Topic: "Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts"

Guest Speaker: Dr Michael Magcamit (University of Leicester)

Discussants: Dr Maria Tanyag (Australian National University), Dr Amalia Sustikarini (Australia Council for the Arts), Aye Theingi (Waseda University)

Moderator: Dr Dahlia Simangan (Hiroshima University)

Date and Time: Monday, 24th April, 2023 / 4:30 - 6:00 p.m. (JST)

Venue: Online thru Microsoft Teams

Language: English

[Registration] Scan QR code on the flyer or visit https://bit.ly/ipcs17

In this 18th International Peace and Co-existence Seminar, Dr Michael Magcamit, author of the book, Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts, published by the Oxford University Press in 2022, is joined by Dr Maria Tanyag, Dr Amalia Sustikarini, and Aye Theingi in a discussion of the question: how does an ethnoreligious group become an existential security threat to states and societies? 

Departing from the mainstream practice and conventional wisdom of rationalist-materialist accounts of violent conflicts, Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts demonstrates how and why emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions are just as powerful and useful in understanding these phenomena. By uncovering the invisible albeit concrete emotive, symbolic, and perceptual causal mechanisms underpinning ethnoreligious otherings and the resulting violent conflicts, this book aims to address the incongruence between how the actual actors operating within these contexts think and act, and the existing theories and models of how they are expected to behave.

Accordingly, Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts has three main goals. First, to highlight the centrality of emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions in providing a more holistic and realistic understanding of otherings and conflicts. Second, to illustrate how the ethnoreligious othering framework developed and applied in the study advances process tracing explanations by systematically incorporating context-specific intersubjective meanings into causal accounts of the events under investigation. And third, to emphasize the importance of recognizing religion and nationalism as legitimate constituents and instruments of contemporary realpolitik by underlining their enduring security utility and essence at individual, group, and state levels.

The book argues that the causal mechanisms driving ethnoreligious otherings and passionate conflicts are simultaneously emitting and are propelled by deeply entrenched emotions, symbolic predispositions, and perceptions. Achieving durable peace and lasting settlements, therefore, requires reconciliation initiatives and regulation strategies that directly incorporate and tackle these neglected "immaterial" and "irrational" forces.