Social Identity Recategorization: Comparing National Reconciliation Initiatives in Burundi and Rwanda

Abstract: After the cessation of violent conflict, societies have to undergo several changes to re-establish asense of harmony and repair the broken intergroup relationships. These changes can be summarized as the process of reconciliation. The different levels of reconciliation are in this thesis described as emotional-, motivational-, and structural reconciliation. I argue that the reconciliation process is facilitated by means of a recategorization of social identities. According to the Common ingroup identity Model, a shared identity will increase positive intergroup dynamics and reduce hostility and antagonism. This study has sought to find evidence for the suggested hypotheses through a structured focused comparison on the post-conflict countries, Rwanda and Burundi. The theorized relationship has found some support, as the post-conflict reconciliation processes of the case-studies showed the expected variation, and for one hypothesis the expected mechanism. However, the findings show that social identity recategorization on its own cannot account for all the variation in outcomes, and another possible mechanism has been detected. This warrants future research into the topic.