Call for Papers

Toward a social psychology of ‘collective racial/ethnic violence’: legitimacy, mobilization, and resistance.

Special Issue Editors

Dr Rahul Sambaraju, University of Edinburgh
Dr Steve Kirkwood, University of Edinburgh

Recent instances of large-scale violence targeted ‘othered’ social groups. Examples include collective violence targeting migrants and asylum-seekers in Ireland and the UK, symbolic violence against minoritized groups in the United States, and anti-Muslim and caste-based violence in India. In this special issue, we invite scholarship that examines collective racial/violence as informing and altering societal norms, ideologies, group membership, and intergroup relations. This focus attends to several aspects that are central to social psychology.

First, is the formation of collectives. Contemporary social psychologists have shown the salience of crowd formation and function for people participating (Drury, 2020). The present concern is on exclusion and othering since these collectives mobilised or acted against members of oppressed and marginalised groups. Collectives can stand in different relations to majority or minority groups. These can be understood as an extension of a broader social group, an exemplar, or an aberration, which will have distinct implications for the legitimacy or undermining of the collective and its actions. Importantly, these can be relevant sources for individuals’ identification (or not) with the collective. Collective action is also met with resistance in collective or other forms, through institutional means like police and state actors, for instance, or other collectives such as anti-fascist groups.

Second, is the relevance of ideology in justifying and accounting for violence (Jost et al, 2017). Ideological aspects can offer rhetorical ballast for forming groups and justifying actions in complex ways (Billig et al, 1988). Of current relevance is the (re)formulation of political ideologies, salience of history and nationalism, and victimhood, and their intersections in the formation of, justification for, or resistance to collectives and racial/ethnic violence and vice-versa. Collective racial/ethnic violence can be seen as an instantiation of (newer) ideologies.

Third, social psychologists have shown that overtly racist or similar actions (based on ethnic, caste, or religious superiority) are subject to norms of taboo: racism is regularly denied or suppressed, and calling out or reporting racism is complicated (Augoustinos & Every, 2015). Instances of collective violence will then have implications for how social psychologists to-date have considered these norms. Violence itself can be seen as reframing these norms, collectives can be constructed in relation to social norms, or violence can be contextualized in ways to legitimize or undermine the violence.

This special issue, therefore, invites scholarship that examines collective racial/ethnic violence as meaningful actions that relate to (re)framing social norms, (re)articulating belonging and entitlement, and (re)configuring group membership and intergroup relations. Submissions are welcomed, but not restricted to, scholarship on the following themes:

1. mobilizing racial, ethnic, caste, or other community group membership and identities, for collective violence
2. production of resistance and solidarity in response to collective racial/ethnic violence
3. the construction and alignment of police, and State and other non-State actors in mobilizing or controlling collective racial/ethnic violence
4. outcomes of collective violence for target and perpetrator groups as well as those not directly involved in the violence.
5. explanations, justifications, and rationalizations offered for collective ethnic/racial violence
6. ideological implications of collective racial/ethnic violence either as justifications or as spaces for formulating newer ideologies
7. role of print, broadcast, and digital media in developing networks for promoting, quelling, or countering collective racial/ethnic violence

We are keen to include work that considers the intersectional aspects of collective violence in terms of gender and sex, class, and age. Further, we would encourage authors to take a decolonial approach, where possible, not only for phenomena in the Global South but also for racial/ethnic violence in the Global North. We invite authors to strongly consider Open Research practices for quantitative and qualitative approaches in psychology (relevant guidance can be found here and here).

At the first stage, we invite abstracts of no more than 150 words outlining the focus, context, data and methodological approach, preliminary findings if any, and salience of the paper for the social psychology of collective racial/ethnic violence. This is due by January 31, 2025. Invitation to submit full papers will be conveyed by the end of February 2025. Full papers are due by July 31, 2025. We aim to develop the full special issue by the end of 2025.

Please send your abstracts to the journal inbox: bjso@wiley.com. Our official emails (r.sambaraju@ed.ac.uk or s.kirkwood@ed.ac.uk) can be used for questions and queries.

Submit now