Aligning Identity: Social Identity and Changing Context in Community-based Environmental Conflict.

Abstract

This research follows the “timber wars” in the Sierras of northern California from 1984 through 1996, including the formation of the controversial Quincy Library Group. Using a case study approach, the research explores the longstanding divisions between environmentalists, loggers, and the U.S. Forest Service and the role that social identity and social context play in perpetuating an intractable conflict and then helping to transform the local conflict as the social, economic, political and ecological context surrounding protagonists changed. Social identity theorists argue that individuals possess multiple social identities that become salient in different contexts or as context changes. Such identities exacerbate differences and can, when threatened, lead to intractable conflict and to common pool resource dilemmas characterized by “tragedy of the commons” situations. The research explores the use of identity and characterization frames by disputants in the context of the local timber and the way frames change, leading to the transformation of the conflict and the emergence of a new conflict at the regional and national level. Using a process theory framework, the research findings support the argument that external directional forces created conditions necessary for the recognition of a common fate, common identity, and positive interdependence between loggers and environmentalists, and for cooperation and collaboration to transcend hostility and conflict. Transformation of the longstanding conflict resulted from a probabilistic process between adopted leaders on both sides of the conflict in which a common identity and superordinate goal were framed by one side and, over time, accepted by the other. The research has relevancy for identity-based environmental and natural resource conflicts and public policy processes in which multiple users are competing for scarce resources or in which tragedy of the commons situations exist.