The search for meaning: Toward a generative constructionist approach in transforming identity-based conflict (Israel/Palestine, Nigeria, South Africa)

Identity-based conflict is a complex and pervasive form of contemporary war. These conflicts are macro-social and involve two or more groups that are organized around aspects of religious, ethnic or political identity.{09}This dissertation focuses on the role of “conflict narratives” in the creation of identity and seeks to uncover this process of meaning-making in generating, sustaining and transforming identity-based conflict.; Using an action research methodology and ethnographic data from Israel/Palestine, Nigeria and South Africa, the dissertation inquires into the question “How can theory be adapted or enhanced to bring our understanding of identity-based conflict into closer alignment with the lived experience of participants and practitioners?”. Having lived 24 years in the extraordinarily struggle to end apartheid and an additional 10 years as a conflict resolution practitioner, the author, through personal depth reflection, brings both personal and practitioner insights into the academic discourse to produce a theoretical construction that brings together ideas and action aimed at transforming the human condition for the better.; Through a first-person grounded theory approach, the author created a theoretical framework which offers a Generative Constructionist Approach to explain the nature and dynamics of identity-based conflict with a view toward fostering new intervention strategies and policy. This Generative Constructionist Approach brings into relationship three core processes of conflict: (1) the reciprocal relationship between agency and structure, (2) conflicting as a field of practice, and (3) the dynamic interplay between identities, meaning and narrative as source of conflict. Taken together this new perspective offers a platform to move beyond current conceptualizations to offer an understanding of intervention work, grounded in the notion that conflicts are socially constructed phenomena. This in turn encourages practitioners in the field to think about their intervention strategies from a broader perspective than current theories which emphasize structural and rational approaches to conflict.