Open AccessWhen Will Academics Contest Intellectual Conflict?
Author(s) -
Mark Cooney,
Scott W. Phillips
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
socius
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2378-0231
DOI - 10.1177/2378023117713099
Subject(s) - contest , space (punctuation) , conflict theories , sociology , social conflict , conflict management , political science , social psychology , conflict resolution , social science , psychology , law , computer science , politics , operating system
Academics have conflicts over ideas with some regularity, yet they contest only some of them. When will they do so? We draw on a theory of conflict management developed by Donald Black and others to explain the response to intellectual conflict. Drawing on interviews with 70 professors at two universities, we find that the contestation of intellectual conflicts is predicted by their social geometry. Academics are more likely to contest conflicts over the validity, ownership, and production of ideas when the conflict spans greater distances in relational and functional space, originates from a lower elevation in vertical space, and is a larger actual or potential change in vertical space.