Despite the widespread acknowledgement that how people and groups understand their history plays a key role in the formation of their social identity, there has heretofore been only limited research on the mechanisms that bring this about. This book examines the critical points in identity formation that history education helps to create. It establishes how history curricula and textbooks shape the identities of their readers through their portrayals of borders and boundaries between social groups, their depictions of relations between minority and majority groups, the value systems they embody, the leaders they hold up as exemplars, and the stories they choose to tell. Korostelina shows how all these attributes of history curricula can be harnessed to reduce conflict attitudes and intentions and create a culture of peace, beginning with the history curriculum.

This book presents the conception of a system of social identities, including the system's structure, development and dynamics, and explores the influence of cultural dimensions and identity salience on attitudes, behavior, and the structures of consciousness. The "Four C" model of identity-based conflicts provides fresh opportunities for analyses of the role of identity in conflicts and violence. Karina V. Korostelina introduces a model of dealing with identity conflicts that includes early warning, identity based training, management of multicultural communities, identity reconstruction workshops, and negotiation of identity. Every theoretical chapter in the book is followed by examples of research and methodological tools for analyzing data on social identities and identity based conflicts.

In order to determine how history education can be harnessed to reduce conflict attitudes and intentions and create a culture of peace, this book examines how history curricula and textbooks shape the identities of their students through their portrayals of ingroup and outgroup identity, intergroup boundaries, and value systems.

This book challenges the discourses, narrative frames, and systems of beliefs that support and promote violence and conflict, it defines new comprehensive approaches to human security as preventative and empowering to individuals, and it provides conceptual frameworks and methodological tools for enhancing the processes of communicating peace.

Looking at a variety of countries, this book explores the influence of cultural dimensions on the interrelations between personal and social identity, and the impact of identity salience on attitudes, stereotypes, and the structures of consciousness.

This book challenges the discourses, narrative frames, and systems of beliefs that support and promote violence and conflict, it defines new comprehensive approaches to human security as preventative and empowering to individuals, and it provides conceptual frameworks and methodological tools for enhancing the processes of communicating peace.