Paul Wehr
Every conflict begins with a latency period (a period when the potential for conflict exists, but it has not yet developed). Latent conflict may exist for very long periods before it becomes visible and the conflict actors are conscious of it and behave accordingly. (Deutsch 1973) In fact, it may never emerge. An alienating social structure tends to suppress the emergence of social conflict. Marx (1978) saw capitalism alienating workers from their labor and from one another, inhibiting open class conflict. That alienation was masked by a culture shaped by the ruling class for the maintenance of its position. (Gramsci 1971) When race was added to political, economic and cultural control in a society, as in the colonized world, obstacles to conflict's emergence were even more considerable. (Fanon 1968 ) In Collins view (1975), social life is above all a struggle for power and status regardless of the type of structure. An inevitable power differential between groups, and between individuals, produces latent conflict in all social relations. But Collins (1992) also points out that the power of those higher on the power differential ladder is restricted in a number of important ways. Those restrictions permit the lower-power actor considerable freedom of action. Transforming latent into manifest conflict is problematic. The way it emerges as open and active struggle will determine how costly it will be for the parties and the larger society. Can a conflict be resolved in its latent stage through structural reform? If not, will the emergence process be characterized by less or more costly conflict methods? How can the opposing parties do the conflict most economically and least harmfully? Concepts 2: Conflict Group Formation The differentiation of jobs and positions in a society and the rank ordering of people by status will inevitably produce conflict groups which bring latent conflict into the open. People become aware they have interests in common with others like them in position and status (Dahrendorf 1959). Those interests will center around common grievances and goals. Group members recognize other groups whose interests will oppose theirs. The initial stage of group formation may not involve real group-consciousness. But at some point, leaders will emerge and group formation will become conscious and deliberate. Members will make decisions about raising group self-awareness, clarification of group interests and goals, likely allies and enemies, and so forth. At that point, the character of the struggle will be decided. Group members may then have their best opportunity to determine the conflict's costs for them.
Supporting Literature: Randall Collins, Conflict Sociology , New York: Academic Press, 1975; Randall Collins, Sociological Insight , New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society , Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959; Morton Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict , New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973; Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth , New York: Grove Press, 1968; Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks , New York: International Publishers, 1971; Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844," in Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader , New York: W.W.Norton, 1978.
Copyright ©1998 Conflict Research Consortium -- Contact: crc@colorado.edu