Conflict and communication in everyday life: An exploration of intercommunity conflict in Assam, India

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• Author: Amiya Kumar Das,Soumen Ray,Ahana Choudhury
• Date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21441

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Conflict and communication in everyday life:

An exploration of intercommunity conflict in

Assam, India

Amiya Kumar Das

1

| Soumen Ray

2

| Ahana Choudhury

1

1

Department of Sociology, Tezpur

University, Tezpur, Assam, India

2

UNICEF Odisha Office, Bhubaneswar,

Odisha, India

Correspondence

Ahana Choudhury, Department of

Sociology, Tezpur University, Tezpur,

Assam, India.

Email: ahanachou25@gmail.com

Abstract

Ethnic conflicts have proved to be inherently

dangerous and repressive across the globe. While this

signification cannot be negated, a deeper articulation

of liminal existences in the conflict-prone areas

requires more attention. Using case studies with a

qualitative research design, the paper emphasizes on

conflict as a social force, facilitating the (re)structura-

tion of communities entangled within it. The paper

explores the mundane lived experiences of the

Adivasis and the Bodos, two of the ethnic communi-

ties living in Assam, a Northeastern state of India, by

making a few claims. First, ethnic conflicts reorient

social relations, intercommunity interactions and eco-

nomic exchanges between the Adivasis and Bodos.

Second, ethnic conflicts recourse varied negotiations

and emotions in their being(ness), aspirational

values, and embodied meanings in mundane life-

processes. The complex realization of identities for

the Adivasis and the Bodos is fostered by the exposure

of fear, past loss of life, and the varied interactions

between victims and perpetrators in everyday

social life.

Received: 12 June 2022 Revised: 30 April 2024 Accepted: 16 June 2024

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21441

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2024;42:223–240. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq © 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 223

1|INTRODUCTION

In societies where people from diverse ethnic groups dwell, issues like conflict, segregation, dis-

crimination, and polarization often take place. Such grounds were discursively theorized by two

evolutionary schools of conflict studies, the primordial and the instrumental. The former eluci-

dates ethnic conflicts as producing an inevitable disharmony between two or more ethnic

groups, acting against each other for fulfillment of goals and possession of resources (Parker &

Vadheim, 2016), while the latter asserts the direct and indirect politicization of ethnic groups

by the state, conferring social, political, and economic powers on some while excluding others

(Stein & Harel-Shalev, 2017). Further, to address the epistemic limitations of political orienta-

tions in both the schools, the contact and constructivist approaches were introduced around the

1950s. More as an integrative knowledge of conflict, the contact approach comprehends both

the state and community-oriented power mediations in addressing ethnic conflicts, such as the

bottom-up or ground-level strategies, proposals, and programs for interethnic collaborations

(Kaufmann & Goodwin, 2018). While the constructivist approach proposes the subjectivist,

rationalist, and idealist interpretations of actors in conflict-affected areas and their interactions

with political structures (Jackson, 2009); these dominant models as stated above, could not

break the primacy of power agents, group antagonisms, and statism as the functional units in

conflict situations. To move beyond the frames, this paper throws light into the mundane lived

experiences and communication of the memories of ethnic conflicts as a passage to conflict

management, notably performed by Adivasi and Bodo ethnic communities living in Assam.

It cannot be discounted that scant scholarships attempted to focus on the micro-reactive

milieus of ethnic conflicts. If at all, certain academic works examined the psychological conse-

quences of conflicts and communal storytelling as a weapon to transcend trauma of conflict survi-

vors to constructive actions, like developing historical consciousness and resilience

(Fuertes, 2012; Senehi, 2015). This has been contextualized in countries like Ghana and Ireland,

where cultural storytelling processes seek to create tacit dialogic spaces for discussing disputes on

land and developingrelational meanings for peace (Linabary et al., 2016). Other scholarships pro-

posed storytelling as an approach to encourage people to live through painful experiences and lis-

ten to the pain of others while using stories as markers of in and out-group asymmetries

(Smirnova & Iliev, 2017). In addition, conceptual framework of “psychosocial dramas”

(Ross, 2001) was popularized by political psychologists to analyze conflicts as polarizing, which

turns more violent with rival groups' usage of localized metaphors, stories, slogans, and cultural

rituals. Following this, few social psychologists analyzed ethnic conflicts as arising from the

extreme notions of belongingness to a territory, curtailing prospects of conflict resolution, and

leading to mistrust or worthlessness among people, observed in the multicultural societies of Sub-

Saharan Africa (Abubakar et al., 2012;Adamsetal.,2015). Accordingly, the storytelling and com-

munity participation as methods of conflict resolution received nods and skepticism. It too cannot

be declined that such approaches possess some tractions. Instead of just examining the stories or

emotions as psychological influences on conflict survivors, attention should be given to how the

state and its various entities disseminate, legitimize, and objectify specific collection of stories. In

addition to the occasions of storytelling, the regular and inadvertent everyday exchanges, contes-

tations, and actions of subverting ethnic conflicts also necessitate space in conflict studies. Even if

the storytelling enactments around the ethnic conflicts shaped scholarships in Europe and Africa,

it has hardly been applied in the geographies of South Asia, specifically in Northeast India.

References from South Asian countries like Sri Lanka and India locate ethnic conflicts

within the primordial, instrumental, and contact approaches. Examples include administrative

224 DAS ET AL.