A social conflict arises when two or more persons or groups manifest

the belief that they have incompatible objectives.

Competition may or may not involve awareness,

while conflict does.4

We refer to such situations as objective, latent, underlying, or potential

conflicts.

we will often refer to five

core ideas in conflict studies that guide our thinking. These are: social conflicts
are universal and can be beneficial; social conflicts are waged with varying
destructiveness; social conflicts entail contested social constructions;
all social conflicts can be transformed; and social conflicts are dynamic and
tend to move through stages.

Constructive forms of social conflict management are those that

preserve relationships, maximize mutually satisfactory outcomes, and minimize
reliance on violence.

occur when one or

both parties see conflicts in zero-sum terms, dehumanize opponents to mobilize
supporters, and rely largely on the use of extreme violence to achieve
their ends.5

rarely results in the kinds of integrated socioeconomic

systems that are crucial to building lasting peace, especially where ethnic,
cultural, or other identity-based differences are salient aspects of the conflict.

A 2008 Rand report underscores this

point by demonstrating that most so-called terrorist groups end not through
defeat, but though engagement in a political process.7

They are framed in reference to a salient past, but not precisely to the
issue at hand.

each conflict is interlocked with

many others. Some conflicts are embedded in larger conflicts, historically and
contemporaneously. Each adversary is also engaged in several other conflicts
at any given time. The primacy of one or another conflict shifts over time, as
one intensifies or moves to little relevance. Various groups within each side
in a conflict may dispute which conflict should be given the greatest priority,
which enemy is number one and which is number two.

provide conflict monitoring

and early warning, utilize social network technologies, and advance the work
of civil society organizations in conflict zones.

Such bottom-up
approaches to constructive conflict management can help initiate, conduct,
and consolidate top-down actions in many ways at each conflict stage.

Waging conflicts constructively typically entails different stakeholders doing

different things at different times. Sometimes elites may focus on transforming
conflicts through new policies and laws; other times private parties
can constructively transform conflicts by attending to the emotional wounds
or problematic narratives that sustain conflicts. At still other times, the assistance
of intermediaries may be necessary to convene meetings, to transmit
information, or to guarantee the adherence to agreements that are made.

Fifth, social conflicts are never static; rather they are fluid and move through
various stages as partisans adopt new strategies, develop different perspec

This book follows the course of a conflict, as it emerges, escalates,

de-escalates, and is settled.9

The various ways a conflict may

be pursued are discussed in chapters 4 and 5, and the processes of escalation
are examined in chapter 6. In chapter 7, transitions toward reduced antagonism and
the processes of de-escalation are examined. In chapter 8, mediation in conflicts
is explored. In chapter 9, we examine the settlement of conflicts through
both negotiated and non-negotiated means. In chapter 10, the factors shaping
the various outcomes and long-term termination sequences are analyzed. Finally,
in chapter 11, the various elements developed in this study are applied
to each conflict stage and the approach taken is specified for different kinds of
conflicts.

Conflicts vary in six relevant ways: the issues in contention,

the characteristics of the contending parties, the relations between the
adversaries, the context in which the adversaries contend, the means used to
conduct the struggle, and the outcomes of the struggle.

Issues in Contention
Adversaries wage conflicts over two kinds of matters: interests and values.
Thus, they may quarrel about resources, assets, or capabilities that they each
want to have and believe how much they have must be at the expense of the
opponent. These resources include material such as land, money, oil, and water.
They may also quarrel over social resources, such as their prestige, or their
ability to make decisions independent of the desires of others.
Issues in contention also arise from diverse values each side holds dear.
These become matters in contention when one side insists on manifesting particular
values that another party finds so objectionable that they try to forbid
the manifestations. For example, in the United States strong disagreements
have existed about the right to practice polygamy, the right to have abortions,
or the right to own and carry firearms. Values may also become contested
matters when members of one group insist that others adopt their values, as
can occur in proselytizing efforts for particular religious beliefs or political
ideologies.

Such constructive
transformations can occur due to at least three widespread conditions: first,
adversaries generally share important interests and value in addition to contentious
ones; second, several issues are in contention in every conflict; and
third, struggles usually have more than two parties involved.

The dispute can then be seen as a mixed-motive game,

in which some adversaries cooperate to gain benefits at the expense of other
parties.

Adversary Characteristics

These are:
the adversarys self-other conceptions; the clarity of the adversarys social
boundaries; and the internal organization of a conflict party. These features
not only vary but they also can change in the course of a conflict and affect
its trajectory.

Self-Other Conceptions

Thus, religious, ethnic, or ideological identities

can be important sources for such conceptions and are central to identity
conflicts. Social identity theory argues that the innate human capacity to categorize
people and other phenomena contributes to the creation of what are
often called in-groups and out-groups.

It is believed
that through such contact individuals can overcome their parochial identities
and develop a new superordinate identity that includes their former adversary.
Such approaches will be discussed at length in chapter 8.

Relations between Adversaries

The nature of the relationship between adversaries is another fundamental
way of distinguishing among kinds of conflicts. Four variations in adversarial
relations significantly affect the course of the conflict between them: (1) their
shared past history, (2) the number of adversaries engaged in a struggle, (3)
the degree to which the adversaries are integrated with each other, and (4) the
degree of asymmetry between the adversaries.

The term power sometimes refers to a social systems capacity to accomplish

an agreed-on task, but often it refers to the relationship between groups within
a system in which one group directs the other.18 Given the attention in this
book to conflicts, the latter meaning is more pertinent.