Paradoxes of identity change: Integrating macro, meso, and micro research on identity in conflict processes

Published date01 February 2018
Date01 February 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717734445
Subject MatterSpecial Issue Articles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717734445
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(1) 3 –18
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395717734445
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Paradoxes of identity change:
Integrating macro, meso, and
micro research on identity in
conflict processes
Bahar Rumelili
Koc University, Turkey
Jennifer Todd
University College Dublin, Ireland
Abstract
Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Most relevant are
changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities. Defining an ‘enemy’, narrowing, or
broadening the inner and outer circles of belonging to include or exclude the Other, are integral
to conflict processes at international, state, group, and individual levels. This Special Issue brings
together scholars with varied sub-disciplinary interests to engage with a set of common paradoxes
surrounding identity change, in order to generate more synthetic comparative understandings of
these processes. It aims to synthesize insights from different approaches and to show how change
from dyadically opposed identities takes place in different contexts.
Keywords
conflict, identity change, national/ethnic identities, self/other relations, state identity
Received: 30th May 2016; Revised version received: 14th December 2016; Accepted: 5th March 2017
Introduction
Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Despite the
analytic and methodological challenges that attend the study of identity (Abdelal et al.,
2009; Brubaker and Cooper, 2002), explanations of the initiation, reproduction, and trans-
formation of conflict are thin without reference to processes of identity consolidation and
change. ‘Identity’ usefully captures the combination of value, meaning, relationality, and
symbolic resonance that self-definition and belonging hold at international, state, group,
Corresponding author:
Bahar Rumelili, Department of International Relations, Koc University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Istanbul 34450,
Turkey.
Email: brumelili@ku.edu.tr
734445POL0010.1177/0263395717734445PoliticsRumelili and Todd
research-article2017
Special Issue Article
4 Politics 38(1)
and individual levels. Identity change occurs in various ways: through the construction of
new social categories and divisions, through actors reclassifying themselves, or being
reclassified by others, through changes in the meaning and boundaries of existing identi-
ties, and through changes in the relations between existing identities. Most relevant in
conflict processes are changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities.
These may include changes in the form of reinterpreting the meaning of identity to define
or eliminate an opposition and redrawing the boundaries of belonging to include or
exclude the Other.
The paradigmatic debates surrounding the concepts of identity and identity change
often emerge as impediments to systematic analysis of their role in conflict processes.
This Special Issue aims to generate synthetic comparative understanding of the patterning
of identity change across macro, meso, and micro- levels of analysis. To this end, this
article introduces and explicates a set of common paradoxes of identity change – seem-
ingly contradictory sets of propositions which surround the study of identity change, and
demand reconceptualization and reorientation of research strategies. The paradoxes allow
us, and the other contributors to this Special Issue, to pose parallel questions across dif-
ferent levels of analysis and to move beyond paradigmatic debate to empirically informed
comparative research.
Conceptual and paradigmatic diversity in the study of identity change
Identity change is frequently referred to or implied in studies of contention and conflict.
For example, to explain durable changes in foreign policy orientation, international rela-
tions scholars often argue that a change in state identity has taken place (Berger, 1996;
Hopf, 2002). Many conflict resolution specialists hold that changes in the identities of
conflict groups will consolidate peace agreements and facilitate reconciliation (Lederach,
1997). In studies on nationalism and ethnic conflicts, the making and remaking of national
identities, and the creation and solidification of ethnic groups are important in mobiliza-
tion and conflict processes (Beissinger, 2002; Coakley, 2012; Horowitz, 2000) and for the
functioning of the nation state (Wimmer, 2002). Migration scholars are interested in iden-
tity changes because of their effects on societal tensions and coexistence (Fong et al.,
2016; Roth, 2012).
However, despite this general interest, we have very little synthesized and cumulative
knowledge about identity change as a process.1 How does change from dyadic identities
take place? Is it a process of radical reclassification or of more subtle reinterpretation?
How does it unfold, with what temporality and patterning? Does it happen in cascades or
through incremental processes? And how is it realized? By which agents, in response to
what conditions and triggers, and facing what obstacles? The reasons are several: the
theorization of identity change is scattered in many disciplines and topical fields, with
each having developed its own specialized terminology and mid-range analytical frame-
works. Divisive metatheoretical debates about ontology and epistemology of identity
militate against attempts to develop common approaches. Identity changes at the indi-
vidual, group, societal, state, and transnational levels are governed by different mecha-
nisms, and to some extent constitute qualitatively different processes.
Still more serious as an obstacle to cumulative and convergent research on identity
change, however, is the lack of shared concepts between and within levels of analysis,
across disciplines and metatheoretical positions. The term ‘identity’ covers a proliferation
of distinct phenomena and distinct dimensions of the same phenomenon. At the

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