Suchergebnisse

Numerous approaches in the social sciences either refuse to consider or minimize the importance of conflict in community or else replace it with a Spencerian vision of the social struggle. Between these two extremes there is considerable space for us to consider conflict as a relationship; this is what differentiates it from modes of behaviour involving war and rupture. Sociology suggests different ways of differentiating various modes of social conflict. The question is not only theoretical. It is also empirical and historical: have we not moved, in a certain number of countries at least, from the industrial era dominated by a structural social conflict in which the working-class movement confronted the masters of labour, to a new era dominated by other types of conflict with distinctly more cultural orientations? Whatever the type of analysis, the very concept of conflict must be clearly distinguished from that of crisis, even if materially the two coexist in social reality.

Chapter 1: The sociological study of conflict, social movements, and collective behavior -- Chapter 2: Sources of social conflict -- Chapter 3: Crises of national unity in new states: origins of the Nigerian Civil War -- Chapter 4: Mobilization: the formation of conflict groups -- Chapter 5: Mobilization: participation in opposition movements, leaders and activists, opposition ideas -- Chapter 6: Mobilization, leaders, and followers in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, 1950 to 1970 -- Chapter 7: Social control and conflict regulation -- Chapter 8: Confrontation -- Chapter 9: Group violence

For generations, sociological theorists have debated the relative function, utility, and harm of social conflict and its resolution. This review identifies some of the most prominent among recent contested forms of conflict resolution as well as their social histories, worldviews, and ways of operating. In sorting out the myriad theoretical traditions and positions guiding this field, we note that the resolution of social conflict is a thing in itself, and hence any design of its study should be directed at this liminal moment during which change is occurring. We conclude by examining four aspects of resolution—violence, spatiality, temporality, and language—using these themes to demarcate fault lines or gaps in the literature and to suggest new directions for future research.