Conflict

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Conflict is a state of opposition between two parties. In political terms, it refers to an ongoing state of hostility between two groups of people.

Conflict as taught for graduate and professional work in conflict resolution commonly has the definition: "when two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine each other's goal-seeking capability".

Conflict can exist at a variety of levels of analysis:

intrapersonal conflict (though this usually just gets delegated out to psychology)
interpersonal conflict
group conflict
organizational conflict
community conflict
intra-state conflict (i.e. civil war)
international conflict

Conflicts in these levels may appear "nested" in conflicts residing at larger levels of analysis. For example, conflict within a work team may play out the dynamics of a broader conflict in the organization as a whole. (See Marie Dugan's article on Nested Conflict. John Paul Lederach has also written on this.) (I'll come back to give hypertext links to those later.)

The Vietnam Conflict became in all aspects but semantics a war.

The Arab-Israeli conflict forms a historic and ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian interests. See also Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland furnishes an example of another notable historic conflict. See Bloody Sunday (Northern Ireland 1972)

Many conflicts have a racial or ethnic basis. This would include such conflicts as the Bosnian-Croatian conflict (see Kosovo and Metohia), the conflict in Rwanda, and the conflict in Kazakhstan

Class conflict forms an important topic in much Marxist thought.

Another type of conflict exists between governments and guerrilla groups or groups engaged in asymmetric warfare.

Compare competition, dispute.

The name Conflict may also refer to an anarcho-punk band; see Conflict (band).

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