Conflict (sociology)
Conflict is a state of opposition between two parties. In political terms, it refers to an ongoing state of hostility between two groups of people.
A common definition of conflict I was taught for graduate and professional work in conflict resolution is: "When two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine eachother's goal-seeking capability."
Conflict can exist at a variety of levels of analysis:
- intrapersonal conflict (though this usually just gets delegated out to psychology)
- interpersonal conflict
- group conflict
- organizatonal conflict
- community conflict
- intra-state conflict (i.e. civil war)
- international conflict
Conflicts in these levels may be "nested" in conflicts residing at larger levels of analysis. For example, perhaps you've been a work team that's had a conflict that actually is nested within and is playing out the dynamics of a broader conflict in the organization as a whole. A good source on this is Marie Dugan's article on Nested Conflict. John Paul Lederach has also written on this. (I'll come back to give hypertext links to those later.)
The Vietnam Conflict was in all aspects but semantics a war.
The Arab-Israeli conflict conflict is a historic and ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian interests. See also Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Catholic-Protestant conflict of Northern Ireland is another notable historic conflict. See Bloody Sunday (Northern Ireland 1972)
Many conflicts are racially or ethnically based. This would include such conflicts as the Bosnian-Croatian conflict See Kosovo and Metohia, or the conflict in Rwanda, or the conflict in Kazakhstan
Another type of conflict exists between governments and Guerrilla groups or groups engaged in Asymetric warfare.
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Conflict is also the name of an anarcho-punk band; see Conflict (band).