Self-Censorship in Contexts of Conflict: Theory and Research

This groundbreaking volume explores the concept of self-censorship as it relates to individuals and societies and functions as a barrier to peace. Defining self-censorship as the act of intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in the absence of formal obstacles, the volumes introduces self-censorship as one of the socio-psychological mechanisms that prevent the free flow of information and thus obstruct proper functioning of democratic societies. Moreover it analyzes this socio-psychological phenomenon specifically in the context of intractable conflict, providing much evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Moving from the micro to the macro level, the collected chapters put the individual as the focal unit of psychological analysis while embedding the individual in multiple levels of context including families, organizations, and societies. Following a firm conceptual explanation of self-censorship, a selection of both emerging and prominent scholars describe the ways in which self-censorship factors into families, organizations, education, academia, and other settings. Further chapters discuss self-censorship in military contexts, narratives of political violence, and the media. Finally, the volume concludes by looking at the ways in which harmful self-censorship in societies can be overcome, and explores the future of self-censorship research. In doing so, this volume solidifies self-censorship as an important phenomenon of social behavior with major individual and collective consequences, while stimulating exciting and significant new research possibilities in the social and behavioral sciences. Conceptually carving out a new area in peace psychology, Self Censorship in Contexts of Peace and Conflict will appeal to psychologists, sociologists, peace researchers, political scientists, practitioners, and all those with a wish to understand the personal and societal functioning of individuals in the real world.

Dr. Daniel Bar-Tal is Professor Emeritus at the School of Education, Tel Aviv University. His research interest is in political and social psychology studying socio-psychological foundations of intractable conflicts and peace building, as well as development of political understanding among children and peace education. He has published over twenty books and over two hundreds articles and chapters in major social and political psychological journals, books and encyclopedias. He served as a President of the International Society of Political Psychology and received various awards for his work, including the Alexander George Award of the International Society of Political Psychology for the best book in Political Psychology. In 2006 he also received Peace Scholar Award of the Peace and Justice Studies Association for great scholarship and hard work in studying conflicts and peacemaking. In 1991 and again in 2009, he was awarded the Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Prize of SPSSI Then he received the Lasswell Award and the Nevitt Sanford Award of the International Society of Political Psychology and the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence (Div. 48 of APA). In 2015 he founded NGO Save Israel -Stop the occupation (SISO).

Dr. Keren Sharvit is a social psychologist serving as head of the international Program in Peace and Conflict Management and senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research concerns the manner in which psychological processes affect and are affected by membership in a society involved in an intractable conflict, focusing specifically on processes of social categorization, emotion regulation and societal beliefs. Her studies have been published in leading journals and she recently co-edited two volumes on social psychology and intractable conflicts.

Dr. Rafi Nets-Zehngut is the Managing Director of the International Summer Program in Conflict Resolution at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He received his PhD at the Political Science Department of Tel Aviv University, and during his PhD studies, he was a pre-doctoral fellow at Yale and Columbia Universities. His research studies the socio-psychological aspects of conflicts, with the main focus being their collective memory and historical narratives. Regionally, he focuses on the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict. He has published extensively on these topics, while his two forthcoming books (one as co-author) will be published by Palgrave and Springer.