CONFLICT THEORIZING
Explaining the Ugly Face of
Society
© Dr. Francis Adu-Febiri, 2014
2/26/2014
1
Contents of Presentation






Focus of Conflict Theorizing
Genesis and Evolution of Conflict Theorizing
Main Theory of Social Conflict and the Paradigm
Shift it provides
The Two Traditions of Classical Conflict
Theorizing
Neo-Conflict Theorizing
Feminist Conflict Theorizing
FOCUS OF CONFLICT
THEORIZING
 The Processes and Results of Social
Groups Competing for Social Scarcities
– Centered Power, Coercion, Inequality, and
Violence
– VIOLENCE

2/26/2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violence_world_map__DALY_-_WHO2004.svg
3
GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF
CONFLICT THEORIZING

CLASSICAL CONFLICT THEORIZING:
– According to Turner (2003: 131), conflict theory in
sociology began with Karl Marx (1818-1883), but
the development of the approach owes a debt to two
other early/classical German sociologists, Max
Weber (1864-1920) and Georg Simmel (1858-1918).


The ideas of Marx, Weber and Simmel on conflict began to resurface in
America and assumed a central place in sociological theory during the
1950s in the works of two German-born sociologists, Ralf Dahrendorf and
Lewis Coser.
NEO-CONFLICT THEORIZING:
– American social theorists—Randall Collins, Erik Olin Wright,
2/26/2014
Immanuel Wallerstein-revised and provided new perspectives
4
on the classical social conflict theories .
Human behavior, condition,
experiences, action, etc.
Conflict
Unequal distribution of wealth, power, and status resulting
Y
MAIN THEORY
X
Dialectics of capitalist political economy and
SOCIAL CONFLICT PARADIGM

MAIN THEORY:

Socio-structural forces, particularly the dialectics of
capitalist political economy and social closures, through
the ideology of scarcity, create competition over valued
resources that produces inequalities in wealth, power,
and status resulting in conflict among social groups,
particularly social classes and status groups. The
inequalities and conflict dictate human behavior,
condition, experiences, access to resources, and possible
revolutionary social change.
2/26/2014
6
PARADIGM SHIFT

Society operates on a shifting balance of
power among competing groups, not on
equilibrium of interdependence and
cooperation (Wallace and Wolf 2006: 68).
2/26/2014
7
SOCIAL CONFLICT PARADIGM

KEY CONCEPTS:

Dialectics: Inner contradictions/conflict creating tension between
the thesis (dominant social system) and its antithesis (its resisting
parts), and thus producing a synthesis (a new social system).
Capitalist Political Economy: Mode and relations of production
characterized by private ownership of the means of production
and market competition.
Ideology: System of ideas that distorts reality.
Conflict: clashes of social groups that are engaged in power
struggles for control of valued scarce resources.
Inequality: Unfair distribution of valued scarce resources among
groups of people.




2/26/2014
8
SOCIAL CONFLICT PARADIGM





KEY CONCEPTS:
Social Classes: relative, collective social status positions based on
property, power, prestige, privilege, and other valued scarce
resources.
Social Closures: Ingroups and Outgroups that operate on the
principles of inclusion-exclusion and social distance.
Power: The ability of people or groups to achieve their goals
despite the opposition from others. This ability is derived from
their access to valued scarce resources, particularly weapons of
violence.
Revolution: Radical or structural shift or the negation and
replacement of previous social structure achieved through violent
processes.
2/26/2014
9
TWO TRADITIONS OF CONFLICT
THEORIZING

TRADITION #1: Conflict is not inevitable nor is it
necessary in human society
– Scientists have the moral obligation to critique society through
factual analysis and value judgment, and to believe in the
principle that it is possible for a society no longer to have
grounds for social conflict (Wallace and Wolf 2006: 69).


KARL MARX
TRADITION #2: Conflict is inevitable and is
permanent in human society:
– Focuses on establishing a social science, with the same canon of
objectivity as informs the natural sciences, to analyze power
and conflict as permannent features of society (ibid.).

2/26/2014
MAX WEBER
10

CLASSICAL CONFLICT THEORIZING:
Tradition #1:
– KARL MARX
KARL MARX’S CONFLICT THEORY


Main Theory: General
Structural inequality ultimately produces
revolutionary conflict that makes communism a
possibility.
 Main Theory: Specific
 Irreconcilable interests between dominant and
subordinate segments of society resulting from
systems of inequality ultimately generate conflict
that becomes violent and revolutionary which may
or may not lead to radical structural change of
society.
2/26/2014
12
KARL MARX’S CONFLICT THEORY:
INEQUALITY

Elaboration of the Theory:
 1. The more unequal is the distribution of
scarce resources in a society, the greater is
the violent conflict of interest between its
dominant and subordinate segments, and the
greater the changes that may be caused in
the pattern of social organization, especially
in the redistribution of scarce resources.
2/26/2014
13
KARL MARX’S CONFLICT THEORY:
OVERT CONFLICT

2. The more subordinate segments become
aware of their true collective
interests/inequality, the more likely they are
to question the legitimacy of the existing
pattern of distribution of valued resources
and join overt conflict against dominant
segments of the social system.
2/26/2014
14
Overt Conflict in Egypt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w69Grp
6QHdI
2/26/2014
15
KARL MARX’S CONFLICT THEORY:
Sources of Class Consciousness

The conditions heightening subordinates’
awareness of their collective interests and joining
overt conflict are:

Disruptions in their social situations
 Increased feeling of alienation
 Increased capacity to communicate with one another
 Increased ability to develop a unifying ideology
 Escalated deprivation or changes in deprivation from
absolute to relative
 Developed political leadership structure for
subordinates
2/26/2014
16
KARL MARX’S CONFLICT THEORY:
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

3. The greater is the ideological unification of
members of subordinate classes and the more
developed is their political leadership structure,
 A) the more likely the relations between the
dominant class and subordinate classes of
society to become polarized and irreconcilable,
 B) the more will the conflict be violent [violent
revolution], and
 C) the greater may be the amount of structural
change within a society and the greater is the
redistribution of scarce resources.
2/26/2014
17

CLASSICAL CONFLICT THEORIZING:
Tradition #2:
– MAX WEBER
– GEORG SIMMEL
– RALF DAHRENDORF
– LEWIS COSER
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY

Main Theory: General

Rationality may prevent structural inequality from
generating revolutionary conflict.

Main Theory: Specific

Revolutionary conflict in systems of inequality is highly contingent
on erosion of legitimacy of power and the emergence of
charismatic leaders who could mobilize subordinates.
The emergence of charismatic leaders is a matter of historical
chance or in situations where there is high inequality in the
distribution of power, wealth, and prestige and the extent to which
holders of one resource control the other resources as well as the
political authority’s incapacity to generate prestige in the wider
world geopolitical system. But this correlation is not inevitable.

2/26/2014
19
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
LEGITIMACY

Elaboration of Theory:
 The transition from societies based on
traditional authority to those organized around
rational-legal authority produces revolutionary
conflict if subordinates withdraw legitimacy
from the sanctity of tradition that legitimate
political and social activity.
2/26/2014
20
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
LEGITIMACY

Subordinates are more likely to withdraw
legitimacy from political authority when
 1. Ascription-based inequalities become
entrenched.
 2. The correlations among memberships in
class, status group, and political hierarchies is
high
 3. The discontinuity or degrees of inequality in
the resource distribution within social
hierarchies is high

4. Rates
2/26/2014
of social mobility up social hierarchies of
power, prestige, and wealth are low or blocked.
21
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
LEGITIMACY

Withdrawal of legitimacy is not just the result of the
intra-societal conditions such as listed in the previous
slide, it also depends on inter-societal relations.
 That is, even if all the three intra-societal conditions
exist, subordinates would not necessarily withdraw
legitimacy from political authority if it is able to
generate economic success and prestige higher than
that of other societies.
– E.G. If the society is able to meet the needs of societal
members for defense and attack against external
enemies
 In fact, political authorities often stir up internal or external
“enemies” as a ploy for increasing their legitimacy and 22
2/26/2014
power to control the distribution of resources.
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP

Conflict between superordinates and
subordinates becomes more likely when
charismatic leaders can mobilize
resentments of subordinates.
 A critical force galvanizing resentment of
subordinates is therefore CHARISMA
2/26/2014
23
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
HISTORICAL CHANCE

Whether or not charismatic leaders
emerge is, to a greater extent, a matter of
historical chance.

But if such leaders do emerge to challenge
traditional authority and to mobilize
resentments caused by the hoarding of
resources by elites and the lack of opportunities
to gain access to wealth, power, or prestige,
then conflict and structural change can occur.
2/26/2014
24
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
ROUTINIZATION

When charismatic leaders are successful in
conflict, they are confronted with
organizational problems of consolidating their
gain.

To solve this problem, charisma becomes routinized as
leaders create formal rules, procedures and structures
for organizing followers after the successful
mobilization to pursue conflict. If such rational-legal
rountinization occurs, authority is based on equally
applied laws and rules, and performance and ability
become the basis of recruitment and promotion in
bureaucratic structures.
2/26/2014
25
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:
ROUTINIZATION

However, if routinization creates new
patterns of ascription-based inequalities
thus creating a new system of traditional
authority, renewed conflict can be
expected as membership in class, status,
and party becomes highly correlated, as
the new elites hoard resources, and social
mobility up hierarchies is blocked.
2/26/2014
26
MAX WEBER’S CONFLICT THEORY:

There are three main areas of life in which
people obtain more or fewer resources and are
more or less dominant or subjected in conflict
processes.
 They are first, peoples occupations, where they
can be grouped into different classes; second,
the communities where people live, with their
different status groups, including age, gender,
ethnic, and educational groupings; and third,
the political arena, where different parties seek
political power.
2/26/2014
27
GEORG SIMMEL’S CONFLICT THEORY

Main Theory:
 Less
intense and less violent
conflicts are more likely in
society because they perform
solidarity and integration
functions in the social structure.
2/26/2014
28
GEORG SIMMEL’S CONFLICT
THEORY: ELABORATION

Conflict produces integration within minority
groups, groups engaged in self-defense, and in the
social whole. Specifically,
 1. Conflict increases the formation of well-defined
group boundaries, the centralization of authority
and power, decreased tolerance of deviance and
dissent, and the enhancement of social solidarity
within conflict groups.
 2. For society as a whole, conflicts of low
intensity and high frequency release tensions and
become normatively regulated, thereby promoting
2/26/2014
29
stability in the social system.
RALF DAHRENDORF’S
DIALECTICAL CONFLICT THEORY

Main Theory: General

Conflict is regular and perpetual because of the
inevitability of power/authority differentials in
human society:

A social system--be it a small group, a clique, a formal
organization, community, or an entire society--is
characterized by institutional patterns of roles
displaying power differentials in which some positions
(ruling) have the authority to dominate others (ruled).
The ruling cluster of roles has an interest in preserving
the status quo, and the ruled cluster has an interest in
redistributing power. Hence conflict.
2/26/2014
30
RALF DAHRENDORF’S
DIALECTICAL CONFLICT THEORY

Main Theory: Specific
 Social reality is typified by an unending cycle of
conflict over authority/power within the
various types of groups that constitute the
social world.

The contest for authority/power between the ruling and the ruled
causes polarization between the two groups that leads to conflict
and produce change in social systems in the form of redistributed
authority. In turn, the redistribution of authority/power produces
institutionalization of a new cluster of ruling and ruled roles that,
under certain conditions, polarize into two interest groups that
initiate another contest for authority/power producing conflict.
2/26/2014
31
RALF DAHRENDORF’S
DIALECTICAL CONFLICT THEORY

Sudden escalation in the perception of ruled
about their deprivation increases the
likelihood of violent conflict. However,
actual violence would occur only if the
social system has not developed regulatory
procedures for dealing with grievances and
releasing tension.
2/26/2014
32
LEWIS COSER’S FUNCTIONAL
THEORY OF CONFLICT

Main Theory: General
 Imbalances in system parts lead to outbreak of
conflict.

Main Theory: Specific
 When emotional arousal and/or relative deprivation
compels the deprived to withdraw legitimacy from an
existing system of inequality, imbalances in system
parts occur leading to outbreak of conflict among these
parts, which in turn causes temporary reintegration of
the system which leads to increased flexibility in the
system’s structure, and therefore increased capability
to resolve future imbalances through conflict, and
2/26/2014
increased capacity to adapt to changing conditions. 33
LEWIS COSER’S FUNCTIONAL
THEORY OF CONFLICT


Four conditions for levels and durations of
Conflict
1.When groups engage in conflict over realistic issues
(obtainable goals), they are more likely to seek
compromises over the means to realize their interests, and
hence, the less violent the conflict will be.
 2. When groups engage in conflict over non-realistic
issues (core values, vague goals), the greater is the level
of emotional arousal and involvement in the conflict,
and hence, the more violent the conflict will be.
 3. When functional interdependence among social units
is low, the less available are the institutional means for
2/26/2014
absorbing conflicts and tensions, and hence, the more 34
LEWIS COSER’S FUNCTIONAL
THEORY OF CONFLICT

4. Leadership has important effect on
conflict processes; the more leaders can
perceive that complete attainment of goals
is not possible and the greater their ability
to convince followers to terminate conflict,
the less prolonged the conflict will be.
2/26/2014
35
 NEO-CONFLICT THEORIZING:
– Randall Collins
– Erik Olin Wright
– Immanuel Wallerstein
NEO-WEBERIAN CONFLICT
THEORY: RANDALL COLLINS





Main Theory: General
Society is an arena of perpetual conflicting
interests over resources and actions
Main Theory: Specific
Power or coercion, particularly violence, is at the
core of social life and social conflict.
There is conflict because violent coercion is
always a potential resource for superiors to try to
control subordinates, it is a zero-sum sort, and
people dislike and resist coercion.
2/26/2014
37
NEO-WEBERIAN CONFLICT THEORY:
VIOLENT COERCION

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4umt7N
v4qeU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61ldZTjl
fgE
2/26/2014
38
NEO-WEBERIAN CONFLICT
THEORY: RANDALL COLLINS

Since power and prestige are inherently scarce
commodities and wealth is often contingent upon
them, the ambition of even a small proportion of
persons for more than equal shares of these goods
sets up an implicit counterstruggle on the part of
others to avoid subjection and disesteem. Such
social conflict can take many forms, but at the
very heart of it lies direct coercion or violence.
2/26/2014
39
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Erik Olin Wright

Main Theory: General

Dynamics of capitalism present possibilities for new,
less exploitative social arrangements that would
prevent the inevitability of revolutionary conflict
leading to communism.

Main Theory: Specific

Complex class structure limits the nature of class formation and
class struggles, and thus makes communism an impossibility

A more complex class structure--multiple class,
mediated class, contradictory class, and temporal class
locations—in advanced capitalist societies limits the
development of polarized social classes and mitigate
class struggles that could bring about communism.
2/26/2014
40
COMPLEX CLASS STRUCTURE

Contradictory Class location
 Multiple Class locations
 Mediated Class location
 Temporal Class location
2/26/2014
41
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Erik Olin Wright

1. Contradictory Class Location:
– One class location with a built-in oppressed and


oppressor roles:
Individuals can occupy one class location that could be
contradictory, that is, a location that puts them into
different classes—both exploiter and exploited classes,
giving them contradictory material interests, diverse
lived experiences and collective capacities.
For example, many managers, semi-autonomous wage earners,
professionals and experts, and small-scale employers can reveal
varying amounts and combinations of a) owning the means of
production, b) purchasing the labor of others, c) controlling and
managing the labor of others, and d) selling their labor.
2/26/2014
42
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Erik Olin Wright

To illustrate, a manager sells labor to an
owner of business, but at the same time this
manager will be involved in hiring and
controlling the labor of others.
 Similarly a skilled consultant sells labor, but
might own the facilities by which this labor
is organized.
2/26/2014
43
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Erik Olin Wright

2. Multiple Class Locations:
– Two or more class locations of which some are
exploiter positions and others exploited positions:

People often have more than one job, and hence,
can actually have more than one class location.
 For example, a person can have a salaried day
job, then operate a small business he/she owns
at night or weekends, thereby making this
individual both a proletarian and capitalist.
2/26/2014
44
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Erik Olin Wright

3. Mediated Class Location:
– Indirect connection to a class

Individuals are often connected to a class via
networks to others who hold a job or own capital.
Children, wives and husbands can all have a
mediated relation to a class location of a parent or
spouse.
 For example, if a female manager is married to a
carpenter, each has a mediated relation to the
other’s class location, and their children, if they
have any, will bear mediated relations to both
2/26/2014
45
classes.
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Erik Olin Wright

4. Temporal Class Locations:
– Shifts in one’s class location over time:
People’s class locations can change over time,
giving them different material interests, lived
experiences, and collective capacities.
 For example, some careers involve movement
across class locations, as when individuals move
up government or corporate hierarchies, when
a small business gets large, when workers begin
to form companies, and when students move
from school to job, and into a career track.

2/26/2014
46
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Immanuel Wallerstein
 Main
Theory:
 Capitalism will collapse but not
because of objective consciousness of
the working class and not through
violent conflict.
2/26/2014
47
NEO-MARXIAN CONFLICT
THEORIZING: Immanuel Wallerstein



World System
Capitalism will collapse, but must first penetrate the
entire world by connecting core, semi-periphery and
periphery countries in an exploitative trade
arrangements that heighten its contradictions and
conflicts.
As long as peripheral states exist to be exploited by the
core capitalist countries, capitalism can sustain itself by
relying on the resources and the cheap labor of less
developed countries. But once capitalism exists
everywhere, there is no longer an escape route but the
collapse of capitalism
2/26/2014
48
THE CREDIT CRISIS
VISUALIZED

http://vimeo.com/3261363
2/26/2014
49
FEMINIST CONFLICT THEORY

Gender inequality is another form of conflictproducing stratification .
2/26/2014
50
SOURCES OF GENDER INEQUALITY


1. Ideology and kinship:
If women’s work is strategically dispensable
and if kinship blocks their inheritance and
acquisition of property, inequality and
oppression against women are entrenched.
 2. Gender Division of Labor:
 Gendered division of labor at the macro level
gives males material resources advantage
which in turn gives them coercive advantage
over women that causes engenderment or
“voluntary” acceptance of their disadvantaged
position.
2/26/2014
51
SOURCES OF GENDER INEQUALITY

3. Social Control:
 Women lack control of their own lives. This
leads to lack of economic power and other
sources of value in stratified social system,
especially honor and prestige, political
power, and ideological support for their
rights relative to men.
2/26/2014
52
Gender Equity Theory

In effect, without economic power, women are
denied honor and prestige, and more important,
they have less control over such basic matters as
their fertility patterns, their marriages, their rights
to seek divorce, their premarital sex, their access
to extramarital sex, their household activities, their
levels and types of education, and their freedom to
move about and pursue diverse interests and
opportunities.
2/26/2014
53
Gender Equity Theory

Women would achieve equity with men in
society when women and their allies
mobilize to gain access to substantive
positions in the macro-level division of
labor.
2/26/2014
54