Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Read the Signs: Detecting Early Warning Signals of Interreligious Conflict
Version 1
: Received: 10 February 2022 / Approved: 17 February 2022 / Online: 17 February 2022 (11:02:09 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Ochs, P.; Fahim, E.; Pinzon, P. Read the Signs: Detecting Early Warning Signals of Interreligious Conflict. Religions 2022, 13, 329. Ochs, P.; Fahim, E.; Pinzon, P. Read the Signs: Detecting Early Warning Signals of Interreligious Conflict. Religions 2022, 13, 329.
Abstract
Building on recent directions in religion-related social and political science, our essay addresses a need for location-specific and religion-specific scientific research that might contribute directly to local and regional interreligious peacemaking. Over the past 11 years, our US-Pakistani research team has conducted research of this kind: a social scientific method for diagnosing the probable near-future behavior of religious stakeholder groups toward other groups. Integrating features of ethnography, linguistics, and semiotics, the method enables researchers to read a range of ethno-linguistic signals that appear uniquely in the discourses of religious groups. Examining the results, we observe, firstly, that our religion and location-specific science identifies features of religious group behavior that are inevident in broader, social scientific studies of religion and conflict; we observe, secondly, that our science integrates constative and performative elements: it seeks facts and it serves a purpose. We conclude that strictly constative, fact-driven sciences may fail to detect certain crucial features of religious stakeholder group behavior.
Keywords
religion; interreligious conflict; science; constative; performative; peacemaking; ethnolinguistics; semiotics; behavioral signals; group behavior
Subject
Social Sciences, Religion
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Comments (0)
We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.
Leave a public commentSend a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment