessed how children's coping prospectively predicted psychopathology in the different conflict trajectories. We identified three distinct trajectories of conflict; youth in two high-conflict trajectories showed deleterious effects on measures of psychopathology at baseline and the six-year follow-up. We found both main effects of coping and coping by conflict trajectory interaction effects in predicting problem outcomes at the six-year follow-up. The study supports the notion that improving youth's general capacity to cope adaptively is a potentially modifiable protective factor for all children facing parental divorce and that children in families with high levels of postdivorce conflict are a particularly appropriate group to target for coping-focused preventive interventions.

Stroop interference is a composite phenomenon: Evidence from distinct developmental trajectories of its components.

Only one previous developmental study of Stroop task performance (Schiller, 1966) has controlled for differences in processing speed that exist both within and between age groups. Therefore, the question of whether the early developmental change in the magnitude of Stroop interference actually persists after controlling for processing speed needs further investigation; work that is further motivated by the possibility that any remaining differences would be caused by process(es) other than processing speed. Analysis of data from two experiments revealed that, even after controlling for processing speed using z-transformed reaction times, early developmental change persists such that the magnitude of overall Stroop interference is larger in 3rd- and 5th graders as compared to 1st graders. This pattern indicates that the magnitude of overall Stroop interference peaks after 2 or 3years of reading practice (Schadler & Thissen, 1981). Furthermore, this peak is shown to be due to distinct components of Stroop interference (resulting from specific conflicts) progressively falling into place. Experiment 2 revealed that the change in the magnitude of Stroop interference specifically results from joint contributions of task, semantic and response conflicts in 3rd- and 5th graders as compared to a sole contribution of task conflict in 1st graders. The specific developmental trajectories of different conflicts presented in the present work provide unique evidence for multiple loci of Stroop interference in the processing stream (respectively task, semantic and response conflict) as opposed to a single (i.e. response) locus predicted by historically - favored response competition accounts.

Mobility dilemmas: conflict analysis of road constructions in a Tibetan tourism community in China

Road construction offers a unique lens through which to investigate tourism mobility. To date, research has focused on the socio-cultural effects of road construction, such as its influence on tourists’ movements and its hindrance to tourism development, with less use of systematic methods to analyze road construction-related conflicts. Accordingly, this study comprised a systematic analysis of road construction-related conflicts in Yubeng, China, and potential strategies to solve the underlying mobility dilemmas. A geo-historical trajectory of conflicts was examined, and road construction conflicts were categorized as involving resource competition, tourism dilemma, modern anxiety, or protection paradox. Then, formal conflict analysis and an evolutionary game model were used to analyze these different conflict categories and develop a general pattern of strategies by which the dilemmas might be resolved. The theoretical implications and practical insights of the findings for tourism development, as well as other social conflict contexts, were also investigated.

Predictive links between genetic vulnerability to depression and trajectories of warmth and conflict in the mother-adolescent and father-adolescent relationships.

The present study used a genetically informed design of twins raised in the same family (375 monozygotic and 290 dizygotic twins; 50.2% girls) to examine the association between adolescents' genetic risk for depressive symptoms and the course of the parent-child relationship quality throughout adolescence. Depressive symptoms and the quality of the parent-adolescent relationships were measured through adolescents' self-reports from ages 13 to 17. Group-based trajectory modeling revealed that most adolescents experienced high-quality relationships with both of their parents, characterized by high levels of warmth and low levels of conflict, and marked by gradual changes over adolescence. However, 3% of adolescents showed a trajectory of high and increasing conflict with their mothers and 16% of adolescents showed a trajectory of low warmth with their fathers, which decreased until mid-adolescence before increasing thereafter. Moreover, in line with an evocative gene-environment correlation process, a higher genetic vulnerability to depressive symptoms increased the likelihood of following a more problematic relationship trajectory with parents. This rGE was mediated by adolescents' actual depressive behavior symptoms. Results also suggest that adolescents' depression symptoms may affect girls' and boys' relationship with their parents in a similar way, with specific sex-patterns revolving more around the sex of the parent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).