From intragroup conflict to intergroup cooperation

This chapter theorizes, and provides field-based illustrations, about new ways to foster intergroup collaboration beginning first with intragroup conflict engagement. While the author has been experimenting with these ideas and practices for many years, this chapter represents still early efforts to lay out an agenda for systematic research and experimentation. I hypothesize that by successfully engaging internal conflicts about out-groups within in-groups, sides may separately become more willing and able to successfully and interactively solve shared problems and achieve superordinate goals between them. History is filled with attempts at cooperation between antagonistic groups - whether through negotiated agreement, functional cooperation, promoting positive contact and attitudes, and so forth - that have led instead to worsening attitudes and renewed confrontation. Even when polarized groups decide to cooperate to achieve superordinate goals (Sherif, 1966) they are often unable to make this leap from conflict to collaboration. I posit that this may be in part because inadequate attention is paid first to intragroup conflict dynamics vis-à-vis outgroups.