Racial Conflict and the Malignancy of Identity

Kaushik Basu

Working Papers from Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics

Abstract: This paper demonstrates how our sense of identity can emerge out of mere markers of social distinction that may have no innate significance, but, nevertheless, spread to various aspects of our lives and be the root of conflict. The basis of such conflicts could arise from the use of race to form conditional judgments about people's behavior. Moreover, there are contexts where racial conflict is inevitable even though, if individuals had common knowledge of one another's preferences, there would be no conflict. It is argued that this kind of conflict, where many individuals have no innate aggressive preference, is widespread and understanding the process that gives rise to such conflict is the key to crafting effective policy that contains it.

JEL-codes: C72 D74 D80 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cae.economics.cornell.edu/05-02.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Racial conflict and the malignancy of identity (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:corcae:05-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().