Mónica Alzate

Identidad colectiva movilizada

Resumen En este artículo se analiza la relación entre la identidad y la acción política. Frente a los conceptos de identidad colectiva e identidad colectiva politizada que han sido utilizados habitualmente para explicar ese tipo de comportamiento, se plantea un nuevo tipo de identidad, la colectiva movilizada, que está asociada a la acción política. En la construcción de esta identidad, la identificación grupal desempeña en muchos casos un papel más significativo que la instrumentalidad de la acción. Esto lleva a plantear un tipo de racionalidad política que se sitúa más allá de la lógica consecuencialista y que se fundamenta en los principios morales del sujeto y en su compromiso con el grupo.

Political Protest in Times of Crisis. Construction of New Frames of Diagnosis and Emotional Climate

In times of crisis, political mobilizations increase. Many of them compete to impose a determined diagnosis of the situation. This work analyses this issue, taking into consideration two of the movements that have had a greater incidence during the crisis in Spain: The Catalonian National Assembly and the Marches for dignity. The objective is to know how the categories of aggrieved ingroup and outgroup responsible were identified and how both these movements defined the emotional climate at that moment. This work includes two studies. In the first one, an analysis of the categories identified in the manifestos published by these two movements was carried out. The results show that the Marches for dignity constructed a more inclusive ingroup identity and show a more negative emotional climate than the Catalonian National Assembly. The second study includes a sample of 919 participants and non-participants in 2 demonstrations called by those organizations. In this case MANOVAs of 2 (Type of demonstration: Catalonian National Assembly, Marches for dignity) × 2 (Type of participants: participants, non-participants) were performed. Results show that participants in both demonstrations have a higher level of injustice than non-demonstrators. Furthermore, demonstrators in Marches for dignity have a more negative perception of emotional climate than non-demonstrators. However, and contrary to the hypothesis, demonstrators of the Catalonian National Assembly have a more positive perception of emotional climate than non-demonstrators. The work explains these results in the socio-political context in which each of these movements acts and highlights the relevance of comparative investigation designs to further the knowledge of political mobilization dynamics.

The Importance of Protesters’ Morals: Moral Obligation as a Key Variable to Understand Collective Action

Collective action and protest have become a normalized political behavior that in many cases defines the political agenda. The reasons why people take to the streets constitute a central subject within the study of social psychology. In the literature, three precedents of protest that have been established as central to the study of this phenomenon are: injustice, efficacy, and identity. But political action is also deeply related to moral values. This explains why in recent years some moral constructs have also been pointed out as predictors of collective action. Moral variables have been introduced into the literature with little consideration to how they relate to each other. Thus, work in this direction is needed. The general aim of this research is to differentiate moral obligation from moral norms and moral conviction, as well as to compare their ability to predict collective action. In order to do so, the research objectives are: (a) conceptualize and operationalize moral obligation (Study 1, N = 171); (b) test its predictive power for intention to participate in protests (Study 2, N = 622); and (c) test moral obligation in a real context (Study 3, N = 407). Results are encouraging, showing not only that moral obligation is different to moral conviction and moral norm, but also that it is a more effective predictor working both for intention and real participation. This work therefore presents moral obligation as a key precedent of protest participation, prompting its future use as a variable that can enhance existing predictive models of collective action. Results regarding other variables are also discussed.

Antecedents of the attitude towards inter-group reconciliation in a setting of armed conflict

BACKGROUND The concept of Reconciliation as applied to inter-group conflict has come into use only recently. Throughout the history of Psychology, Reconciliation was mostly understood at the individual and inter-personal level. METHOD In the present study we shall analyse the roles played by trust, negotiating attitude, legitimacy and ethnocentric attitude over the attitude towards social reconciliation. To this end we studied a group of 188 Colombian civilians living under conditions of real socio-political conflict. RESULTS A path analysis was performed using the statistical program AMOS whose fit indexes indicate a good fit of the model and a variance of .36. The results show that the variables of trust, negotiating attitude and legitimacy have a significant and positive effect on the reconciliation variable, and significant negative effect on the ethnocentric attitude variable. CONCLUSIONS This study contributes to the integration of a number of variables that facilitate process of social reconciliation, as it explicitly deals with some of the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs which could change the course of a confrontation.

Eight Cultures of Peace Indicators Applied to Colombian Conflict During 2002–2006

This chapter presents an analysis of the eight large action areas proposed by the United Nations for the development of a culture of peace and their corresponding indicators applied to Colombia, during the first term of President Alvaro Uribe (20022006), whose government was characterised by a “Democratic Security Policy”. Based on the description of the social situation, an explanation of how it affects the psychological situation of the Colombian population is developed. An example shows that the context is related with psychosocial elements that would explain the tendency towards social political conflict. From this analysis it can be concluded that there are indirect sources of violence which have been institutionalised and that must be transformed if the substrate is to be removed from the conflict. A number of the psychosocial strategies which could contribute to the construction of a peace culture are presented.