The Collective Remembering of Conflict and Its Role in Fueling an Ethos of Conflict in Society

Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on how collective memory fuels current conflict. In addition to the narrative about the present, that Bar-Tal defined as the configuration of central eight previously described societal shared beliefs that provide particular dominant orientation lo a society, collective memory or narrative about the past plays an important functional role for conflict. Bar-Tal hypothesizes that a society develops a functional psychological infrastructure or ethos of coping. Essential to this societal coping mechanism are formal and informal collective memories, usually associated with a set of self-serving narratives and attributions about the conflict, and collective emotions of hatred, fear, anger, and pride (Bar-Tal 2007; Halperin and Pliskin, volume 2), Bar-Tal's model of collective remembering under intractable conflict is based on the following functional characteristics: hardship, uncertainty, and suffering of the ingroup caused by intractable conflict with an outgroup that furnishes people with collective challenges in terms of satisfying needs, coping with stress, and withstanding the enemy (Bar-Tal 2007, p, 1437), This leads to institutional biases in the construction of an ethos of conflict and collective memories of conflict, and accords well with the literature on collective/social memories (Olick and Robbins 1998) and social representations of history (Liu and Hilton 2005), (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)