How does armed conflict affect the social fabric of societies? This question is central if we want to understand better why some countries experience repeated cycles of violence. In recent years, considerable scientific work has been put into studying the social legacies of armed conflict. This article brings these academic studies together in a novel way, taking a holistic perspective and analyzing each of the three constituent elements of social cohesion—trust, cooperation, and identity—in detail and along both a vertical (state–society relations) and a horizontal (interpersonal and intergroup relations) dimension. Bringing together insights from fifty empirical studies, I call into question the initial optimism expressed by some scholars that conflict increases social cohesion. Only political participation seems to often be positively affected by experiencing conflict. In contrast, social and political trust as well as identification and cooperation across groups declines. However, research in several of these sub-elements of social cohesion is still nascent so that the strengths and shortcomings of the different studies are discussed and future avenues for research are identified.

中文翻译：

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我们对武装冲突如何影响社会凝聚力了解多少？实证文献综述

武装冲突如何影响社会的社会结构？如果我们想更好地理解为什么一些国家会经历反复的暴力循环，这个问题就至关重要。近年来，人们投入了大量的科学工作来研究武装冲突的社会遗产。本文以一种新颖的方式将这些学术研究结合在一起，从整体的角度，从纵向（国家与社会关系）和横向的角度详细分析了社会凝聚力的三个构成要素——信任、合作和认同。横向（人际关系和群体间关系）维度。汇集了五十个实证研究的见解，我对一些学者最初表达的“冲突可以增强社会凝聚力”的乐观态度提出了质疑。只有政治参与似乎经常受到冲突的积极影响。相比之下，社会和政治信任以及群体之间的认同与合作下降。然而，对社会凝聚力的几个子要素的研究仍处于起步阶段，因此讨论了不同研究的优点和缺点，并确定了未来的研究途径。