Introduction

Abstract

Empirical facts have shown that social conflicts are part of life for humans in their interaction between one another. Conflicts are found in any social system from the smallest level such as ones between close friends or a dating couple, between family members, between members of different groups, to the macrointernational level, such as those between nations. Lulofs and Cahn (2000), for instance, say that conflict is “a fact of life”. The sociologist Dahrendorf says, “Every society displays at every point dissesnsus and conflict; social conflict is ubiquitous” (Dahrendorf 1963:162). In a similar line of thought, the sociologist Georg Simmel states: “An absolutely centripetal and harmonious group, a pure ‘unification’, not only is empirically unreal, it could show no real life process” (Simmel 1966:15). He then continues to say, “Just as the universe needs ‘love and hate’, that is, attractive and repulsive forces, in order to have any form at all, so society, too, in order to attain a determinate shape, needs some quantitative ratio of harmony and disharmony, of association and competition, of favorable and unfavorable tendencies”. The sociologiest Karl Marx also shares a similar view. As quoted by Vago,