Conflict transformation and history teaching: social psychological theory and its contributions

The aim of this introductory chapter is to render intelligible how history teaching can be enriched with knowledge of social psychological theories that deal with the issue of conflict transformation and partcularly the notions of prejudice reduction and reconciliation. A major aim of history teaching is to engage students with historical texts, establish historical significance, identify continuity and change, analyse cause and consequence, take historical perspectives and understand the ethical dimensions of historical interpretations. Such teaching, enriched with social psychological theory, will enlarge the notion of historical literacy into a study of historical culture and historical consciousness in the classroom so that students become reflective of the role of collective memory and history teaching in processes of conflict transformation and understand the ways in which various forms of historical consciousness relate the past, present and future. This is what the editors of this volume call an interdisciplinary paradigm of transformative history teachin

The development of prejudice in children : The case of Cyprus

In this chapter, we discuss the concept of prejudice, broadly defined as a generalized antipathy toward a social group (Allport 1954), and how it develops in children through the lens of different developmental theories. We use these theoretical foundations to examine the case of Cyprus in relation to prejudice development among Greek and Turkish Cypriot children. In the first part of the chapter, we discuss concepts adjacent to prejudice such as category awareness, identification with one’s own category, preference for one’s own social group, and discrimination against other social groups, and we present the key social psychological theories of prejudice development in children. The second part of the chapter is devoted to presenting the case of Cyprus as a context of ethnic conflict and inter-ethnic prejudice. We review the main studies aiming to track the onset as well as the nature of prejudice among Greek and Turkish Cypriot children and critically discuss these studies while highlighting the specificities of the Cypriot sociopolitical context. In the last part of the chapter, we discuss how existing theories of prejudice development can not only inform the case of Cyprus but can also be informed by it. We conclude by offering a set of recommendations about addressing prejudice in childhood through research and education

Social Representations of the Past in Post-conflict Societies: Adherence to Official Historical Narratives and Distrust Through Heightened Threats

One of the main obstacles to the cultivation of historical thinking, in post-conflict societies, is adherence to the official master narratives of conflict. We argue based on empirical evidence from three post-conflict settings (Cyprus , Serbia and Croatia ) that such representations of the past and their uncritical internalization that leads to adherence to master narratives of conflict constructs a threatened self and generates distrust towards the outgroup. Such a mentality becomes a major obstacle to conflict transformation and to a peaceful settlement of intercommunal conflicts

Blocking the solution: S

This paper first identifies representations of threats in Greek-Cypriot newspapers related to the negotiations for a Cyprus settlement. Then, it identifies how alternative representations to these core representations of threats are managed through the use of a number of semantic barriers. Therefore, it problematizes the role (function) that such representations of threats play in undermining the potential for transformative dialogue in a post-conflict and divided country in need of conflict transformation. Focus is on the editorials of two newspapers during a four-month period before the collapse of the July 2017 Cyprus peace talks. Both were suspicious and polemic vis-à-vis the said negotiations but used different strategies to oppose them. Simerini convened recurrently threats such as Turkification, state dissolution and threats against Hellenism. Phileleftheros focused on the issue of security drawing red lines on various dossiers under discussion in the negotiations. The paper contributes to the theoretical debate of the relationship between social representations and identities and the role of threats and historical narratives in undermining transformative dialogue through the use of semantic barriers