While it is widely assumed that civil wars reinforce the existing political divisions, a recent sociological study sheds light on how these divisions actually can be reinvented during social conflict. The study, “Fabricating Communists: The Imagined Third That Reinvented the National Fault Line in Mid-Twentieth-Century Colombia’s Civil War,” by Laura Acosta (University of California-San Diego), is published in the December 2025 issue of the American Sociological Review.
How inventing political adversaries can create real civil division
Reader’s Picks
-
Eldest sons step up financially, while eldest daughters take care of their parents: A new study from the University of [...]
-
A new study from the University of California San Diego finds that adults in California and Louisiana who experienced intimate [...]
-
Probation officers—who supervise nearly 4 million people across the United States—are among the most visible faces of the criminal legal [...]