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ANALYZING CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE
Author(s) -
Kent George
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0130.1993.tb00185.x
Subject(s) - harm , set (abstract data type) , agency (philosophy) , variety (cybernetics) , social psychology , politics , conflict resolution research , conflict theories , law and economics , sociology , political science , conflict resolution , psychology , law , computer science , social science , artificial intelligence , programming language
This study offers a conceptual framework for the analysis of concrete conflicts and also the violence that can result from conflicts. A conflict situation is the background setting in a particular time and place in which the important parties, issues, and possible outcomes are embedded. A party is an individual, entity, organization, or agency of some sort that has a distinct set of preferences relating to the possible outcomes of a situation. Preferences are indications of the choices a party would make among the possible outcomes of a situation. Parties generally have some capacities, which are resources or powers they can use to assure that their preferences are fulfilled. Conflict is an incompatibility of preferences in a situation with several different possible outcomes. There are two basic kinds of conflict: dilemmas, or internal conflicts, are cases in which one party has difficulty making a choice; and disputes, or social conflicts, occur where there are two (or more) parties, and their preferences are incompatible. Thus the bask architecture of social conflicts is made up of a few basic elements: in a situation there are different parties with certain capacities to pursue their preferences with regard to a variety of issues, and their preferences are incompatible. Violence means doing harm to others in the pursuit of one's own preferences. Peace is the absence of violence, negative peace is the absence of physical violence, and positive peace is the absence of all kinds of violencendashphysical, economic, political, and cultural. It can be useful for conflicting parties to analyze their conflict themselves. With systematic conflict analysis through interactive procedures, the representation of the conflict is not introduced by outsiders but is built up, step by step, by the conflicting parties. Repeated reconstruction of conflict descriptions carried out jointly by the parties can be an important tool of conflict resolution.