The Victim-Perpetrator Paradigm

Abstract

This chapter proposes the victim-perpetrator paradigm as a framework to understand contention surrounding victimhood in intergroup conflict. Adversarial groups in conflict employ binary, archetypal constructions of victimhood and responsibility as a function of intergroup processes. The victim-perpetrator paradigm, then, explains how groups that claim victim status create a favourable self-image which is accentuated against the ‘bad’ out-groups they identify as perpetrators, and how such processes resonate with group-serving explanations of violence. The case of Northern Ireland illustrates how these group narratives proliferate to protect in-group victim claims, denying in-group responsibility and out-group suffering. Violence committed by the in-group is framed as legitimate, and those whose actions threaten groups’ moral self-image are portrayed as deviants or ‘bad apples’.

… if there was people killed by the security forces, to me all the blame boils back to the terrorist campaign, because as soon as the terrorists quit their campaign in 1994, within three years the troops were off the streets. So really it was the terrorists that kept it going, and if there were casualties as a result of the security forces, I’m afraid it falls back onto the terrorists.

Personal interview 10

I would have personal experience of people who would define themselves as innocent of any wrongdoing in Northern Ireland and who held positions of authority and positions of leadership within the community, and I would have heard them making statements about people who were killed and dying, and those statements were statements of indifference at the very least. And other statements like if they get a bit of their own medicine they can’t complain. And they’re these very same people who would say, well violence is wrong.

Personal interview 12