IBSS: Religious Infusion and Asymmetric Group Conflict

这个跨学科的研究项目将探讨宗教仪式，教义和背景的差异如何塑造团体的动机和能力，其中宗教渗透到私人和公共生活的许多方面，有时导致这些团体对更强大的群体发起冲突。 该项目将通过测试关于宗教可能影响冲突的不同机制的假设，加强对宗教、种族和冲突的基本理解。 它将扩展和整合政治学，经济学，人类学和社会心理学的理论观点，将宗教和冲突联系起来。 它还将评估一些宗教灌输的动机和过程，低权力群体与似乎更强大的群体进行不对称冲突。 该项目将有助于填补美国和国际机构和组织在知识方面的重大空白，提供有关群体在宗教灌输方面存在差异的方式以及这些差异如何转化为群体冲突的见解和信息。 这些见解将有助于决策者和执行人员查明造成或减轻冲突的因素。 正如最近的事件所表明的那样，加强对力量悬殊的群体之间不对称冲突的原因、促进因素和抑制因素的理解，对于加强美国和其他国家的国家安全具有重要意义。 该项目还将在一系列不同的环境中为学生提供跨学科的教育和培训机会。调查人员将使用三种互补的方法来进行该项目，以测试九种假设，即宗教仪式，教义和背景的差异如何影响弱势，宗教融合群体的动机和能力，以发起对强势群体的冲突。 他们将进行案例研究，比较中东和南亚的两个跨国穆斯林族群（伊朗，伊拉克，叙利亚和土耳其的库尔德人和伊朗，阿富汗和巴基斯坦的俾路支人）。 他们将对全球40个资源相对薄弱的群体进行定性比较分析，并将在美国和印度进行实验室实验。 这些方法将阐明造成资源贫乏、宗教信仰坚定的群体参与不对称冲突的因素，并将有助于确定宗教信仰坚定可能导致更和平结果的情况。 该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究（IBSS）竞赛获得支持。

This interdisciplinary research project will examine how differences in religious ritual, doctrine, and context shape the motivations and capacities of groups in which religion permeates many aspects of private and public life, sometimes leading those groups to initiate conflict against stronger groups. The project will enhance basic understanding about religion, ethnicity, and conflict by testing hypotheses about different mechanisms through which religion may shape conflict. It will extend and integrate theoretical perspectives in political science, economics, anthropology, and social psychology that connect religion and conflict. It also will assess the motivations and processes though which some religiously infused, low-power groups engage in asymmetrical conflict against groups that seemingly are much more powerful. The project will help fill a significant gap in knowledge for U.S. and international agencies and organizations by providing insights and information regarding the ways in which groups differ in their religious infusion and how these differences translate into group conflict. These insights will assist policy makers and practitioners in identifying factors that create or mitigate conflicts. As recent events have demonstrated, enhanced understanding of the causes, facilitators, and inhibitors of asymmetric conflict between groups having great disparity in power has great significance for enhancing the national security of the U.S. and other nations. The project also will provide interdisciplinary education and training opportunities for students in a range of different settings.The investigators will conduct this project using three complementary methods in order to test nine hypotheses about the ways through which differences in religious ritual, doctrine, and context affect the motivations and capacities of weak, religiously infused groups to initiate conflict against stronger groups. They will conduct case studies comparing two transnational Muslim ethnic groups in the Middle East and South Asia (the Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey and the Baluchi in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). They will conduct qualitative comparative analyses of 40 relatively resource-weak groups around the world, and they will conduct laboratory-based experimentation in the U.S. and India. These approaches will elucidate the factors shaping the circumstances in which resource-poor, religiously infused groups engage in asymmetric conflict, and they will facilitate identification of the circumstances in which religious infusion may lead to more peaceful outcomes. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.