Culture, Social Representations, and Peacemaking: A Symbolic Theory of History and Identity

Abstract

Without Abstract Peace psychology has emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the Cold War to provide an interdisciplinary approach to the psychology of peace and conflict that draws more strongly from macro-level and institutional factors than from individual-level cognitive-motivational factors characteristic of mainstream intergroup theory in psychology. A recent review by Christie (2006) highlighted three major themes for peace psychology in the post–Cold War environment: “(1) a greater sensitivity to geohistorical context, (2) a more differentiated perspective on the meanings and types of violence and peace, and (3) a systems view of the nature of violence and peace” (p. 3). These themes bear major structural similarities to social psychological movements in Asia privileging culturally appropriate social actions (Atsumi, 2007; Liu & Ng, 2007) and those in Europe articulating a representational form of social psychology (Moscovici, 1988). Reflecting its origins in the United States, however, current approaches to peace psychology have little compelling theory about how culture and its representational systems influence war and peace. The purpose of this chapter is to present a symbolic representational approach to culture and conflict resolution developed in Asia and the Pacific that synthesizes European theories of social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and social representations (Moscovici, 1988).