All told, the average session had an attendance of over 50. There were also two interesting dinner speeches given by people involved in attempts to settle the Northern Irish conflicts, and the participants toured Belfast. This was followed by the main part of the conference, the presentation of various cases of ethnic warfare, going from the most genocidal to cases that had been resolved. Ethnic identity is not automatically violent. Identities that allow both entry and exit are much less likely to lead to political violence.
Barricaded identities are more prone to violence.
This conclusion applies as well to religious conflict which is theoretically very similar to, and in cases such as Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, virtually identical to ethnic conflict in the modern world. Though Western social scientists are extremely suspicious of both nationalism and ethnic consciousness, these are and will remain strong sentiments. In the modern world, the village, the family, and the clan are no longer the primary focus of allegiance. Rather, the state is the focus of political identity, and if a particular religious or ethnic group feels that the state in which they live discriminates against them, it will eventually attempt to seize that state, or secede and form its own state. We should recognize, however, that in the 20th century states have killed many more people than less organized groups acting against states.