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Max Weber's (1864–1920) approach to conflict is contrasted with that of Marx. Durkheim saw crime as "a factor in public health, an integral part of all healthy societies." The collective conscience defines certain acts as "criminal." Crime thus plays a role in the evolution of morality and law: " implies not only that the way remains open to necessary changes but that in certain cases it directly prepares these changes." Functionalism concerns "the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system," The chief form of social conflict that Durkheim addressed was crime. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) saw society as a functioning organism. There are no barbaric tribes in our neighborhood to be sure - but let no one is deceived, their instincts lie latent in the populace of European states.Ĭonflict theories were popular in early sociology, and accordingly often date back to the early 1900s founders of Sociology, and particularly the ideas of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx, and Lester Frank Ward. But if anyone believes that we are safe from such catastrophes he is perhaps yielding to an all too optimistic delusion. European civilization may perish, over flooded by barbaric tribes. What happened in India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome may sometimes happen in modern Europe. Horowitz says that Gumplowicz understood conflict in all its forms: "class conflict, race conflict, and ethnic conflict", and calls him one of the fathers of conflict theory.
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The winner of a war would enslave the losers eventually a complex caste system develops. Gumplowicz theorized that large complex human societies evolved from war and conquest. Gumplowicz, in Grundriss der Soziologie ( Outlines of Sociology, 1884), describes how civilization has been shaped by conflict between cultures and ethnic groups. Although Ward and Gumplowicz developed their theories independently they had much in common and approached conflict from a comprehensive anthropological and evolutionary point-of-view as opposed to Marx's rather exclusive focus on economic factors. Two early conflict theorists were the Polish-Austrian sociologist and political theorist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909) and the American sociologist and paleontologist Lester F. While many conflict theories set out to highlight the ideological aspects inherent in traditional thought, conflict theory does not refer to a unified school of thought, and should not be confused with, for instance, social conflict theory, or any other specific theory related to social conflict. Georg Simmel was one of the earliest sociologists to formally use "conflict" as a framework to understand social change, writing about the topic in his 1908 book, "Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations". Other historical political philosophers associated with having "conflict theories" include Jean Bodin, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mills, Thomas Robert Malthus, Karl Marx, and Georg Simmel. Many political philosophers and sociologists have been framed as having conflict theories, dating back as far as Plato's idea of the tripartite soul of The Republic, to Hobbes' ideas in The Leviathan. Accordingly, conflict theories represent attempts at the macro-level analysis of society. Power generally contrasts historically dominant ideologies, economies, currencies or technologies. Conflict theories often draw attention to power differentials, such as class conflict, or a conflict continuum. Conflict theories are perspectives in political philosophy and sociology which argue that individuals and groups ( social classes) within society interact on the basis of conflict rather than agreement, while also emphasizing social psychology, historical materialism, power dynamics, and their roles in creating power structures, social movements, and social arrangements within a society.