Conflict: Sources

This chapter focuses on how conflict can come about. Conflict can be caused by personal or situational aspects. Three major situation aspects are socioeconomic transformation, political transformations, and cultural transformation. The socioeconomic transformation would involve something like the switch from horticulture to agricultural societies; the means of production are changed, so peoples' roles are changed and class conflict can emerge. The modernization of production, like factories emerging caused a population transfer to cities and a class difference between the haves and have nots. Political transformation has more to do with reorganization of power and new opportunities for minorities. This can create conflict between minorities because they are competing for these new identities. A large source of cultural transformations have to do with modernization and technology. The material culture is changing before the non-material culture and there can be inner turmoil about these changes.

Once you realize why the conflict is happening, you can more from analysis to resolution. There are two main theories on how to approach this: relative deprivation and basic human needs. The relative deprivation deals with the frustration that occurs when people are not getting what they perceive they should be getting or achieving. This can have to do with where you are living/what you are doing in life. For example, an American might get in a conflict about a promotion they they did not get, but thought they deserved; the would feel relatively deprived in their reality with what they imagined for themselves. A person from a third world country would not feel deprived if they had a job but just did not get a promotion. The basic human needs theorists would counter that most conflicts can be analyzed based on the needs for identity, recognition, and security. They would analyze the job scenario by saying that the worker was having trouble being recognized for his hard work or maybe not getting the promotion hurt his job security and thus the security for getting food/clothes/housing/etc. Human need theorists focus on the fact that these needs are universal and non-negotiable, while relative deprivation theorists focus on the frustration on not getting what one 'deserves.'