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--- abstract: |- Civil Society Iraq: Ethnic, Religious, and Location Influences on Outgroup Perception Jon Gresham* April 2004 A significant research question in the immediate post-war (May 2003) environment of Iraq was: "How do Iraqis’ ethnicity, religious affiliation, and location affect expressed perceptions of threat from outgroups?" We collected 479 surveys of Iraqi opinions, in five locations in Iraq, Jordan, and The Netherlands, with a single page instrument. Religion, ethnic origin, and location alone had little direct bearing on respondents’ attitudes towards outgroups or change (another type of threat) in Iraq. However, certain sets of interacting elements did reflect significant differences in perceptions of threat. For example, Shi’a Muslims of urban Basra had very different expressions towards return of expatriate Iraqis than did Baghdad residents. A serendipitous innovation was that of publishing our research process onto a "wiki" web page where visitors could add to or change contents of the documents. The wiki live publishing helped fellow scientists, decision-makers, resource agencies, and Iraq fieldworkers participate in our project. Why Civil Society? The term describes both behavior and social systems and provides a sociological framework from which to explore social interactions in Iraq. Follow-up is warranted. We found, for example, that "moderate Arabs" in Iraq were the most opposed to foreign involvement and were the most opposed to expatriate Iraqis returning to Iraq. This finding is relevant to decision-makers and field workers in relief, development, and reconstruction in Iraq. This paper describes our research process in a post-regime-change environment. I would welcome comments onto the web site: http://CivilSocietyIraq.seedwiki.com. _____________ * Jon Gresham is a visiting scholar at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. His work focuses on the Cyprus-Syria-Iraq-Iran area. Special thanks are given to Hub Linssen, Assistant Professor at the University of Utrecht, with interest in cross-national comparative survey methodology. altloc: - http://CivilSocietyIraq.seedwiki.com chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Gresham given: JN honourific: Dr. lineage: '' date: 2004-04 date_type: published datestamp: 2004-05-24 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/36/45 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 3645 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/3645/1/CSI5_04.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: ~ issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'civil society, Iraq social systems, post-regime change, democratization, social network, social capital, appreciative inquiry, ERCOMER, repatriation, ethnic conflict, inter-ethnic, tribalism, nationalism, inter-group, ethnic identity, refugee, expatriate, terrorism, terrorist, social psychology, irak, iran, civil stability, linked, network analysis, utrecht, social network, interethnic, tribal' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:36 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: Recommendation for peer-reviewed journal submission would be appreciated number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: |- End Notes 2 M Edwards, Civil Society, Cambridge: Polity, 2004, p. 4. 3 M Edwards, "Enthusiasts, Tacticians and Skeptics: The World Bank, Civil Society and Social Capital" http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/scapital/library/edwards.htm, p.1. 4. S Kaviraj, Civil Society & its Possibilities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 17. 5. L Drake, "Implosion of Iraq" in Middle East Insight March 1996, and personal communications 7/1996. 6. A Wimmer, "Democracy and Ethno-religious Conflict in Iraq" in Survival, Vol. 45, no. 4, Winter 2003-04, p. 119). 7. ibid, p. 113. 8. P Adler, and S Kwon, "Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept" Academy of Management Review 27(1), p.17. 9 J Glubb, A Short History of the Arab Peoples, New York: Dorset Press, 1969, p. 68. 10 (ibid, p 275; P Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985, .p. 36. 11. In Basra, we tested a repeated measures effect in combination with the priming effect. There were three versions of the survey form (ethnic primed, religious primed, and neutral). We administered the three versions of the survey to the same respondents, at one sitting, to assess if they would respond to the priming, or if they would differ in their responses to the primed versus neutral versions of the surveys. In other locations, each respondent completed only one survey form, with one of the three versions only. 12. Adler, p.37. 13. L Wantchekon, "The Paradox of 'Warlord' Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation" in American Political Science Review, Vol. 98, No. 1 (February 2004), p. 21. 14. Adler, p. 18. 15 ibid, p.20. 16. ibid, p. 37. 15 Bibliography (Resources studied in preparation of this project report) Adler, Paul and Kwon, Seok-Woo "Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept" Academy of Management Review 27(1): 17-40. Al-Khayat, Sana Honour & Shame: Women in Modern Iraq (London: Saqi Books, 1990). Axelgard, Frederick, ed. Iraq in Transition: A Political, Economic, and Strategic Perspective (Georgetown: Georgetown University Center for Strategic & International Studies, 1986). Baali, Fuad Relation of the People to the Land in Southern Iraq (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966). Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo "Architecture of Complexity", http://www.nd.edu/~networks, viewed 8/12/2003. ibid. Linked (London: Penguin Books, 2003). Bauman, Zygmunt Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). Burt, Ronald "The Network Structure of Social Capital", Pre-print for a chapter in Research in Organizational Behavior, ed. Robert L. Sutton and Barry M. Staw, (Greenwich. CT: JAI Press, 2000). Chatelard, Geraldine Working Paper No. 61, "Jordan as a Transit Country: Semi-protectionist Immigration Policies and their Effects on Iraqi Forced Migrants" (Florence, Italy: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 2002). 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Judge, Robert "Social Capital: Building a Foundation for Research and Policy Development" viewed at http://policyresearch.gc.ca/page.asp?pagenm=v6n3_art_03, 4/4/04. Kaviraj, Sudipta Civil Society & Its Possibilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2001). Mackey, Sandra The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation (New York: Plume, 1996). Malinowski, Jon C. Geographic Perspectives: Iraq (Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw- Hill/Dushkin,2004). Mansfield, Peter The Arabs (London: Penguin Books, 1992). Marr, Phebe The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985). Metz, Helen Chapin Iraq: A Country Study (Washington: Library of Congress, 1988). Murrell, Kenneth "International and Intellectual Roots of Appreciative Inquiry" Organization Development Journal 6 (4) (1998), 13-17. Nakash, Yitzhak The Shi'is of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994). Narayan, Deepa and Cassidy, Michael F. "A Dimensional Approach to Measuring Social Capital: Development and Validation of a Social Capital Inventory" in Current Sociology, 49 (2), 59–102, (London: Sage, 2001). Nordstrom, Carolyn and Robben, Antonius C.G.M. Fieldwork under Fire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Paley , Julia Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Pareja, M. Preparing for a Rapid Livelihood Security Assessment (Nairobi: CARE East Africa, 1997). Phalet, Karen and Orkeny, Antal, eds. Ethnic Minorities and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Context (Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2001). Roe, E. M. Policy Analysis and Formulation for Sustainable Livelihood (New York: UNDP, 1998). Rubin, Barry Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (New York: Penguin Books, 1982). Schwedler, Jilian, ed., Toward Civil Society in the Middle East Ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner: 1994). Shaaban, Bouthaina Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk About Their Lives (London: Women's Press, 1988). Tabataba'i, 'Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn, translated by Nasr, Seyyed Hossein Shi'ite Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977). Tester, Keith Civil Society (London: Routledge:1992). Turner, John Social Influence, (Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press: 19991). UNDP UNDP and Civil Society Organizations http://www.undp.org/cso/, viewed 28/4/2004. UNHCR Preliminary Repatriation and Reintegration Plan for Iraq (Geneva: UNHCR, 2003). UNICEF Child Survival in Wartime: A Case Study from Iraq (Paris: UNICEF, 1990). Van Ham, Carolien "Migration Decision-making? A Social Psychological Model of Return Migration of Refugees: The case of Afghans in the Netherlands", Thesis, (Utrecht, Netherlands: University of Utrecht Faculty of Social Sciences Graduate School, 2003). Verkuyten, Maykel "Ethnic Minority Identification" in Phalet, Karen and Orkeny, Antal, eds. Ethnic Minorities and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Context (Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2001), 97-112. Wantchekon, Leonard "The Paradox of 'Warlord' Democracy: A Theoretical Investigation" in American Political Science Review, Vol. 98, No. 1 (February 2004), p. 17-33. Westney, Lynn C. Hattendorf "Historical Rankings of Science and Technology: A Citationist Perspective" The Journal of the Association for History and Computing Vol. I, No. 1., June 1998, viewed at http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/jahcI1/Westney/Westney.htm March, 2004. Wilbur, Ken "The War In Iraq", http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/iraq.cfm, viewed 22/February/2004. Wimmer, Andreas "Democracy and Ethnoreligious Conflict in Iraq" in Survival 45 no. 4, Winter 2003-4, 111.134. ibid. "Dominant Ethnicity and Dominant Nationhood", (personal communication of unpublished article, 2004). relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:52:34 subjects: - soc-psy succeeds: 3473 suggestions: | Hello. I request advice on a pre-press peer review, with suggestions as to appropriate e-publishing routes. Thank you for your kind attention. JN Gresham European Research Centre On Migration & Ethnic Relations Faculty of Social Sciences University of Utrecht Netherlands Email: intl@securenym.net sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'Civil Society Iraq: Ethnic, Religious, and Location Influences on Outgroup Perception' type: preprint userid: 4760 volume: ~