Understanding the spatial variation of perceived threat outcomes in intergroup conflict: a case study of the ethnic and religious conflicts in Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

ABSTRACT In extant scholarship on intergroup conflict, perceived threat is portrayed as either positively linked with conflict occurrence or neutralizable by individuals’ internal psychological inhibitors, such as feelings about a past experience or encounter or pre-existing dovish disposition. Yet, conflict avoidance is possible even in the absence of such internal guardrails against destructive responses to threat. This comparative qualitative study of two similarly structured communities in Jos, Nigeria’s ethnic conflict hotbed, reveals that while perceived threat may create aggressive dispositions, as established in extant scholarship on intergroup conflict, conflict avoidance remains possible in the absence of both internal inhibitors and external coercion. The compared Jos communities, Angwan Doki and Dadin Kowa, are similar in terms of widespread fear of the outgroup and significant willingness to respond aggressively to threat. Yet, conflict avoidance was possible in the latter because its community leaders both wittingly and unwittingly confronted the underlying threat that drove people’s violent dispositions. Past variability analyses omit this dynamic of external malleability of perceived threat outcomes – aggression and violence. Generally, the findings show that low-tech threat management interventions are more effective at mitigating intergroup conflict in weak states than interventions that seek to forcefully suppress the threat.