Toward a Taxonomy of Ethnopolitical Violence: Is Collective Killing by Any Other Name Still the Same?

Abstract

Several disciplines have studied the scientific and applied aspects of collective violence between or among groups defined by ethnic, religious, social, economic, political, linguistic, and similar characteristics. Psychology is well suited for developing nomothetic, quantitative, generalizable data and concepts, incorporating idiographic knowledge from other disciplines about specific episodes of such violence. This article argues that both research and intervention would benefit from the availability of a basic taxonomy of ethnopolitical violence, and proposes a number of possible classification schemata.