Institut für interdisziplinäre Konflikt- und Gewaltforschung
Universität Bielefeld

Group-focused Enmity (GFE)

The humanity of a society is revealed most clearly not by its talk shows or way the newspapers discuss moral and ethical questions, but in the way it treats its weakest groups. This is reflected in many different ways: This includes regressive redistribution of wealth, exclusion from the public sphere, blanket suspicion against groups or lifestyles, instrumentalizing one group against another, or declaring a group to be a public threat. Another variant is not to discuss the situation of weak groups at all, thus excluding them from public perception and avoiding having to think about improving their position. A subtle "reversal of blame" can creep in here, shifting the responsibility for discrimination from society to the discriminated group itself.

Here we are confronted with a striking disjoint. Although there have been broad political efforts to strengthen legal equality and reduce discrimination, these efforts are plainly not sufficient to bring about a categorical change in attitudes in the population or to improve coexistence. Indeed, "new" groups such as Muslims or the long-term unemployed have become new targets of prejudice and exclusion.

The central motivation behind all manifestations of prejudice, discrimination, and exclusion is to maintain or expand inequality between groups in order to secure the position of the ingroup. This may even involve violating the boundaries that protect physical and psychological integrity and allow a life without fear.

The questions to which we always return are: How do people with different social, religious and ethnic backgrounds pursue their different lifestyles in this society? How do they receive recognition? And where they are exposed to hostile mentalities?

Hostile mentalities are prejudices in the broadest sense: negative and exclusionary attitudes based solely on attributed group membership. Hostile mentalities are expressed in negative stereotypes, in contemptuous or derogatory statements about a group, in blanket suspicions, in holding the group responsible for the actions of individuals, in refusal of equal rights and participation, and in overemphasis of "unbridgeable" cultural differences. See also What is group-focused enmity .

Categorization by others is the crucial factor, rather than whether targeted individuals identify themselves as members of a particular social, cultural, ethnic, religious or gender group. For example, people who were born and brought up in Germany (and may even possess German citizenship) are still often labeled "foreigners." Here, categorization as "foreigner" depends on the subjective perception of the majority. People with Turkish roots are more quickly classified as "foreigners" than, for example, someone with a French mother or a Dutch father.

Three questions are always central:

  • To what extent is the dignity of weak groups that possess little power and influence affected by negative or exclusionary attitudes and discriminatory behavior?

  • How does the extent and composition of the problem [change] over time?

  • What explanations can be found for the persistence (or expansion) of hostile mentalities in society? And what pointers does this give us for intervention and prevention.

    • The group-focused enmity project at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence is investigating these questions in a ten-year study launched in 2002.

    The GFE project runs for 10 years from 2002 to 2012. Every year since 2002 we have surveyed attitudes toward weak groups in a representative sample of 2,000 individuals in Germany. The last scheduled survey will be conducted in 2011. As well as these annual cross-sectional surveys, we also conducted a longitudinal survey at intervals of two years. Interviewing the same people again and again allows us to observe changes in attitudes and analyse possible causes.

    The geographically broader Group-focused Enmity in Europe project (further details at http://www.uni- bielefeld.de/ikg/zick ) surveyed group-focused enmity in eight European countries in 2008, which means we can embed the German findings in a European context. Results of the European project can be downloaded . In the ongoing Community Analyses project [link auf das Projekt setzten: Sozialraumanalysen] we record and analyse group- focused enmity in local spaces such as small towns or urban neighborhoods. Interested local authorities may apply to join. A DFG- funded Graduate Program on Group-Focused Enmity: Causes, Phenomenology, Consequences launched in 2004 cooperates closely with the GFE project. Here postgraduates research specific aspects of group-focused enmity from different scientific perspectives using a broad spectrum of scientific methods. As of March 2011 about 50 researchers have entered this program.



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