Conflict as change

Abstract

This paper further develops the study of the link between conflict and sociality, following on my previous analysis of “Conflict as Closure” (2011). It addresses the ‘normality’ of conflict as a product of human sociality and seeks to bring the entire research of the Microcon project to bear upon the sociological understanding of collective violent conflict. In doing so, the paper develops an explanatory thesis according to which conflict is an effort to accelerate social change based on a previously existing or an ad hoc community link. The thesis explains both the relation between closure and change and the specificity of conditions that favour or prevent the breakout of conflict. In this context, it develops a clear argument on the aetiology of peace in late modernity as a structural consequence of social fragmentation into pursuing individual biographical projects of change.