Coser, Lewis A. 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. London: Routledge & K. Paul.
Rating:
6
Summary:
Theoretical work focusing on the positive functions of social conflict
The author, Lewis Coser, explains at the beginning of the book that the primary goal of the book is to outline the functions of social conflict (as indicated by the title). But what isn’t immediately apparent is that the author is primarily interested in illustrating how social conflict can have a positive function in social life, a notion that went against the predominant theoretical inclinations of the day (Parsonian Functionalism, which saw conflict as purely disruptive and non-beneficial). In Coser’s words, “Simmel’s essay, to which we now turn, is informed by the central thesis that “conflict is a form of socialization.” This means essentially that, to paraphrase the opening pages of Simmel’s essay, no group can be entirely harmonious, for it would then be devoid of process and structure. Groups require disharmony as well as harmony, dissociation as well as association; and conflicts within them are by no means altogether disruptive factors. Group formation is the result of both types of processes. The belief that one process tears down what the other builds up, so that what finally remains is the result of subtracting the one from the other, is based on a misconception. On the contrary, both “positive” and “negative” factors build group relations. Conflict as well as co-operation has social functions. Far from being necessarily dysfunctional, a certain degree-of conflict is an essential element in group formation and the persistence of group life” (p. 31).
In order to illustrate the positive functions of social conflict, Coser breaks down an essay on social conflict by Georg Simmel into 16 propositions. He then examines those propositions, using primarily logic but also some references to empirical data (the author doesn’t present any novel empirical data to test the propositions), and concludes with revised versions of the propositions (see the propositions below).
Review:
As I understood this book, it serves two purposes. First, it clarifies Simmel’s proposed functions of social conflict, which is useful and informative. Second, it presents a number of empirically testable propositions. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to say whether the propositions have been tested or not, but if they have not, then they should be.
As noted above, the book is almost entirely theoretical and presents no empirical data of its own. Inasmuch as the book is explicit about this, this isn’t a problem. However, most theoretical treatments in sociology have two problems – (1) they are tedious to read as they have a tendency to get bogged down in both tangents and definitions, and (2) they are difficult to understand. This book is a perfect example of both of these problems – it is tedious and difficult to understand, in large part because it stays so long in the realm of the abstract and only occasionally touches foot on the concrete that you have a hard time relating most of what is said to the concrete, which is to say, the empirical and, ultimately, that which matters to most people.
Overall, if you are a social researcher interested in social conflict, this is undoubtedly an important and seminal work that you should read. Additionally, for other social researchers that want a good grounding in social theory, this may be a useful read. If you do not fit into one of the above categories, this is certainly not a book you’ll want to pick up any time soon.
Propositions:
Proposition #1
p. 38 “Conflict serves to establish and maintain the identity and boundary lines of societies and groups.
“Conflict with other groups contributes to the establishment and reaffirmation of the identity of the group and maintains its boundaries against the surrounding social world.
“Patterned enmities and reciprocal antagonisms conserve social divisions and systems of stratification. Such patterned antagonisms prevent the gradual disappearance of boundaries between the subgroups of a social system and they assign position to the various subsystems within a total system.
“In social structures providing a substantial amount of mobility, attraction of the lower strata by the higher, as well as mutual hostility between the strata, is likely to occur. Hostile feelings of the lower strata in this case frequently take the form of ressentiment in which hostility is mingled with attraction. Such structures will tend to provide many occasions for conflict since, as will be discussed later, frequency of occasions for conflict varies positively with the closeness of relations.
“A distinction has to be made between conflict and hostile or antagonistic attitudes. Social conflict always denotes social interaction, whereas attitudes or sentiments are predispositions to engage in action. Such predispositions do not necessarily eventuate in conflict; the degree and kind of legitimation of power and status systems are crucial intervening variables affecting the occurrence of conflict.”
Proposition #2
pp. 47-48 “(I) Conflict is not always dysfunctional for the relationship within which it occurs; often conflict is necessary to maintain such a relationship. Without ways to vent hostility toward each other, and to express dissent, group members might feel completely crushed and might react by withdrawal. By setting free pent-up feelings of hostility, conflicts serve to maintain a relationship.”
“(2) Social systems provide for specific institutions which serve to drain off hostile and aggressive sentiments. These safety-valve institutions help to maintain the system by preventing otherwise probable conflict or by reducing its disruptive effects. They provide substitute objects upon which to displace hostile sentiments, as well as means of abreaction. Through these safety valves, hostility is prevented from turning against its original object. But such displacements also involve costs both for the social system and for the individual: reduced pressure for modifying the system to meet changing conditions, as well as dammed-up tension in the individual, creating potentialities for disruptive explosion.”
Proposition #3
p. 54 “Each social system contains sources of realistic conflict insofar as people raise conflicting claims to scarce status, power and resources, and adhere to conflicting values. The allocation of status, power and resources, though governed by norms and role allocation systems, will continue to be an object of contention to some degree. Realistic conflicts arise when men clash in the pursuit of claims based on frustration of demands and expectancies of gains.”
“Nonrealistic conflicts arise from deprivations and frustrations stemming from the socialization process and from later adult role obligations, or they result, as we have seen in the previous proposition, from a conversion of originally realistic antagonism which was disallowed expression. Whereas the first type of conflict takes place with the frustrating agents themselves in expectation of attaining specific results, the second type consists of a release of tension in aggressive action directed against shifting objects. The first type of conflict is viewed by the participants as a means toward the achievement of realistic ends, a means which might be abandoned if other means appear to be more effective for reaching the same end. The second leaves no such choice, since satisfaction is derived from the aggressive act itself.”
Proposition #4
p. 59 “Aggressive or hostile “impulses” do not suffice to account for social conflict. Hatred, just as love, needs some object. Conflict can occur only in the interaction between subject and object; it always presupposes a relationship.
“Realistic conflict need not be accompanied by hostility and aggressiveness. “Tensions” in the psychological sense are not always associated with conflict behavior. Yet it might be “useful” to hate the opponent. The propagandist expects that such hatred will reinforce the emotional investment in the conflict and hence strengthen the readiness to carry it out to the end.
“Conversely, the main function of the mediator is seen as divesting conflict situations of nonrealistic elements of aggressiveness so as to allow the contender to deal realistically with the divergent claims at issue.”
Proposition #5
p. 64 “Reformulating the present proposition, we may say that antagonism is usually involved as an element in intimate relationships. Converging and diverging motivations may be so commingled in the actual relationship that. they can be separated only for classificatory and analytical purposes, while the relationship actually has a unitary character sui generis.
“Close social relationships, characterized as they are by frequent interaction and involving the total personality of the participants, may be said to include in their motivational structure an essential ambivalence in that they contain both positive and negative cathexes inextricably intertwined.”
Proposition #6
p. 72 “In the last proposition we stated that hostile feelings are likely to arise in close relationships and that if conflicts occur in these relationships, they are likely to be intense. This does not necessarily point to the likelihood of more frequent conflict in closer relationships than in less close ones. We have already encountered situations in which accumulated hostility does not eventuate in conflict behavior. The next proposition will consider this problem further.”
Proposition #7
p. 80 “Conflict may serve to remove dissociating elements in a relationship and to re-establish unity. Insofar as conflict is the resolution of tension between antagonists it has stabilizing functions and becomes an integrating component of the relationship. However, not all conflicts are positively functional for the relationship, but only those which concern goals, values or interests that do not contradict the basic assumptions upon which the relation is founded. Loosely structured groups and open societies, by allowing conflicts, institute safeguards against the type of conflict which would endanger basic consensus and thereby minimize the danger of divergences touching core values. The interdependence of antagonistic groups and the crisscrossing within such societies of conflicts, which serve to “sew the social system together” by canceling each other out, thus prevent disintegration along one primary line of cleavage.”
Proposition #8
p. 85 “The absence of conflict cannot be taken as an index of the strength and stability of a relationship. Stable relationships may be characterized by conflicting behavior. Closeness gives rise to frequent occasions for conflict, but if the participants feel that their relationships are tenuous, they will avoid conflict, fearing that it might endanger the continuance of the relation. When close relationships are characterized by frequent conflicts rather than by the accumulation of hostile and ambivalent feelings, we may be justified, given that such conflicts are not likely to concern basic consensus, in taking these frequent conflicts as an index of the stability of these relationships.
“In secondary relationships, where we are initially justified in expecting relatively less intense conflicts owing to the segmental involvement of the participants, the presence of conflict may be taken as an index of the operation of a balancing mechanism.”
Interesting to see findings on this; seems too micro for sociology.
Proposition #9
p. 95 “Conflict with another group leads to the mobilization of the energies of group members and hence to increased cohesion of the group. Whether increase in centralization accompanies this increase in cohesion depends upon both the character of the conflict and the type of group. Centralization will be more likely to occur in the event of warlike conflict and in differentiated structures requiring marked division of labor.
“Despotism seems to be related to lack of cohesion; it is required for carrying out hostilities where there is insufficient group solidarity to mobilize energies of group members.
“In groups engaged in struggle with an external enemy, the occurrence of both centralization and of despotism depends upon the system of common values and upon the group structure prior to the outbreak of the conflict.
“Social systems lacking social solidarity are likely to disintegrate in the face of outside conflict, although some unity may be despotically enforced.”
Analyze Mormon out-group conflict and its impact on internal cohesion (possible contradiction – death of J.S.) other times, strong cohesion? no polygamy debacle; what about blacks and the priesthood?
Proposition #10
p. 103 “Groups engaged in continued struggle with the outside tend to be intolerant within. They are unlikely to tolerate more than limited departures from the group unity. Such groups tend to assume a sect-like character: they select membership in terms of special characteristics and so tend to be limited in size, and they lay claim to the total personality involvement of their members. Their social cohesion depends upon total sharing of all aspects of group life and is reinforced by the assertion of group unity against the dissenter. The only way they can solve the problem of dissent is through the dissenter’s voluntary or forced withdrawal.
“Groups of the church type, not involved in continuous struggle with the outside, tend to make no special claims on the total involvement of the personality of the membership and, because they set up no rigid criteria for membership, are more likely to be large. Such groups are able to resist outside pressures successfully by exhibiting elasticity of structure and allowing an area of “tolerated conflict” within.”
Proposition #11
p. 110 “Rigidly organized struggle groups may actually search for enemies with the deliberate purpose or the unwitting result of maintaining unity and internal cohesion. Such groups may actually perceive an outside threat although no threat is present. Under conditions yet to be discovered, imaginary threats have the same group-integrating function as real threats.
“The evocation of an outer enemy or the invention of such an enemy strengthens social cohesion that is threatened from within. Similarly, search for or invention of a dissenter within may serve to maintain a structure which is threatened from the outside. Such scapegoating mechanisms will occur particularly in those groups whose structure inhibits realistic conflict within.
“There are shifting gradations between the exaggeration of a real danger, the attraction of a real enemy, and the complete invention of a threatening agent.”
Proposition #12 (no clear reformulation of this proposition by Coser)
p. 112 “With this proposition Simmel distinguishes between two types of conflict: that in which the goal is personal and subjective and that in which the object of contention has an impersonal, objective quality.
“Simmel’s remarks bear upon two distinct consequences of the objectification of conflict: (1) the collective aim, transcending personal interests, will make the struggle more intense; (2) a unifying element exists between the contending parties in their adherence to the common norm of abstention from personal attacks. In other words, the present proposition concerns (1) the effect of objectification upon the intensity of the conflict, and (2) the effect of objectification upon the relation between the antagonists.”
Proposition #13
pp. 118-119 “Conflicts in which the participants feel that they are merely the representatives of collectivities and groups, fighting not for self but only for the ideals of the group they represent, are likely to be more radical and merciless than those that are fought for personal reasons.
“Elimination of the personal element tends to make conflict sharper, in the absence of modifying elements which personal factors would normally introduce. The modern Marxian labor movement exemplifies the radicalizing effects of objectification of conflict. Strict ideological alignments are more likely to occur in rigid than in flexible adjustive structures.
“Objectification of the conflict is likely to be a unifying element for the contending parties when both parties pursue the same purpose: for example, in scientific controversies in which the issue is the establishment of truth.”
Proposition #14
pp. 132-133 “In view of the advantages of unified organization for purposes of winning the conflict, it might be supposed that each party would strongly desire the absence of unity in the opposing party. Yet this is not always true. If a relative balance of forces exists between the two parties, a unified party prefers a unified opponent.
“Labor unions have often preferred to deal with employers’ associations rather than with individual employers. Although strikes might spread further and last longer in such cases, both parties prefer that the form of the conflict be in line with their own structural requirements. Only by dealing with representative organizations of employers can workers feel sure that the result will not be jeopardized by independent operators; and, correlatively, employers will tend to prefer to deal with unified labor organizations, which are able to control “unruly” or autonomous members. In opposing a diffuse crowd of enemies, one may more often gain isolated victories, but then one very rarely arrives at decisive results which fix a more enduring relationship. This explains the apparent paradox that each opponent may see the advantage of his enemy as his own advantage.”
Proposition #15
p. 137 “Conflict consists in a test of power between antagonistic parties. Accommodation between them is possible only if each is aware of the relative strength of both parties. However, paradoxical as it may seem, such knowledge can most frequently be attained only through conflict, since other mechanisms for testing the respective strength of antagonists seem to be unavailable.
“Consequently, struggle may be an important way to avoid conditions of disequilibrium by modifying the basis for power relations.
“Conclusions we reached earlier in these pages we now reach again by an alternative route: conflict, rather than being disruptive and dissociating, may indeed be a means of balancing and hence maintaining a society as a going concern.”
Proposition #16
pp. 148-149 “Struggle may bring together otherwise unrelated persons and groups. Coalitions and temporary associations, rather than more permanent and cohesive groups, will result from conflicts where primarily pragmatic interests of the participants are involved. Such alignments are more likely to occur in flexible structures than in rigid ones, because, in rigid societies, suppressed conflicts, if they break out, tend to assume a more intense and hence more “ideological” character. Coalitions and associations give structure to an individualistic society and prevent it from disintegrating through atomization.
“The unifying character of conflict is seen more dramatically when coalitions and instrumental associations produce agreement out of relationships of competition or hostility. Unification is at a minimum level when coalitions are formed for the purpose of defense. Alliance, then, for each particular group reflects the most minimal expression of the desire for self-preservation.
“The more the unified elements differ in culture and structure, the smaller the number of interests in which they coincide. Just to the extent that unification is not grounded in prior attraction based on common characteristics will the meaning of unification correspondingly confine itself to coalition and the purpose at hand.
“Most coalitions between already existing groups, especially between numerous groups or between those that differ widely from each other, are formed for defensive purposes only, at least in the view of those who enter the alliance. Alliance, even when not formed for the purpose of conflict, may seem to other groups a threatening and unfriendly act. This very perception, however, leads to the creation of new associations and coalitions, thus further stimulating social participation.”
Again, could use Mormons & Fundies (& Catholics).