Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Understanding conflict -- Development of incompatible goals -- Application to the civil rights struggle -- Emergence of overt conflicts -- Application to a university conflict -- Escalation and deescalation -- Application to conflict in Bosnia -- Making conflict work economically -- Understanding and managing conflicts

The general principles common to conflict theory are: (1) the primary unit of analysis is social structure; (2) conflict is endemic in social organizations; (3) persons in similar social conditions will organize to promote their group interests; (4) the powerful use their power to keep themselves in power; (5) inequities in wealth, power, and prestige plus the exploitation by the powerful toward the powerless lead to conflicts between them; (6) the understanding of society requires the understanding of the political economy; (7) the conditions of social organization, domination, and exploitation have alienating, repressive, and frustrating effects on individuals; and (8) human beings are the architects of social organization. These principles of conflict theory are applied to deviance in sport. Specifically, this paper defines deviance from the conflict perspective by using objective criteria. Next the structural roots of deviance in sport are examined by focusing on the structural conditions of massification and commodification.

This article offers an intellectual history of theoretical work devoted to explaining asymmetric conflict outcomes since World War II. Three factors are critical to understanding how the literature has evolved. First, the concept of "asymmetric conflict" encompasses a number of overlapping literatures, including insurgency, terrorism, counterinsurgency, and most recently, civil wars. Second, and interrelated, the field of inquiry has been unproductively divided between military and academic thinkers, with insufficient engagement between the two communities. Third, the popularity of the field of inquiry following the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent American-led military operations in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) have resulted in analyses that are empirically rich, but have provided little in the way of theoretical advances. The conclusion offers an overall assessment of the field of inquiry into asymmetric conflict outcomes, suggested directions for future research, and a table of major contributors to the literature, their key questions, case universes, intended contributions, and theoretical limitations. Adapted from the source document.

Conflict theory represents a useful perspective in the conceptualization of welfare policy. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (1971) theorized that government distributes financial assistance (e.g., welfare) in response to conflict (e.g., rioting by the poor masses). Thus, welfare is a mechanism of control used in an effort to squelch rebellious poor people's movements. The goal of this paper is to analyze the validity of Piven and Cloward's thesis through a review of empirical literature that supports and challenges this thesis. Conflict theory will be utilized in a discussion of how it may inform further research in the field of welfare policy.

Since the end of the Cold War, we have been witnessing the emergence of new types of conflicts. These are progressively more complex, but are, still too often, conceptualised and approached simplistically, using a linear type of reasoning. Complexity is disregarded, and the need for systemic thinking is underestimated, not rarely leading to disastrous results. Feedbacks are most often ignored, and the complex dynamics which make a conflict to change over time, following often unpredictable paths, are rarely taken into account. A shift from a precomplexity mindset to a mindset founded in an understanding of complexity is necessary. In the paper, using concrete examples, we will try to show how a systems thinking approach is essential to analyse today's conflict, to prevent them, and to act so as to make them develop along non violent constructive paths rather than along violent destructive ones. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.