unstable orbits in the space of lies
In the current issue of Science:

Science 317, 1540 (2007).

Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence
May Lim,^1,2 Richard Metzler,^1,3 Yaneer Bar-Yam^1*

We identify a process of global pattern formation that causes regions to differentiate by culture. Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose members prefer similar neighbors, with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model to the area of the former Yugoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict. This model also points to imposed mixing or boundary clarification as mechanisms for promoting peace.

1 New England Complex Systems Institute, 24 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
2 Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454, USA.
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

The link goes to a page with the abstract. I assume full text requires an institutional subscription and is not generally available.

Addendum: The headline is the title of a Greg Egan story which is similar, in which a region -- I think it's California -- undergoes a similar sort of formation of ideological spatial domains. Of course, in that case it's due to some sort of telepathic spatial coupling, rather than normal cultural transmission mechanisms, but that's not really the point. As one goes deeper into a domain one finds one's attitudes and world view becoming that of the domain, and the only way to becoming "brainwashed" into one domain or another is to stay on the boundaries of domains.