Intergroup encounters
Intergroup encounters between Jewish and Arab students in Israel: Towards an interactionist approach
Shifra Sagy
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
This paper draws on workshops supported by Abraham Fund, Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Address for correspondence: Dr. Shifra Sagy, Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105 Israel. Telfax: 972-7-6469148. E-mail:
Intergroup encounters between Jewish and Arab students in Israel: Towards an interactionist approach
Abstract
The paper examines the relationship between self and society from an interactionist approach, in the context of intergroup encounters. One of the main dilemmas found in intergroup encounters is the tension that exists between the salience of the group identity versus personal and interpersonal dimensions. We suggest applying an interactionist way of dealing with this debate, which emphasizes the situation in which the contact takes place. From this approach, the use of different types of intergroup encounters is discussed by comparing two types of workshops in which Jewish and Arab Israeli students met to work on the Israeli-Arab political conflict. The research questions are analyzed in regard to topics that are central to the Jewish-Arab conflict, such as the Holocaust and Al-Nakba (the Arab epithet for the 1948 war).
This article was written before the present crisis (2000/2002) in Jewish-Palestinian relations.
Intergroup encounters between Jewish and Arab students in Israel: Towards an interactionist approach
Research in the field of intergroup relations has developed considerably in the last two decades, influenced by events and the historical zeitgeist (Mackie & Smith, 1998). Establishing the conditions for effective intergroup encounters and finding ways to permit groups at odds to coexist in the same state is a powerful challenge and a formidable task in severe ethnic conflicts. Designing effective practices is particularly difficult in settings where group conflict is high and trust is low (Ross, 2000). Using an interactionist approach (Tajfel, 1978), this article compares two types of encounters between two national groups: Jews and Arabs who live in Israel. The analysis will focus on the question of the preferred salience in these encounters - the individual versus the group salience - in order to achieve their purpose.
Encounter groups of Jews and Arabs in Israel.
Encounters between Jews and Arabs (teenagers and young adults) have been taking place in Israel since the beginning of the 80s. These encounters have focused on the question of the conflictual relations and the possibility of coexistence between the two nationalities in Israel (cf. Amir & Ben-Ari, 1989; Bargal & Bar, 1996; Katz & Kahanof, 1990). The tension between the political-group dimension and the psychological-personal and interpersonal dimension is discussed in most of the reviews of these encounters (Amir & Ben- Ari, 1989; Katz & Kahanof, 1990; Suleiman, 1996). This is usually presented as being linked to the declared and hidden goals that the group participants and initiators attribute to the encounter.
The goals of the encounters are usually defined dichotomously (Katz & Kahanof, 1990; Suleiman, 1996). On the one hand, they are defined on the micro level; that is, developing interpersonal closeness and relationships between the participants as individuals. In this case, the reference to political issues might fuel controversy and be detrimental to the goals of the encounters. On the other hand, the goal of the encounter is defined as an attempt to find solutions to a socio-national conflict and arrive at an agreement on ways of dealing on the macro level. In this case, political issues and the outside reality are stressed. Thus, the question is usually posed as a tension between two “opposing” demands: the focus on the group as opposed to the individual psychological self.
Most of the researchers (e.g., Rouhana & Korper, 1997; Sonnenschein, Halabi & Friedman, 1998; Suleiman, 1996) tried to explain the tension between the two approaches in terms of power relations between the minority and the majority group. In workshops, the minority (Arab) group exercises its informal influence in the direction of focusing the meeting on political aspects on the macro level of the two groups’ relations. Such an analysis sees in the demand made by the minority group as the “right to scream” (Katz & Kahanof, 1990).
A different approach to understanding this tension between the two approaches refers to the cultural differences between the Jewish and Arab groups (Sagy, 2000). The content and structure of the inner self may differ considerably by culture (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Regarding the Arab and Jewish cultures, studies found that Arab-Israelis are more likely to generate selves focused on national-religious ethnic collective groups than are Jewish-Israelis (Oyserman, 1993; Sagy, Orr, Bar-On & Awwad, 2001). Thus, the demand of the Arab-Israeli participants to focus on the collective-self in the intergroup may reflect the more collectivistic-orientation of this culture versus the more individualistic-oriented culture of the Jewish-Israelis.
The present paper is an attempt to examine the dilemma from an interactionist approach, which leads to an integrated view of the two possible strategies in the encounter. The most prominent interactionist approach in the field of intergroup relations is Social Identity Theory, which was developed by (Tajfel, 1978) for describing a basic dimension of interaction between people. On the one pole - the influence of personal characteristics, and on the other - the impact of groups and social categories. This is a “group theory” in its orientation, as it tries to explain that social behavior and social conflict are caused by individuals belonging to groups, and not by interpersonal or intrapersonal processes. However, the theory does not claim that society comes first, before the individual: there is a dynamic interaction between psychological-personal processes and social context. In accordance with the interactionist approach, the question is not whether the individual or the group is more important, but rather what is the nature of interdependence between them. Moreover, an interactionist approach asserts that it is possible to see the situational context, in which the encounter takes place, as an important factor for understanding the tension between the personal and the collective self (Vivian, Hewstone & Brown, 1997).
This approach will be used in this paper in analyzing the empirical data. The focus of the analysis is centered mainly around two questions:
1. What in the encounter contributed to the salience of the group identity versus the personal self in each of the situations?
2. How does the difference in salience contribute to achievement of the encounters’ goals?
Method
The analysis focuses on two kinds of encounters that were conducted with students from Ben Gurion University of the Negev. The first type (the University Workshop) was a continuing workshop in which the participants committed themselves to a series of meetings. Each workshop lasted one academic year (1996/7 and 1997/8), was initiated by lecturers at the university, and was led by two facilitators (an Arab and a Jew) from the School for Peace (Neve Shalom, near Jerusalem). Sixteen students (8 Arabs and 8 Jews) participated in 1996/7 and 19 (10 Arabs and 9 Jews) in 1997/8. The participants were completing either their undergraduate or graduate studies and came from different departments. The group met together once a week for three hours, and once every three weeks in segregated (Arab and Jewish) groups. The group meetings were observed behind a one way mirror, by two lecturers (including the author) and a doctoral student, who recorded the audio and video proceedings and had them fully transcribed.
The second workshop (the Frankfurt Workshop) took place in conjunction with a student exchange project with Goethe University in Frankfurt. The workshop was conducted as a one-time event. Although all of the participants that took part in the Frankfurt workshop had participated in one of the two university workshops described above, this encounter was self-contained. Thirteen students (7 Arabs and 6 Jews) participated in this workshop. Not all of them were acquainted with one another before the trip to Germany.
Two lecturers from Goethe University and one from Ben Gurion University of the Negev (the author) initiated the Frankfurt Workshop. The two facilitators from Neve Shalom, who had led the university workshops, conducted the Frankfurt Workshop. The meetings were recorded and transcribed by the second author. The visit lasted one week (October 9-16, 1998), during which the group stayed at a guesthouse near Frankfurt. Among the activities that occurred during the week were tours and lectures highlighting the multi-cultural aspects of Frankfurt and a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In addition, spontaneous informal events took place: there were evenings of dancing, singing, trips in the woods, outings, etc.
These workshops were analyzed using an inductive approach. This was done in order to identify how the participants constructed their personal individual identity as opposed to (or together with) their collective group identity. We did not use predetermined categories for analysis, but looked for meaningful themes that came up during the encounters.
The sources of information that we used for collecting data were:
1. Observations (behind a one way mirror) of the meetings at the university. In the Frankfurt encounter, the authors participated in the group meetings since the technical conditions of the meetings were unsuitable for observation.
2. The participants in the university workshops were required to write a personal diary in which they described their impressions, thoughts and feelings during each meeting. These diaries were collected at the end of the year.
3. The participants in the Frankfurt encounter filled out open end questionnaires during flights to and from Germany. On the way to Germany, the questionnaire referred to the project’s goals (as the students perceived them), reasons for participating, expectations and evaluation of the itinerary of the visit. On the flight home, the participants were asked about the attainment of the project’s aims, fulfillment of personal expectations, what in the week’s activities was especially meaningful, or extraneous, annoying or boring.
4. Additional data were collected after the encounters ended, at a summary meeting, which was conducted three weeks after the group returned from Germany.
The following section will include an analysis of some of the findings, including quotes from the participants’ oral and written statements, and a comparison of the two different situations in which the encounters took place.
Results
The analysis of the encounters will be presented with regard to two topics:
(a) The salience of the collective self versus the personal self - the main dilemma examined in this article - as expressed by the initiators, the facilitators and the group participants. We ask: how do the participants address the question of how should the discussions be conducted?
(b) The way in which the Holocaust and El-Nakba (the Arabs’ epithet for the 1948 war) - two central and emotionally-charged issues - were dealt within the groups.
a. The salience of the collective self versus the personal self: Attitudes of the initiators, the facilitators, and the participants.
The goals of the two encounters described above were defined in a similar manner, integrating aims on the personal, interpersonal and intergroup level. The encounters focused on the idea of coping with the Jewish-Arab conflict. The goal, however, is not to resolve concrete conflicts in the external world, but to help people understand them and to propose tools and a perspective to facilitate coping with them (Bar & Eady, 1998). This process includes developing the participants’ awareness of the complexity of the Jewish-Arab conflict and enabling the exploration and construction of identity through interaction with the “other”.
Despite the fact that the initiators of the workshop (the university staff) and the facilitators (from Neve Shalom) agreed on the common manifest goals, the two teams did not agree on the more specific definitions concerning the suitable strategies for the encounters. In recent years, the School of Peace approach has focused mainly on strategies aimed at emphasizing the group and collective level (Halabi & Sonnenschein, 1999). The facilitators’ work was based on their assumptions, that in order to make generalization to the external environment possible, there was a need to emphasize group differentiation and to preserve group boundaries (Hewstone & Brown, 1986). This was the main facilitation approach used in the university workshops.
On the other hand, the lecturers’ approach was more integrative and emphasized both the collective and the personal elements of self. They advocated an interactive approach that was more directed to the personalized pole (Brewer & Miller, 1984) on the continuum. They often suggested to use this approach in their weekly discussions that they held with the facilitators. (e.g. to try to “uncover” the personal stories of the participants). The lecturers used this approach also by requiring the students to write a personal diary, interview a family member, etc. In the Frankfurt encounter, this interactive approach was used more often.
In the university encounter, the facilitators approach was evident from the beginning. The Arab facilitator made his introduction to the group: “ We shall refer here to the relations between the two groups: Jews and Arabs. We presume that what is happening here represents what is happening outside. We are two facilitators: a Jew and an Arab. We look upon the reality in terms of majority/ minority”.
Later on, the facilitation focused only on the intergroup processes. The facilitators interpreted, reflected and explained the processes that occurred between the two groups. They also linked the intergroup processes happening in the room to the outside reality, while the interpersonal interactions between individuals received no attention. Indeed, interpersonal interactions were perceived by the facilitators as interfering with the understanding of the intergroup relations. Individuals were usually regarded as being spokespeople for their own group. At times, when only one group participant expressed an opinion, it was treated as reflecting his or her group’s position. Did this type of facilitation actually lead to the salience of the group and the group identity in the university encounters? What were its results?
Analyses of the workshops show that the group identity was indeed the dominant style in most of the meetings. The participants saw themselves as representatives of their groups and the “others” as the representatives of the other group. The discussions took place mostly on the macro ideological – political level. The dialogue emphasized the feeling that there was one group against another group, and the discussion took the form of arguments and counter arguments. Mutual accusations and group defensiveness were prevalent. Moreover, the discourse often centered on the extreme national and uncompromising voice. Participants who wanted to stand out in the group adopted the “right” position that would lead them in this direction.