Conflict Theory

Since the beginning of time, human beings have come into conflict with one another. Disputes over scarce resources such as food, water, land, housing, shade, animals, tools, and materials have led to fights and physical violence. The larger the groups of people in conflict, the more devastating the consequences.

There are many reasons why conflicts develop, at both the individual and group levels. Some conflicts arise from belief systems or principles, some from personality differences, and others are conflicts over material goods, identity, status, or reputation. Because conflicts develop for so many different reasons and because much conflict is dangerous and unproductive, the theory of conflict attempts to understand the different sources of conflict, the dynamics of how conflict develops, escalates, or declines, and how conflict can be handled, reduced, or resolved.

At the same time, it must be recognized that conflict can have social utility as well. Many important changes in human society, many for the betterment of human life, have come from hard-fought conflicts that resulted in the change of human institutions, relationships, or ideas. The U.S. Civil War, for example, saw the death of more than a million Americans, but it eliminated slavery in the United States and marked the beginning of an ongoing period of change in U.S. race relations. Those changes in race relations have continued to be marked by conflicts, including, in recent years, conflicts over whether reparations should be paid to the descendants of slaves and whether there should be affirmative action in education and employment to compensate for the past wrongs of the society. Even small interpersonal conflicts (as between husband and wife or parent and child) can lead to important changes, not only in relationships between the people in conflict but in larger social movements, such as the feminist, peace, and children's rights movements. Conflicts with outsiders often clarify and reinforce commitments and norms of one's own group, and internal conflict within an individual can lead to changed views and intellectual and emotional growth.

Conflict theory tries to classify and describe the types of conflicts that exist (for example, in terms of whether they are productive or destructive). It then attempts to explain the ways in which conflict proceeds or is structured (both by internal and external forces) and how it can be managed or resolved.

A conflict can be experienced as a simple disagreement, a feeling of discomfort or opposition, or a perception of difference from, or competition or incompatibility with, others. Conflicts, then, can be perceptual, emotional, or behavioral. When a conflict is actually acted on, it becomes a dispute. In order for a conflict to develop fully into a dispute, people must perceive some [Page 324]wrong to themselves and identify someone else to blame for it, as well as some way to take action against that person or people. That process has been called “naming, blaming and claiming” (Felstiner, Abel, & Sarat 1980–1981, p. 631). How the conflict turns into a dispute and how it is labeled affect how it progresses and whether it escalates and gets worse, leading in extreme cases to war, or is handled, managed, or resolved. This process of conflict being experienced, labeled, and expressed is often called a process of social construction, as different people, groups, and cultures will vary within and among themselves about what they consider a conflict to be and whether and how they will act on their interpretations.

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