Intractable Conflicts—How can they be Solved? The Theory of Daniel Bar-Tal

Abstract

For almost 30 years Daniel Bar-Tal's primary scientific interests were focused on one specific subject, though a very complex and very difficult one-intergroup conflicts in their especially vicious form, namely, intractable conflicts. His approach to this complex social phenomenon is very different from approaches that are predominant in social psychology. This is because the main inspiration for his studies was not merely intellectual curiosity-it was his experience of living in a region where intractable conflict shapes the life of everybody who lives there. It was therefore his experience as a concerned citizen who was trying many times to change the course of events to facilitate a peaceful solution of the conflict that shaped his approach. Based on this experience and on extensive research, for which he recruited a large group of collaborators, mainly doctoral students, he has developed an elaborated theory of intractable intergroup conflict that deals with the origin of such conflict, with the mechanisms that maintain it and with the processes that may contribute to its peaceful resolution. It is a general theory that can be applied lo various kinds of intergroup intractable conflicts in various places around the world. But unlike other social psychologists whose research is focused mainly on relationships between small groups he has studied conflicts of macro social scale-between nations and large political entities. His unique approach lo intractable conflicts is related to and, to some extent, also driven by his more general conception of social psychology. He believes that social psychology should not limit itself to studies of the relationships between individuals and between small groups-it should also include psychological processes that regulate behavior of large social groups such as nations. Thus, he postulates the extension of social psychology into the societal domain; that is building a subdiscipline- societal psychology. In this chapter, I will discuss Bar-Tal's approach to intractable conflict beginning with his conception of societal psychology. Next, I will review the popular understanding of intractable conflicts and describe Bar- Tal's unique theory focusing on his conception of the nature and origin of such conflict, its development and implications of the theory for strategies of resolving such conflicts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)