There has been a great deal of intercultural and cross-cultural research conducted on conflict behavior.
The overwhelming majority of this research has focused on comparing East Asian (usually operationalized as collectivist) and U.S. American (usually operationalized as individualist) populations (Cai & Fink, 2002; Chau & Gudykunst, 1987; Kim, Lee, Kim, & Hunter, 2004; Kim & Leung, 2000; Miyahara, Kim, Shin, & Yoon, 1998; Oetzel, Arcos, Mabizela, Weinman, & Zhang, 2006; Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2001; Ting-Toomey, Oetzel, & Yee-Jung, 2001; Zhang, 2007; for reviews of this line of research see Croucher, 2011a; Croucher, DeMaris, Holody, Hicks, & Oommen, 2011; Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2003).
This body of research has provided an abundance of findings on how individuals conceptualize conflict, communicate during conflict, and attempt to manage/resolve conflict and how groups differ in various aspects of conflict as a whole. However, little is known about conflict in geographic regions other than those populated by U.S. Americans and East Asians. Moreover, few scholars consider the significance of religion in conflict research (Croucher, 2011a), often failing to gather the religious identification of participants in studies, simply reporting religious identification as a demographic variable, and/or only conducting research among predominantly Caucasian college students in the United States (who are predominantly Christian). Croucher and Cronn-Mills (2011) argue that communication researchers are inherently biased in their sampling methods. Researchers conduct the bulk of their research in the United States among Caucasians, among the middle class, among Christians, and among college students. This is not to criticize research conducted by communication scholars (or other social scientists) but to point out that there are many other populations in the United States, and around the world, neglected by communication scholarship. Many communication traits/ behaviors differ in unstudied/understudied populations (Croucher, 2008; Croucher & Cronn-Mills, 2011). Ultimately, less is known about conflict outside a Christian, Caucasian, middle-class, U.S. American, or East Asian student sample.1 Knowing how individuals conceptualize and manage/resolve conflict in different cultures is pivotal to effective intercultural/cross-cultural communication (Oetzel et al., 2006). Furthermore, Croucher (2011b) asserts that to better understand conflict and culture, scholars must expand conflict literature to the examination of religious groups other than Christians. Thus, this chapter explores the relationship between conflict and a vital aspect of culture, religion (Croucher, 2009; Geertz, 1973; Polkinghorn & Byrne, 2001).In this chapter, I first explore philosophi- cal/doctrinal traditions and roots of conflict in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. These religions were included because at the time of the writing of this chapter, the religions were the three largest religious groups in the world (Ahuja, 2008). The second section examines how religion has been studied in relation to various communication traits/behaviors. The third and final section proposes areas for future work linking religion—religious identification/affilia- tion and religiosity or strength of religious devotion (Alston, 1975)—with conflict research.