Dixon et al. contend that unequal power relations between social groups are often characterized by attitudinal complexity, rather than simple hostility, and that collective action, rather than reduction in negative evaluations, is the solution to the problem of these unequal power relations. From a collective action perspective, there is agreement with the argument, implicit in their target article, that prejudice should be understood as a broadly political rather than as a narrowly psychological notion. The corollary of this point is that responses to prejudice and inequality should also be broadly political.
Dixon et al. argue that negative evaluation of group members is not the essence of “the problem.” I agree. Far from being a problem at all, negative evaluations of groups may sometimes be appropriate. According to the orthodox conception of prejudice, and hence explicit in many of the definitions cited in Dixon et al., negative evaluations of members of other groups are wrong (“unjustified,” “faulty,” “irrational”). But what about the anti-Fascist's negative evaluation of all Fascists, the striking miner's dislike of all police officers, the Socialist's enmity to the capitalist class: Are these necessarily cases of prejudice? Whether negative evaluations of particular groups are judged to be wrong is not a matter simply of measuring perceptions against reality; rather, it is a matter of (political) perspective (Oakes et al. Reference Oakes, Haslam and Turner1994; Stott et al. Reference Stott, Drury, Reicher, Dixon and Levine2012).
Of course, the (broadly political) concern of prejudice research is specifically with disadvantaged groups. As Dixon et al. point out, changing relations of disadvantage is also a concern of collective action research. From this perspective, the world is socially structured by conflict between groups with different degrees of power (Tajfel & Turner Reference Tajfel, Turner, Austin and Worchel1979). Historically, the ruling class has sought to construct, promote, and build upon division among subordinate groups, including by encouraging “racial” prejudice, in order to maintain its privileged position (Miles Reference Miles1989). As Dixon et al. argue, collective action can improve racialized subordinate groups' material situation in relation to the powerful (cf. Piven & Cloward Reference Piven and Cloward1977). Collective action can also have unintended consequences, including changes in relations within and between subordinate groups. These, in turn, can entail changes in identity: that is, who “we” are, who counts as “other,” and hence how “we” feel about “them.”
Oral histories of the United Kingdom miners' strike of 1984–1985 (Coulter et al. Reference Coulter, Miller and Walker1984; Green Reference Green1990; Salt & Layzell Reference Salt and Layzell1985) are rich in examples of such changes. Over the course of the strike, which involved numerous picket-line confrontations, many strikers came to view the police no longer as a neutral protector of their rights but as a “political” force, sent by the Conservative government to break their strike and destroy their livelihoods. A reference point was the 1981 urban riots in London and other cities, which the official enquiry had blamed partly on police “racial” prejudice (Scarman Reference Scarman1981). For many among the predominantly white working-class strikers, the rejection of the police as a social category was linked to a positive re-evaluation of black people, and specifically those involved in the riots. Now they were “the same as us.”
Our longitudinal study of a nonviolent direct action campaign investigated the process underlying this kind of psychological change (Drury & Reicher Reference Drury and Reicher2000; Reference Drury and Reicher2005; Drury et al. Reference Drury, Reicher and Stott2003). The groups involved were “locals” and “activists” who both opposed a trunk road being built through the “village green” of Wanstead. At first, locals saw the activists, with their “scruffy” appearance, as “anathema” to respectable Wanstead. Later, however, many of these same locals came to embrace the activists (literally as well as figuratively) and, in some contexts, to redefine “them” as “us.”
In their own explanation for locals' change of views, the activists offered a “contact” hypothesis. It was the long discussions they had together, they said, that allowed locals to get to know them, realize they were decent people, and understand their “political” (rather than parochial) critique of road-building. There were two problems with this explanation. First, contact did not seem to be necessary, as the locals also changed their evaluations of groups who they had not even met, including Irish republicans, the Nigerian Ogoni tribe, and other activists around the country. Second, the activists' critique only seemed to have become persuasive when relations between locals and the police had changed.
The change in relations with the police took place within a single event: the eviction by police of locals and activists from under a tree they were occupying on the green in Wanstead. Although the locals understood their action in defending the tree as legitimate, peaceful protest by various different individuals and groups, the police saw it as disorderly behaviour by a single, dangerous crowd. The police acted on this perception by using force against the crowd, without differentiating between activists (who expected some rough treatment) and locals (who did not). The social location of the locals in relation to the police was transformed. The contrast that now defined their identity was no longer that between “locals” and “activists,” but between all those who were affected by “injustice” on the one hand and the police on the other. Thus, the locals' positive evaluations of the activists – like the miners' reevaluation of black people – were a function of a shared relationship of opposition to those who treated them all as a single oppositional group.
The evidence from industrial disputes and nonviolent direct actions suggests that “contact” may indeed enhance positive evaluations between groups – at least insofar as that contact takes place within a superordinate relationship of shared struggle against their subordination. However, the problem of inequality between groups is not essentially a problem of negative evaluations, but of power. Therefore, as Dixon et al. argue, the solution to the problem is mobilization for social change through collective empowerment (Drury & Reicher Reference Drury and Reicher2009).
Dixon et al. contend that unequal power relations between social groups are often characterized by attitudinal complexity, rather than simple hostility, and that collective action, rather than reduction in negative evaluations, is the solution to the problem of these unequal power relations. From a collective action perspective, there is agreement with the argument, implicit in their target article, that prejudice should be understood as a broadly political rather than as a narrowly psychological notion. The corollary of this point is that responses to prejudice and inequality should also be broadly political.
Dixon et al. argue that negative evaluation of group members is not the essence of “the problem.” I agree. Far from being a problem at all, negative evaluations of groups may sometimes be appropriate. According to the orthodox conception of prejudice, and hence explicit in many of the definitions cited in Dixon et al., negative evaluations of members of other groups are wrong (“unjustified,” “faulty,” “irrational”). But what about the anti-Fascist's negative evaluation of all Fascists, the striking miner's dislike of all police officers, the Socialist's enmity to the capitalist class: Are these necessarily cases of prejudice? Whether negative evaluations of particular groups are judged to be wrong is not a matter simply of measuring perceptions against reality; rather, it is a matter of (political) perspective (Oakes et al. Reference Oakes, Haslam and Turner1994; Stott et al. Reference Stott, Drury, Reicher, Dixon and Levine2012).
Of course, the (broadly political) concern of prejudice research is specifically with disadvantaged groups. As Dixon et al. point out, changing relations of disadvantage is also a concern of collective action research. From this perspective, the world is socially structured by conflict between groups with different degrees of power (Tajfel & Turner Reference Tajfel, Turner, Austin and Worchel1979). Historically, the ruling class has sought to construct, promote, and build upon division among subordinate groups, including by encouraging “racial” prejudice, in order to maintain its privileged position (Miles Reference Miles1989). As Dixon et al. argue, collective action can improve racialized subordinate groups' material situation in relation to the powerful (cf. Piven & Cloward Reference Piven and Cloward1977). Collective action can also have unintended consequences, including changes in relations within and between subordinate groups. These, in turn, can entail changes in identity: that is, who “we” are, who counts as “other,” and hence how “we” feel about “them.”
Oral histories of the United Kingdom miners' strike of 1984–1985 (Coulter et al. Reference Coulter, Miller and Walker1984; Green Reference Green1990; Salt & Layzell Reference Salt and Layzell1985) are rich in examples of such changes. Over the course of the strike, which involved numerous picket-line confrontations, many strikers came to view the police no longer as a neutral protector of their rights but as a “political” force, sent by the Conservative government to break their strike and destroy their livelihoods. A reference point was the 1981 urban riots in London and other cities, which the official enquiry had blamed partly on police “racial” prejudice (Scarman Reference Scarman1981). For many among the predominantly white working-class strikers, the rejection of the police as a social category was linked to a positive re-evaluation of black people, and specifically those involved in the riots. Now they were “the same as us.”
Our longitudinal study of a nonviolent direct action campaign investigated the process underlying this kind of psychological change (Drury & Reicher Reference Drury and Reicher2000; Reference Drury and Reicher2005; Drury et al. Reference Drury, Reicher and Stott2003). The groups involved were “locals” and “activists” who both opposed a trunk road being built through the “village green” of Wanstead. At first, locals saw the activists, with their “scruffy” appearance, as “anathema” to respectable Wanstead. Later, however, many of these same locals came to embrace the activists (literally as well as figuratively) and, in some contexts, to redefine “them” as “us.”
In their own explanation for locals' change of views, the activists offered a “contact” hypothesis. It was the long discussions they had together, they said, that allowed locals to get to know them, realize they were decent people, and understand their “political” (rather than parochial) critique of road-building. There were two problems with this explanation. First, contact did not seem to be necessary, as the locals also changed their evaluations of groups who they had not even met, including Irish republicans, the Nigerian Ogoni tribe, and other activists around the country. Second, the activists' critique only seemed to have become persuasive when relations between locals and the police had changed.
The change in relations with the police took place within a single event: the eviction by police of locals and activists from under a tree they were occupying on the green in Wanstead. Although the locals understood their action in defending the tree as legitimate, peaceful protest by various different individuals and groups, the police saw it as disorderly behaviour by a single, dangerous crowd. The police acted on this perception by using force against the crowd, without differentiating between activists (who expected some rough treatment) and locals (who did not). The social location of the locals in relation to the police was transformed. The contrast that now defined their identity was no longer that between “locals” and “activists,” but between all those who were affected by “injustice” on the one hand and the police on the other. Thus, the locals' positive evaluations of the activists – like the miners' reevaluation of black people – were a function of a shared relationship of opposition to those who treated them all as a single oppositional group.
The evidence from industrial disputes and nonviolent direct actions suggests that “contact” may indeed enhance positive evaluations between groups – at least insofar as that contact takes place within a superordinate relationship of shared struggle against their subordination. However, the problem of inequality between groups is not essentially a problem of negative evaluations, but of power. Therefore, as Dixon et al. argue, the solution to the problem is mobilization for social change through collective empowerment (Drury & Reicher Reference Drury and Reicher2009).