Intergroup Conflict,Religious Fundamentalism,and Culture

Abstract

Kashima underlines the importance of considering religion as a major contemporary cultural source of intergroup conflict around the world. In this commentary, I first examine theory and psychological research either discrediting or crediting religion per se, including fundamentalism, as being a cultural cause of intergroup conflict and violence. The evidence is in favor of the latter. Second, I propose a model of cultural psychological diversity of religious fundamentalism, across monotheistic religions and denominations. I finally argue, following Kashima’s global perspective on the person-culture-nature interactions, that cultural differences in religious fundamentalism may be understood as reflections of longtime interactions between natural and cultural environments and human animals, which, by creating religious (sub)cultures, rebuild, even if frequently with negative consequences, their ecological niches.