Introduction

ABSTRACTThis paper uses a case study approach to explore issues of social work policy and practice in three sites of political conflict in Europe: Northern Ireland; Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Cyprus. It begins with a review of the international literature on social work and political conflict and then discusses the strengths and limitations in engaging with comparative case study approaches. The authors explain how they view the writing of the paper as an intellectual encounter that helped establish the beginning stages of their comparative analysis. This starts with an analysis of the existing knowledge base about the three case studies that each share similar patterns of colonial histories, political and community conflict and the social work response. The second part of the paper extends this analysis to a critique of the impact of neo-liberal social and economic policies that often adversely impact upon the role of social workers in resolving conflict and building peace. The paper concludes with an appeal for social work to rediscover its rights-based role in working with victims and survivors of political conflict, what the authors describe as: ‘social work for critical peace’.

Religious conflict remains a pressing issue in plural societies, particularly where political and social tensions intersect with religious identity. In Indonesia, one of the world’s largest Muslim-majority countries, understanding the drivers of religious conflict at the local level is vital for fostering social cohesion. This study investigates the role of social capital—specifically bonding, bridging, and linking—in influencing religious conflict in Pasuruan Regency, East Java, with particular attention to the mediating roles of political and social conflict. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected through structured face-to-face interviews with 400 respondents, selected using multi-stage sampling. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via SmartPLS was employed to analyze both direct and indirect relationships between the constructs. The results reveal that bonding and bridging significantly reduce political and social conflict, which in turn significantly reduce religious conflict. However, their direct effects on religious conflict are not significant. Linking was found to significantly reduce social conflict but did not show a significant influence on political or religious conflict directly. Indirect effect analysis confirmed that bonding, bridging, and linking can mitigate religious conflict through their effects on political and social tensions. This study contributes to the growing literature on social capital and conflict by highlighting the importance of indirect pathways. Practically, the findings suggest that policies aiming to reduce religious conflict should strengthen both horizontal (bonding and bridging) and vertical (linking) social ties, while also addressing underlying political and social grievances. The study underscores the need for integrated, community-based conflict prevention strategies.

In a polarized society, rhetorical arguments are usually expressed by strong, extreme terms which by themselves carry a positive or negative sentiment about one side of the social debate or conflict. By detecting extreme terms in a social-political text such as a blog post, we are able to automatically detect the sentiment of the text about polarizing issues in a divided society. On the other hand, during social and political conflicts in polarized societies, we observe a shift from mainstream to extreme language and rhetoric. In this research, we illustrate that there is a correlation between the language shift and social conflicts. In other words, the language shift can be used as a signal for predicting social conflicts in divided societies. The data for this research were collected from Iranian political blogs during Iran election crisis in 2009.

In the following an attempt is made to summarize the basic lines of the academic discussion on the character of the Finnish civil war. I pose some questions concerning the nature of the conflict in terms of modern politics. Following the recent discussion on the contradictions of modern political culture, I will ask to what degree the war can be understood in terms of conflicting patterns of national sovereignty and popular sovereignty. In terms of historiography, the nature of the civil war of 1918 was defined during the interwar and Cold war periods mainly in two opposing ways. In the hegemonic academic tradition, the war was interpreted as a fight for national sovereignty, as the ‘war of liberation’. In the discourse close to the labour movement, the conflict was conceptualized as an internal matter, as a social conflict or a ‘class war’. First from the 1960s on, there have appeared new interpretations that have tried to cover both aspects of the crises and reassessed in what sense the war can be understood as a struggle for national sovereignty and to what degree it should be seen in the context of an internal social and political conflict.

Relevance. The phenomena and processes observed in the social system in the modern objectively conditioned conditions of dynamization and politicization have a stable tendency to the formation and accumulation of transformational potential. In this sense, social conflicts at the present stage are often transformed into political conflicts within the framework of an unprecedentedly developing and increasingly complex socio-political space. Of particular research interest is the identification of key features and patterns of political transformation of social conflicts in the focus of global political risks and threats. It also seems appropriate to formulate specific practical measures of approximating specifics in the direction of managing the political and transformational potential of modern social conflicts.Purpose. The main purpose of this article is to present a theoretical overview of the transformation of social conflicts in the context of global political risks and threats.Objectives: formulation of global political risks and threats at the ideological-conceptual, activity-functional, structural and institutional, resource and interactive levels, identification of key features and patterns of political transformation of social conflicts.Methodology. The author mainly used the following group of methods in the process of writing the article: information analysis, content analysis, event analysis, sociological analysis.Results. Taking into account the stated research issues, it seems appropriate to formulate specific practical measures of approximating specifics in the direction of managing the political and transformational potential of modern social conflicts.Conclusion. Within the framework of the modern global socio-political reality, generating and reproducing a huge number of social and other conflicts, it is necessary to pay more attention to the phenomenology of social conflict as such, implying, firstly, a positive and naturalistic perception of the conflictogenic nature of political phenomena and processes, and secondly, the implementation of targeted monitoring of political and conflict dynamics, thirdly, the organization of discussions on open and verified platforms, and fourthly, improving the effectiveness of existing regulatory and legal regulations and formal procedures.

The article addresses social and political conflicts with a clearly defined ethnic component in the modern Spanish society. Assessing the experience of regulating interethnic and interterritorial relations between Spanish nationalities and regions, the mass immigration of diverse cultural backgrounds in the asymmetric State of Autonomies, the author examines competitive identity politics and public discourses on nation, nationalism and nation-building. Voiced by the central and subnational authorities, it frequently assumes a conflict character. This is especially customary for Catalonia, but also applies to the Basque Country and several other autonomous regions. Education and language policies are a sphere of clashing perceptions and a key priority for politics of identity involving central and regional authorities, political parties and civil society groups. The increasing phenomenon of the ethnicity politicization in the State of Autonomies complicates the formation of the civic (national) identity and enhances the potential of ethnopolitical conflicts in the country, where particularistic sentiments are sufficiently strong in the historical perspective, while the mass foreign migration introduces new interethnic and intercultural contradictions and challenges. The Spanish experience of interethnic and interterritorial relations regulation and of positive civic identity construction in the context of the federalizing State of Autonomies may be useful for the Russian Federation having some similar problems on the agenda and a continuously developing model of federal structure. Acknowledgements. This article was prepared with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation [grant no. 15-18-00021 “Regulating interethnic relations and managing ethnic and social conflicts in the contemporary world: the resource potential of civic identity (a comparative political analysis)”]. The research was conducted at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO).

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of political socialization and life course on the ideological involvement of two cohorts of Norwegian men. Our main thesis is that socialization in a period dominated by political and social conflicts will produce a higher level of ideological involvement than socialization in a period with a low level of political and social conflicts. But the higher level of ideological involvement can be modified by the life course experiences of the cohorts. We are only able to discuss some aspects of this rather general thesis in this article, comparing two cohorts born in 1912 and 1932.

Critical Issues in Israeli Society, edited by Alan Dowry. Westport: Praeger, 2004. 261 pp. $79.95. The politics and sociology of Israeli society cannot be understood without considering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but often that particular conflict becomes the primary focus of analysis. Alan Dowty's edited volume, Critical Issues in Israeli Society, is a welcome addition to the literature because it goes beyond this limited view. There are, indeed, many other critical issues in Israeli society, and this book is a useful compendium of essays that address them. Overall, the book examines various points of confrontation within Israeli society. Though no single theoretical or methodological framework unites the volume, the individual chapters, sometimes in combination with each other, are quite valuable. After an introduction by Dowty, the book is organized into trends in the public sphere, and economic trends, security issues, and Zionism and history. Trends in the public sphere includes discussions of the consequences of tweaking the institutions of governance for what is still an evolving democracy (Gideon Doron and Rebecca Kook), of the consequences of this tweaking on corruption (Menachem Hofnung), and of the limitations of and opportunities for policymaking by the High Court of Justice (Gad Barzilai). Each of these chapters asks an interesting question about the nature and evolution of governance and the challenges faced by the Israeli state as a result of its institutional structure. The second section examines social cleavages, both inter- and intra-group. Asher Cohen discusses the way changes in the Orthodox camp have altered the relationship between the Orthodox parties vis-a-vis Labor and Likud. Zvi Gitelman examines the new wave of immigration from the Former Soviet Union. In both of these cases, Orthodox parties and waves of Soviet immigrants, intra-group as well as inter-group tensions introduce an important dynamic into the Israeli political mix. In contrast, although the Palestinian citizenry of Israel is a heterogenous community, the social conflicts between them and other groups are more pressing than intra-group tensions, as the chapter by Majid Al-Haj makes clear. The position of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the double periphery places them at a severe political, social, and economic disadvantage since their interests are marginal to both Jewish Israel and the emerging Palestinian polity. …

Self‐disclosure is a frequent topic in the relational psychotherapy literature. However, there are few psychoanalytic writings or empirical studies that concern self‐disclosure in the context of cross‐cultural treatment; specifically treatment between Israeli therapists and Palestinian clients. This particular subject broadens the investigation of cross‐cultural treatment beyond race and color into the domain of religious and political differences between client and clinician. An Israeli‐American therapist's counter‐transference reflections around self‐disclosure and its impact on her Palestinian client will be the subject of investigation in the following paper. Self‐disclosure has been increasingly examined in the relational literature over the past ten years in the context of the therapist's subjectivity within the therapeutic encounter (Aron, 1991; Renik, 1995). Few psychoanalytic writings, however, have focused on self‐disclosure as embedded within race and culture, and fewer still address the impact of religious and political differences between client and therapist, differences that, in the case of a Palestinian client and an Israeli therapist, reflect larger social and political conflicts. The transference‐countertransference dynamics around self‐disclosure and the way these shape the therapeutic encounter between a Palestinian client and an Israeli therapist will be the subject of investigation in this paper.

This article reports on a retrospective study of social workers experiences and perception of practice during the height of the political conflict in Northern Ireland (1969–1988). The article describes the qualitative research methodology used to access the sample, design of interview schedule and data collection. Data were analysed using an iterative process to highlight emergent themes. Interviews were carried out with twenty-eight social workers who were employed in a range of agencies. The findings explore how social workers routinely had to negotiate access to communities in the midst of this violence, sometimes through paramilitary organisations. Respondents identified a range of coping mechanisms that they had used to make the ‘abnormal normal’. This included adopting apolitical, neutral stances, yet taking risks in the everyday tasks of meeting the needs of individuals and families. There was, however, limited evidence of employers providing support for practitioners, with peer support most prevalent and purposive forms of education and training during this period. The authors argue for greater attention to the skills and knowledge required for interventions with victims and survivors of the conflict and a more holistic approach to the analysis of social work and political conflict across international contexts.

This paper reports on the evaluation of a European PEACE III sponsored teaching and learning project that was designed to enable social work students to better understand the needs of victims and survivors of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The paper begins with an introduction to policy, practice and educational contexts before reviewing the literature on social work, conflict and trauma. It also summarises key, innovative pedagogical approaches used in the teaching, including the use of ground rules, teaching teams consisting of lecturer and service user dyads, learning exercises and case studies. The paper then explains the evaluation methodology. This involved two surveys which returned 144 student and 34 practice teacher questionnaires. The findings revealed that students were generally committed to this form of teaching and engagement with victims and survivors of the conflict, although some students reported that their attitudes towards this subject had were not changed. Some students also discussed how the conflict had affected their lives and the lives of families and friends; it is argued that such biographical details are crucial in developing new pedagogical approaches in this area. Practice teachers who supervised some of these students on placement reported general levels of satisfaction with preparedness to work with conflict related situations but were less convinced that organisations were so committed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the study limitations and a recommendation for more robust methods of teaching and evaluation in this area of social work education and practice.

We construct models of the endogenous formation of politicalgroups designed to capture some of the key features ofpolitical and social conflict. We draw on the `citizencandidate' approach and consider both instrumental andexpressive approaches to understanding group formation andconflict between groups. We argue that the inclusion ofexpressive elements into the analysis of political groupsprovides both new insights and a better fit with certainaspects of the realities of political conflict.

This paper deals with the political and social conflicts in 18th century Val de Bagnes. The existence of a large genealogical database of its population provides new insights into the mobilization patterns of an early modern rural area. Our prosopographical approach, which attempts to identify the protagonists of the different conflicts, reveals the existence of well-organized and relatively stable political factions. Rather than simply being shaped by personal solidarities, they had a coherent political program. Comparisonwith genealogical data reveals the influence of kinship ties within the political factions, which are responsible for continuities within the structure of political conflicts. However, kinship alone does not explain the logic of political mobilization, other social networks like spiritual kinship or village solidarities also need to be considered.

Enzensberger’s Illusions

Fifty years ago Hannah Arendt taught a series of lectures on Immanuel Kant's political philosophy in the New School for Social Research in New York; a course that made an entrance to the contemporary history of political philosophy for its acumen of interpretation of a classic so long unassessed on his reflections on politics and especially for its polemical idea that Kant's work contained two distinct models of political philosophy. The first of them (the traditional one) would be centered around the activity of practical reason, therefore exposed in the Critique of pure reason, Critique of practical reason and Metaphysics of Morals, as for the second one, "Kant's unwritten philosophy", it would relate itself more closely to the activity of the reflecting power of judgement in the Critique of Judgement and in the political essays Toward Perpetual Peace and The Conflict of Faculties. Since its publication on 1982 Arendt's lectures have stir up many controversies on the studies of Kantian philosophy (Kantsforschung) and on contemporary political thought: considerations on its interpretative method, criticism on its philosophical refusal of practical reason and varying inspirations to search for "sensible politics" concerning social interrelations of people. Considering this manifold reception, we can say that the objective of this study is to gather, reassemble and, luckily, open up a few possible considerations on political reflection concerning Kant's thought. For that end, we shall investigate the political and social role that the concept of sensus communis may imply as a "community sense" which comes out of the reflecting power of judgement, that is, a certain type of reflection oriented toward sociability, communicability and publicity of ways of thought on its plurality and especially on its political and social conflicts. We suggest that such an investigation must be conducted through the philosophical and political contests that spreads through two of Kant's main political essays published after the Critique of Judgement: the criticism of empirical politics in Theory and Praxis and the criticism of political prudence in Toward Perpetual Peace. Regarding our analysis, we aim to show in which ways (political and juridical) social conflict should be mediated by freedom of thought and State transparency. Both are grounded in a conception of political reflection that instead of render itself a priori to an idea of practical reason signalizes empirically the general orientation of the publicly manifested way of thoughtfor example, such as happens with the enthusiasm of the spectators of the French Revolution. At the end we consider that the concept of publicity actually conceives a concept of reflection able to assess political phenomenon from an empirical, common (popular) and social orientation according to the three maxims of common understanding (think for one self, think on the place of everybody else, think coherently).